English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600; Greene, Robert, 1558-1592
Technically Greene's contribution to the stage was most significant.
Nash called him master above all others in "plotting of plays." Part of
this mastery comes from his recognition of the technical requirement of
continuous action on the stage. Better than any of his contemporaries,
not excluding Kyd, he knew that action is of equal importance with
speech in the exposition of a dramatic story. Wherever possible he
visualises before his audience the successive stages in the progress
of his plot, not by the use of ghosts and chorus, who serve merely
a narrative purpose, but by bringing before his readers palpable
expedients illustrative of the theme of the action. The use of the
Brazen Head in _Alphonsus of Arragon_; the incantations of Melissa in
_Orlando Furioso_; the raising of the arbor, and the death of Remilia
under the incantations of the Magi in _A Looking-Glass for London and
England_; the use of a visible magic to transport Burden and Helen, to
raise Hercules and the tree, and to present the downfall of the Brazen
Head in _Friar Bacon_, all reveal an ability to adapt the properties
and expedients of the stage of the time to the purposes of the plot.
This is further exemplified in the facility with which from the
beginning Greene utilises such spectacular expedients as the letting
down of the throne of Venus from above in _Alphonsus of Arragon_, and
the descent of the throne of Oseas the prophet in _A Looking-Glass_.
Not only does he use the palpable tricks of stagecraft, but he adapts
these to the purposes of his dramatic exposition. The perspective
glass in _Friar Bacon_ which serves to present two scenes at the same
time serves also to connect two strains of the plot and to further the
action by arousing Prince Edward's suspicion of the fidelity of Lacy.
So magic, which in _Dr Faustus_ serves only to raise a spectacle, in
this play is used as a plot expedient to delay the marriage of Margaret
and Lacy. The stage directions are more full and circumstantial in
Greene's plays than in those of either Marlowe or Peele, and reveal the
same tendency to heighten the effect of plot by action and display.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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