Greene's Hall on the second of November, 1590, is a paraphrase of the parable of the Prodigal Son. That parable had been shaped for school-boys into a Latin comedy after the manner of Terence, Acolastus, first printed in 1529,* and now it takes the form of an Elizabethan novel. The Mourning Garment is Repentance, in sign of which the returned Prodigal was covered by his father "in a new robe, but with a garment of black, as a man mourning at his high faults and low fortunes." The piece, probably, was written soon after the "Looking Glass for London and England." Greene begins his dedication of it to the Earl of Cumberland with reference to the wantonness of the Ninevites, and their garments of gold, changed to sackcloth after Jonas called them to repentance. The sackcloth of the Ninevites is mentioned again in the "Conclusion." Greene in the dedication also professes that he has with the ears of his heart heard Jonas crying, "Except thou repent," and he says, "As I have changed the inward affects of my mind, so I have turned my wanton works to effectual labours, and pulling off their vainglorious titles have called this my Mourning Garment.” Greene's earlier tales had been sound in morals, planned to teach while they delighted. If he failed in his own management of life, he still sought, pen in hand, to maintain only the right. But in "The Mourning Garment," and in some later pieces, not only is the didactic purpose more avowed, but Robert Greene dwells heavily upon his own misdeeds, and holds up his own past life as an example by which others may be warned. The father of the Prodigal is one Rabbi Bilessi, "in the City of Callipolis seated in the land of Avilath, compassed with Gihon and Euphrates, two rivers that flow from Eden." The Rabbi's younger son, Philador, desires to see the world. He sets advice aside, receives his portion, and goes into Thessaly with a following of servants. Seeking some town, he finds a shepherd and his wife, who are described in a song ending "If country loves such sweet desires gain, What lady would not love a shepherd swain?" The shepherd swain guides Philador to a town, telling love-tales on the way associated with some tombs by which they pass. In one of the * "E. W." viii. 89-95. tales an Alexis praises Rosamond in English hexameters, and Rosamond, in the same measure, before she dies for love, laments her loss. Alexis has forsaken her to marry Phillida. "Once was she liked, and once was she loved of wanton Alexis, Here did he clip and kiss Rosamond, and vow by Diana, That Thessaly had not such another Nymph to delight him." When the shepherd swain has brought Philador within sight of a town, he warns him against lodging at the sign of The Unicorn, where be three sisters beautiful and witty, but of small honesty. Philador does lodge with those sisters. He spends with them his substance in repeating the experience of Acolastus, and is beaten out by them, stripped to his shirt. Then, in time of famine, he minds the swine of a farmer, and is glad to share the husks that the swine eat. All dialogue and monologue in the piece is euphuistic, even when the Prodigal has returned to his father. But words of the parable as told in Scripture are now and then interwoven, as in the reasoning of Rabbi Bilessi with the discontent shown by his eldest son: "Ah, Sophonos, and art thou angry then with thine old father for entertaining his son that was lost and is found, that was dead and is alive again ?” Greene's "Farewell to Folly: sent to Courtiers and Schollars as a president to warne them from the vaine delights that drawes youth on to repentance," seems to be the first part of an unfinished design to thread upon a very simple narrative a set of tales upon the Seven Deadly Sins. The connecting narrative is less ingenious than John Gower's in the Confessio Amantis.* Greene's "Farewell to Folly." Greene's "Farewell to Folly." At Florence, in the days of feud between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, Jeronimo Farnese sought peace in a retired country-house, taking with himself and his wife three daughters and four young gentlemen. These seven young ladies and gentlemen had their own several "E. W." iv. 201-238. characters, and held arguments after dinner, and illustrated each argument with a tale told by one of them. The first discussion was of Pride, first of the Deadly Sins, and Peratio told his tale of Johannes Vadislaus, a proud king in the city of Buda, who expelled Selides, a faithful noble, for warning him against effects of pride. But Vadislaus was at last cast out by his subjects, who elected Selides as his successor. Vadislaus in his beggary came to a country cottage in which Moesia, the daughter of Selides, had taken service as a country maid. There Vadislaus hears her singing at the cottage door "Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown." They know each other presently, and the tale ends with a dialogue be tween them. From Pride the discussion passes to another of the sins-Lustwhich another of the four gentlemen, Cosimo, illustrates with a story of Ninus, who, through desire for Semiramis, the honest wife of Monon, a poor man in Babylon, killed