Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/75



first part was dedicated ‘To … his very good Lorde and Maister, Lord Darcie of the North,’ and has commendatory verses by Roger Portington. Of the second part, licensed 6 Sept. 1583, the earliest edition known is the 1593 4to, which has a dedicatory epistle—dated ‘From my Studie in Clarehall’—to Robert Lee and Roger Portington. Some of Greene's biographers state, without authority, that he entered the church. A certain 'Robert Grene,' one of the queen's chaplains, was presented in 1576 to the rectory of Walkington in the diocese of York, but at that time Greene was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Another person who bore the poet's name, but whose identity with the poet cannot be established, was presented on 19 June 1584 to the vicarage of Tollesbury in Essex, which he resigned in the following year. It is clear from the dedicatory epistle before the second part of 'Mamillia' that on his return from abroad Greene was engaged on literary work at Cambridge before taking his M.A. degree. At one time he contemplated adopting the profession of medicine, for at the end of his ‘Planetomachia’ is the signature ‘R. Greene, Master of Arts and Student in Phisicke.’

Towards the end of 1585, or early in 1586, Greene married ‘a gentleman's daughter of good account’ (Repentance), and seems to have settled for a while at Norwich. When she had borne him a child he deserted her, after spending her marriage portion. She returned to her friends in Lincolnshire, and he permanently settled in London. In his 'Repentance' he states that he deserted her because she tried to persuade him from his wilful wickedness. If his own account may be accepted, the life that he led in London was singularly vicious. His friend Nashe allows that 'hee had not that regarde to his credit in which [which it] had beene requisite he should,' but declares 'with any notorious crime I never knew him tainted' (Strange Newes). The author of 'Greene's Funeralls,' 1594, a certain ‘R. B.,’ would have us believe that Greene was a pattern of virtue: ‘His life and manners, though I would, I cannot halfe expresse;’ but it is clear that he was guilty of grave irregularities, although his own confessions (and Gabriel Harvey's charges) are doubtless exaggerated. On one occasion he was so moved by a sermon which he heard in St. Andrew's Church at Norwich that he determined to reform his conduct, but his profligate associates laughed him out of his good resolutions. It is to be noted that, however faulty his conduct may have been, his writings were singularly free from grossness. He never, in the words of his admirer ‘R. B.,’ gave the looser cause to laugh, Ne men of judgment for to be offended. His pen was constantly employed in the praise of virtue.

Green's literary activity was remarkable, and he rose rapidly in popular favour. 'In a night and a day,' says Nashe (ib. 1592), ‘would he have yarkt vp a pamphlet as well as in seauen yeare; and glad was that printer that might bee so blest to pay him deare for the very dregs of his wit.’ The style of his first romance, ‘Mamillia,’ is closely modelled on ‘Euphues,’ and all his love-pamphlets bear traces of Lyly's influence. His enemy, Gabriel Harvey, termed him ‘The Ape of Euphues’ (Fovre Letters, 1592).

Early in August 1592 Greene fell ill after a dinner, at which Nashe was present, of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine. The account of his last illness and death given by his malignant enemy, Gabriel Harvey (ib.), may be exaggerated in some particulars, but appears to be substantially true. Harvey called on Greene's hostess, and professes to record the information that she supplied. If his account be true, Greene was deserted by all his friends, Nashe among the number, and died in the most abject poverty. He lodged with a poor shoemaker and his wife, who attended him as best they could, and his only visitors were two women, one of them a former mistress (sister to the rogue known as ‘Cutting Ball,’ who had been hanged at Tyburn), the mother of his base-born son, Fortunatus Greene, who died in 1593. Having given a bond for ten pounds to his host, he wrote on the day before his death these lines to the wife whom he had not seen for six years: ‘Doll, I charge thee by the loue of our youth and by my sovles rest that thou wilte see this man paide, for if hee and his wife had not succoured me I had died in the streetes. Robert Greene.’ He died 3 Sept. 1592, and his devoted hostess, obeying a wish that he had expressed, crowned his dead body with a garland of bays. On the following day he was buried in the New Churchyard, near Bethlehem Hospital.

Shortly after Greene's death appeared Gabriel Harvey's ‘Fovre Letters and Certaine Sonnets: especially touching Robert Greene and other parties by him abused,’ 1592, 4to; licensed 4 Dec., the preface being dated 16 Sept. Meres (Palladis Tamia, 1598) aptly compares Harvey's odious attack on his dead antagonist to Achilles' treatment of Hector's corpse. Chettle, in ‘Kind-Hartes Dream’ (licensed 8 Dec., four days after Harvey's tract had been licensed), represents that Greene's spirit appeared to him and laid on his breast a letter addressed to Nashe. This 