About the time that Greene's _Orlando Furioso_ appeared there was presented, perhaps at the same play-house, the Theatre, Marlowe's play, _Dr Faustus_. In this play Marlowe treated with characteristic intensity the tragical story of a magician who aspired for wisdom as _Tamburlaine_ had aspired for power. Magic and witchcraft were popular in English literature. The story of _Dr Faustus_ was issued in German in 1587, and an English translation was probably made about the same time. The prose narrative of _The Famous History of Friar Bacon_ must also have been well known. Magic and incantation had already been used by Greene in the Brazen Head of _Alphonsus of Arragon_, in Melissa of _Orlando Furioso_, and in the priests of Rasni in _A Looking-Glass for London and England_. But that Marlowe was the first to see a large dramatic motive in the conventional magic is certain. Here again we must accept it that Marlowe was the leader and Greene the adapter. We must agree with Collins that "the presumption in favour of _Faustus_ having preceded Greene's play is so overwhelmingly strong that we cannot suppose that Marlowe borrowed from Greene." But Greene's _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ is by no means an imitation of _Dr Faustus_, nor is it a mere parody. Through his new mastery of technique Greene was deriving a method of his own that was to make him an effective and independent story-teller. Also there was developing in his art a refinement and sanity that revolted from the broadly-drawn conceits and exaggerated passion of Marlowe's early style. There is something suggestively ironical in the opposition of the titles of the two plays, the _honourable_ history of _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, as compared with the _tragical_ history of _Dr Faustus_. So also there must be some delicate satire in the comic summoning of Burden and the Hostess as opposed to the impressive evocation of Alexander and Helen. And one of the chief episodes in the play may have a jocose oblique reference to _Dr Faustus_. "It is hardly too great an assumption," says Ward, "to regard Bacon's victory over Vandermast as a cheery outdoing by genuine English magic of the pretentious German article," represented in the play of _Dr Faustus_. In _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ we have the first extant expression of Greene's independent genius working along characteristic lines. Though Marlowe provides him his starting-point, the treatment is Greene's alone. While lacking in originativeness this play reveals that clearly-marked individual attitude toward art and the people of his brain that was to give Greene's plays a pronounced influence in the development of domestic comedy. And, according to Henslowe's records, the play was as great a success as _Dr Faustus_ had been.