style which John Lily had rendered popular, and a certain incontinence of metaphors and classical allusions, the issue of a full and ready memory unrestrained by taste or judgment; the writer galloping on from page to page with unflagging volubility, himself evidently captivated with the rolling sound of his own sentences.  Still, his descriptions often have a warmth and height of colouring that could not fail to take prodigiously in an age when severity or delicacy of taste was none of the commonest.  Several of his prose pieces are liberally interspersed with passages of poetry, in which he uses a variety of measures, and most of them with an easy, natural skill, while his cast of thought and imagery shows him by no means a stranger to the springs of poetic sweetness and grace, though he never rises to any thing like grandeur.

The History of Orlando Furioso was acted as early as 1591, and probably written some time before.  The plot was partly founded on Ariosto’s romance, partly invented by Greene himself.  The action, or what stands for such, is conducted with the wildest license, and shows no sense or idea of dramatic truth, but only a prodigious straining after stage effect; the writer trying, apparently, how many men of different nations, European, African, and Asiatic, he could huddle in together, and how much love, rivalry, and fighting he could put them through in the compass of five Acts.  As for the fury of Orlando, it is as far from the method of madness as from the logic of reason; being none other than the incoherent jargon of one endeavouring to talk stark nonsense.

Alphonsus, King of Arragon, belongs, by internal marks, to about the same period as the preceding, but is not known to have been printed till 1597.  Each Act opens with a chorus by Venus.  Medea, also, is employed to work enchantments, and raises Homer’s Calchas, who comes forth “clad in a white surplice and a cardinal’s mitre.”  This play, too, is crammed from first to last brimful of tumult and battle; the scene changing between Italy and Turkey with admirable lawlessness; and Christians of divers nations, Turks, and a band of Amazonian warriors, bestriding the stage with their monstrous din.

Both of these pieces are mainly in blank-verse, with a frequent interspersing of couplets.  In the latter piece, allusion is made to “the mighty Tamburlaine,” thus indicating the height which Greene was striving to reach, if not surpass.  In fact, both pieces have plenty of Marlowe’s thunder, but none of his lightning.  Even the blank-verse reads like that of one accustomed to rhyme, and unable to get out of his wonted rut.  And the versification runs, throughout, in a stilted monotony, the style being made thick and turgid with high-sounding epithets; while we have a perfect flux of learned impertinence.  As for truth, nature, character, poetry, we look for them in vain; though there is much, in the stage noise and parade, that might keep the multitude from perceiving the want of them.