the attack on Marlowe, now in _Francesco's Fortunes_, in a slighting reference to the trade of Marlowe's father,[9] now in _Greene's Vision_, and finally in _A Groatsworth of Wit_, in which, though in more friendly guise, Greene reproves Marlowe for his atheism.[10] There can be little doubt that thus was displayed the rancour of the unsuccessful as against the successful dramatist. The play of _Alphonsus of Arragon_ is in fact quite unworthy to be placed beside Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_ in any comparison for literary excellence. Whether Greene recognised this or not he was undoubtedly influenced in his later play composition by the failure of his first effort. Without immediately striking out in any new vein he now proceeds to burlesque and to parody where first he had imitated. About 1585 there was produced Thomas Kyd's _The Spanish Tragedy_, a tragedy of blood, of madness, and revenge, with many ingredients of the Senecan plays. This play and Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_ were the chief sensations of the English stage of the sixteenth century. No single play of Shakespeare's can be said to have had the instantaneous popular success and the immediate and widespread imitation given to both of these plays. In the next play that Greene wrote unaided after the failure of his _Alphonsus of Arragon_ there is discernible an entire change in the author's attitude. He is no more originative than he was before, but he does not again attempt to treat an imitative drama in the spirit of its original. Certain of the scenes of _Alphonsus of Arragon_ were ridiculous enough, but they were undertaken in no apparent spirit of burlesque. In _Orlando Furioso_ Greene proceeds to parody the two most popular types holding the boards in his day. The real hero of _Orlando Furioso_ is not the mad French knight, Orlando, but Sacripant. And Sacripant is a foiled Tamburlaine, a high aspiring king whose ambition comes to nothingness. In the spirit of Macbeth, who himself had something of Tamburlaine's lust of conquest, are the words of Sacripant: "I hold these salutations as ominous; for saluting me by that which I am not, he presageth what I shall be." And in the musings of Sacripant there operates the spirit of Tamburlaine. "Sweet are the thoughts that smother from conceit," he reflects; his chair presents "a throne of majesty"; his thoughts "dream on a diadem"; he becomes "co-equal with the gods." The lines beginning "Fair queen of love," spoken by Orlando (p. 187 of this edition) remind us of the lofty yearning love of Tamburlaine for Zenocrate. As a play _Orlando Furioso_ is _Tamburlaine_ by perversions, and purposely so. Its chief martial spirit strives for high ends by ignoble means. He fails to win his mistress, and he fails to win his throne; done out of both by a madman. If this play is a perversion of the _Tamburlaine_ motive, it is also a burlesque on the tragedy of blood. There are indications that Greene would have been quite willing to ridicule Kyd.