Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay was printed in 1594, but acted as early as 1591.  The hero is Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward the First; the heroine, Margaret, a keeper’s daughter, known as “the fair maid of Fressingfield.”  The Prince, who is out on a hunting excursion with Lacy and several other friends, and Ralph Simnel, the Court Fool, meets with Margaret, and his fancy is at once smitten with her, while she has no suspicion who he is.  At Ralph’s suggestion, he sends Lacy, in the disguise of a farmer’s son, to court Margaret for him, and sets out on a visit to Friar Bacon at Oxford, to learn from the conjurer how his suit is going to speed.  Lacy thinks the Prince’s aim is not to wed the girl, but to entrap and beguile her; besides, his own heart is already interested; so he goes to courting her in good earnest for himself.  Meanwhile the Prince with his company, all disguised, arrives at Friar Bacon’s; and, through the conjurer’s art, learns what Lacy is doing.  Soon after, he comes upon Lacy, poniard in hand, meaning to kill him on the spot.  Margaret, being present, intercedes for her lover, and takes all the blame of his course to herself.  The Prince then lays siege to her in person, but she vows she will rather die with Lacy than divorce her heart from his, and finally reminds him of his own princely honour; whereupon he frankly resigns her to his rival’s hand.

Among other entertainments of the scene, we have a trial of national skill between Bacon and Bungay on one side, and Vandermast, a noted conjurer from Germany, on the other.  First, Bungay tries his art, and is thoroughly baffled by the German; then Bacon takes Vandermast in hand, and outconjures him all to nothing.  Bacon has a servant named Miles, who, for his ignorant blundering in a weighty matter, is at last carried off by one of his master’s devils.  The last scene is concerned with the marriage of Prince Edward and Elinor of Castile, and is closed by Bacon with a grand prophecy touching Elizabeth.

Here, again, we have some fair lines of characterization, especially in the Prince, Lacy, Margaret, and Ralph.  The heroine is altogether Greene’s masterpiece in female character; she exhibits much strength, spirit, and sweetness of composition; in fact, she is not equalled by any woman of the English stage till we come to Shakespeare, whom no one has ever approached in that line.  It scarce need be said that the play is quite guiltless of any thing worthy to be named dramatic composition.  But it has a good deal of dramatic poetry, that would be almost charming, had not Shakespeare spoilt every thing of the kind that was done before he taught men how to do it.

The comedy of George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, printed in 1599, is ascribed to Greene, but, it seems to me, not on very strong grounds.  I can hardly believe it his; certainly the style and versification are much better than in any other of his plays; nor does it show any thing of that incontinence of learning which he seems to have been unable to restrain.  The blank-verse, too, is far unlike Greene’s anywhere else.