It is impossible to view with any favour the theory of Greene's authorship of _Selimus_. In every respect the play is divergent from Greene's characteristic tone and method. Grosart's theory that this play may be supposed to take the place of the promised second part of _Alphonsus of Arragon_ has no weight. Like the latter play _Selimus_ is the first part of a work that had been planned in series, and in no respect does it supplement Greene's first play. Like _Alphonsus of Arragon_ the play is constructed with such slavish fidelity to the _Tamburlaine_ principles that it is difficult to think Greene could have written _Selimus_ after the failure of _Alphonsus_. Constructively the play is unlike Greene's work. The declamation is more sustained and the action is less crowded than in Greene's other plays. The many parallel passages quoted by Grosart prove nothing more than that borrowing was the order of the age. Nor is anything proved by the fact that the same clown comedy is introduced into _Locrine_, _Selimus_ and _A Looking-Glass for London and England_. If _Locrine_ is Greene's work it was probably written about the time that he was collaborating with Lodge, and he may have introduced the same comedy into both plays. It is no more of an assumption that the author of _Selimus_ borrowed his comedy from _Locrine_ than that Greene would use the same tricks three times within two years. The blank verse of _Selimus_, built largely on a system of rhymed stanzas, is very far from that of _Locrine_ and of Greene's undoubted plays. To illustrate this no better passages could be chosen than those produced by Collins to evidence the similarity of the verse of the two plays. The vexed problem of the part taken by Greene in the _Henry VI._ plays can be treated now only as a subject for interesting but comparatively fruitless speculation. So also must be considered the ingenious and almost convincing circumstantial argument that _A Knack to Know a Knave_ is the comedy "lastly writ" by Greene and "Young Juvenal," and mentioned in _A Groatsworth of Wit_.[25]