Monon. Semiramis, in revenge, so gratified Ninus that he agreed to her wish to be made for three days sole and absolute sovereign. Her first act was to send him to execution, after which she entombed him royally and ruled till her son Ninus was of age to govern. Greene's seven young gentlemen and ladies then are drawn to the discussion of Gluttony, and Bernardino tells a short tale of a gluttonous Duke of Augsburg who ruined Rustico by a wrong decision given when he was not sober, for which Rustico, by device, exhibited him to his people, besmeared with his own vomit, drunk, upon a scaffold, made a speech over him, and was chosen to be governor in his place. Three of the Seven Sins having been thus dealt with by three of the company of seven young debaters, they all went in to dinner; "and so," Greene ends, "for this time we will leave them." The phrase, "for this time," leads us to infer that there would have been four more tales in a second part of the "Farewell to Folly" which Greene then intended. In the years 1591 and 1592—the two last years of his life-Greene, urged, perhaps, by the need of money, produced, among other pieces, a series of five pamphlets professing to expose the tricks of all on Corogues, male and female, who made it their busi Pamphlets senage. ness to prey on the unwary. The first of these pamphlets, published in 1591, was called "A Notable Discouery of Coosnage. Now daily practised by sundry lewd persons, called Connie-catchers, and Crosse-biters. Plainely laying open those pernitious sleights that hath brought many ignorant men to confusion. Written for the general benefit of all Gentlemen, Citizens, Apprentises, Country Farmers and yeomen, that may hap to fall into the company of such coosening companions. With a delightful discourse of the coosnage of Colliers. Nascimur pro patria. By R. Greene, Maister of Arts." There were two parts of this, and in 1592 followed "The Thirde and last Part of Conny-catching. With the new devised knauish Art of Foole-taking. like Cosenages and Villenies neuer before discouered. By R. G." Then followed, in 1592, "A Disputation betweene a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny-catcher." Last came, under the name of "The Blacke Booke's Messenger," "The Life and Death of Ned Browne, a notorious Cutpurse and Conny-catcher." In the Black Book that was promised as the closing piece of the series, Greene undertook to give what we should call a London Thieves' Directory. Death stayed his hand. Awdelay's The There was nothing new in the design of these books. Thirty years before they appeared, John Awdelay-a member of the Stationers' Company who wrote some of the little books that he sought profit in publishing, and who was a zealous Protestant-had written and published, in 1561, a little pamphlet called "The Fraternitye of Vacabondes, as wel of ruflying Vacabondes, as of begerly, of women as of men, of Gyrles as of Boyes, with their proper names and qualities. With a description of Couseners and Shifters. Whereunto also is adjoyned the xxv Order of Knaves, otherwyse called a Quartern of Knaves, Confirmed for ever by Cocke Lorell." This was reprinted in 1565, and again in 1575. In Germany Luther himself had written a preface to such a book But the Harman's "Caveat for -a Liber Vagatorum, first published about 1514. previous book that especially led Greene and other men to the production of this kind of literature was "A Caveat or Warning for Commen Cursetors, vulgarely called Vagabones, by Thomas Harman Esquiere," first published in 1567. This book was very popular, and much subject to piracies. The greater part of a pamphlet, published in 1592 as "The groundworke of Conny-catching," and often ascribed to Robert Greene, was a reprint from Thomas Harman's "Caveat." Cursetors." Thomas Harman was a gentleman of Kent who lived at Crayford, and had Kentish estates at Ellam, Maystreet, and Maxton. When his book was published, in 1567, he had kept, he says, for twenty years a house "where vnto pouerty dayely hath and doth repayre," and took interest in talking daily with the "wyly wanderers." At last he began to set down notes of their knavish tricks and of their ways of speech. In London, when his book was being printed, he lived at Whitefriars, within the cloister, among vagabonds who there sought freedom from arrest. Harman's discrimination of the several sorts of vagabonds under their own names-as "the Ruffler," "an Upright Man," Hooker or Angler," "a Frater," "an Abraham Man"—is given in little characters that may be taken for rough early examples of the character-writing that we shall soon find coming into fashion. Harman's "Caveat" also contains little stories of tricks played. It closes with a list of the names "of the upright men, rogues, and pallyards," and a small glossary of " their pelting speech "--their slang. a Robert Greene in his books on Cosenage does not attempt character-writing, but takes some pains with the telling of his stories. One story he tells twice over, the second time with new seasoning, said to have sprung out of more accurate information. Greene spiced his book with occasional suggestion of peril to Greene's Cosenage. H-VOL. X. |