In the relation of verse and prose Greene’s work differs from that of Sannazzaro and Sidney, the former being of considerably greater merit than the latter.  The style adopted exhibits a very marked Euphuism, and the whole form of narrative is characterized by that fondness for petty conceit which not seldom gives an air of puerility to the lighter Elizabethan prose.  Puerile in a sense it had every right to be, for modern prose narration was then in its very infancy in this country.  No artistic form destined to contribute to the main current of literature is born perfect into the world; the early efforts appear not only tentative, uncouth, at times rugged, but often childish and futile, unworthy the consideration of serions men.  The substance of the Gesta Romanorum and the style of the Novellino appear so, considered in relation to the Decameron; the mystery plays are an obvious instance, not to be explained by any general immaturity of medieval ideas.  Traces of the tendency may even be noticed where revival or acclimatization, rather than original invention, is the aim; we find it in the Shepherd’s Calender, nor was it absent in the days of the romantic revival, either from the German Lenores or the English Otrantos.  And so it is with the novelists of the Elizabethan age.  Renouncing the traditions of the older romance, which was adult and perfect a hundred years before in Malory, but had now fallen into a second childhood, and determined on the creation of a new and genuine form of literary expression, they paid the price of originality in the vein of childishness that runs through their writings.

If, however, Greene was content in the main to adopt the style of the new novel, he, as indeed Lyly too, could at times snatch a straightforward thought or a vigorous phrase from current speech or controversial literature, and invest it with all the greater effectiveness by contrasting it with its surroundings.  Here, as an example of euphuistic composition, is Democles’ address to the champions about to engage in single combat: 

Worthy mirrors of resolved magnanimitie, whose thoughts are above your fortunes, and your valour more than your revenewes, know that Bitches that puppie in hast bring forth blind whelpes; that there is no herbe sooner sprung up than the Spattarmia nor sooner fadeth; the fruits too soone ripe are quickly rotten; that deedes done in hast are repented at leisure:  then, brave men in so weightie a cause,... deferre it some three daies, and then in solemn manner end the combat[140].

With this we may contrast the closing sentence of the work: 

  And lest there should be left any thing imperfect in this pastorall
  accident, Doron smudged himselfe up, and jumped a marriage with his old
  friend Carmela.

This is, of course, intentionally cast in a homely style in contrast to the courtliness of the main plot; but Greene, as some of his later works attest, knew the value of strong racy English no less than his friend Nashe, who, in the preface he prefixed to this very work, pushed colloquialism and idiom to the verge of affectation and beyond.