his already ill-disposed mind into
expressing the only abuse known to have been directed by his
contemporaries against the author of "Hamlet."

Shakespeare, of course, did not answer;[121] his plea might have been
that if he did not pay much attention to others' authorship, much less
did he pay to his own; for he never published his own dramas, nor did he
protest when mangled versions of them were circulated by printers. He
only showed that Greene's criticisms had not much affected him by
turning later on another of the complainer's novels into a drama.
Shakespeare's friend, Ben Jonson, who was not accustomed to so much
reserve, speaks very disparagingly of Greene; he represents him as being
a perfectly forgotten author in 1599, which was untrue, and as for the
particular work in which Shakespeare was abused, he describes it as only
fit for the reading of crazy persons.

"_Trusty._ ... Every night they read themselves asleep on those books
[one of the two being the "Groats-worth"].

"_Epicoene._ Good faith it stands with good reason. I would I knew where
to procure those books.

"_Morose._ Oh!

"_Sir Amorous La Foole._ I can help you with one of them, mistress
Morose, the 'Groats-worth of wit.'

"_Epicoene._ But I shall disfurnish you, Sir Amorous, can you spare it?

"_La Foole._ O yes, for a week or so; I shall read it myself to him,"
&c.[122]

With the exception just mentioned, Greene's thoughts were all turned to
repentance. He had the consolation of receiving from his wife a kindly
message on the eve of his death, "whereat hee greatly rejoiced,
confessed that he had mightily wronged her, and wished that hee might
see her before he departed. Whereupon, feeling his time was but short,
hee tooke pen and inke and wrote her a letter to this effect:

"Sweet wife, as ever there was any good will or friendship betweene thee
and mee, see this bearer (my host) satisfied of his debt: I owe him
tenne pound, and but for him I had perished in the streetes. Forget and
forgive my wronges done unto thee, and Almighty God have mercie on my
soule. Farewell till we meet in heaven, for on earth thou shalt never
see me more. This 2d of September, 1592. Written by thy dying
husband."[123]

He died a day after.

III.

Greene's non-dramatic works are the largest contribution left by any
Elizabethan writer to the novel literature of the day. They are of four
sorts: his novels proper or romantic love stories, which he called