with a pleasant Comedie &c." Of this drama Ulrici says that "Greene, led
astray perhaps by Marlowe, ventured upon a task quite beyond him. He as
yet obviously had no idea of the dignity of history, of an historical
spirit, of an historical conception of the subject, or of an historical
form of the drama. History with him resolves itself into a romance."
This opinion is fully sustained by the play itself; James falls in love
with Ida, the daughter of the Countess of Arran, but in spite of his
disloyalty, his Queen is faithful. James repents for the very good
reason that Ida spurns him, but not until he has ordered the Queen to be
killed. The murder is unsuccessfully attempted, and after her partial
recovery, she rushes between the armies, disarms the hostility of her
father, the English King, and wins back her husband's love. The chief
characters are Oberon, King of Fairies, and Rohan, a "misanthropic
recluse." Rohan has this veracious "history" enacted before Oberon, and
so justifies himself for having withdrawn from a bad world. This is the
"pleasant Comedie" which is connected with the main action by Slipper,
Rohan's son, who plays the part of clown. It is not strange that the
impartial critic summed up the review with the remark that "the
atmosphere of history was evidently too pure and cool for Greene's
taste." The play is a romance from beginning to end; it has no
pretension to the character of an historical drama. Mr. Dyce says of it:
"From what source our author derived the materials of this strange
fiction I have not been able to discover; nor could Mr. David Laing of
Edinburg, who is so profoundly versed in the ancient literature of his
country, point out to me any Scottish chronicle or tract which might
have afforded hints to the poet for its composition."

The play originally called in 1599 "The Chronicle History of Alphonsus,
King of Aragon" is based upon a semi-historical foundation, and yet, as
the highest authority has pronounced, Greene "has erected such a
romantic and fantastic structure upon this foundation, that it would be
doing him an injustice to judge his work from the standpoint of an
historical drama."

It is plainly an imitation of "Tamburlaine." Alphonsus, singly and
alone, conquers the crown of Aragon and half the world in addition,
accompanied by monotonous noise and blood. The ghost of Mahomet is
introduced as if to give variety to the scene, but fails utterly, and,
nobody can guess why,