Samela made this reply, because she had heard him so superfine, as if Ephebus had learned him to refine his mother’s tongue; wherefore though he had done it of an ink horn desire to be eloquent, and Melicertus thinking Samela had learned with Lucilla in Athens to anatomize wit, and speak none but similes, imagined she smoothed her talk to be thought like Sappho, Phaon’s paramour.

The following passage could hardly be distinguished from the writings of Lyly: 

I had thought, Menaphon, that he which weareth the bay leaf had been free from lightning, and the eagle’s pen a preservative against thunder; that labour had been enemy to love, and the eschewing of idleness an antidote against fancy; but I see by proof, there is no adamant so hard, but the blood of a goat will make soft, no fort so well defended, but strong battery will entry, nor any heart so pliant to restless labours, but enchantments of love will overcome.

Melicertus addresses Samela, whom he finds feeding her flocks, in the following terms: 

Mistress of all eyes that glance but at the excellence of your perfection, sovereign of all such as Venus hath allowed for lovers, Oenone’s over-match, Arcadia’s comet, Beauty’s second comfort, all hail!  Seeing you sit like Juno when she first watched her white heifer on the Lincen downs, as bright as silver Phoebe mounted on the high top of the ruddy element, I was, by a strange attractive force, drawn, as the adamant draws this iron, or the jet the straw, to visit your sweet self in the shade, and afford you such company as a poor swain may yield without offense; which, if you shall vouch to deign of, I shall be as glad of such accepted service, as Paris was first of his best beloved paramour.

Another of Samela’s lovers, despairing of success, “became sick for anger, and spent whole ecologues in anguish.”

Greene’s story of “Pandosto,” of “Dorastus and Fawnia,” which attained a great popularity, and went through at least fourteen editions, is well known as the foundation of Shakespeare’s “Winter’s Tale.”  Shakespeare has followed Greene in the material points of the story, even so far as to make Bohemia a maritime country.  But the genius of the dramatist is manifest in the miraculous and happy ending which he substitutes for the unlawful love and inconsistent suicide of Pandosto in the work of Greene.  Shakespeare borrowed from the text, as well as from the plot of the novelist.  The lines,

                        The gods themselves,
      Humbling their deities to love, have taken
      The shapes of beasts upon them:  Jupiter
      Became a bull, and bellowed:  the green Neptune
      A ram, and bleated; and the fire robed god,
      Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,
      As I seem now,

are evidently a reproduction of the soliloquy of Dorastus: