and the hay, and butter, and cheese displays of Harleston fair. "He was of singular pleasaunce, the very supporter, and, to no man's disgrace be this intended, the only comedian, of a vulgar writer, in this country," writes Chettle in _A Kind Hart's Dream_, summing up in striking phrase the true contemporary judgment of Greene's greatest distinction. But there is another aspect of his genius. He loved the active life of out-of-doors, and he indulged a vigorous spirit of participation in the life around him. But he saw behind things into the spirit, and his treatment of events is dignified with a rich philosophy drawn from his manifold contact with the most lavish era in England's history. To him a drama is more than an isolated and a meaningless show. In _Francesco's Fortunes_ he outlines the kind of play that he himself wrote: "Therein they painted out in the persons the course of the world, how either it was graced with honour, or discredited with vices." He leaves the hollow-sounding verbiage of his early plays to comment with the lawyer on "the manners and the fashions of this age." His _James IV._ is a play of contemplation. Bohan is an early "malcontent," and Andrew, noting the downfall of his prince, exclaims, "Was never such a world, I think, before." With the heart of a democrat Greene understands alike the problems of kings and yeomen. The counsel of the King of England to Dorothea on the obligations and dangers of sovereignty is sage and rational, and Ida's comments on the "greatest good"--that it lies not "in delights, or pomp, or majesty"--are rich with the best philosophy. In _A Quip for an Upstart Courtier_ Clothbreeches asks, "Doth true virtue consist in riches, or humanity in wealth? is ancient honour tied to outward bravery? or not rather true nobility, a mind excellently qualified with rare virtues?" So often is this note struck in Greene's plays that we might call it a personal one were it not that it is beginning to appear commonly in the literature of the time. Summing up Greene's contribution to the drama of his age we should say that it lies in the essential comedy of his outlook on life, his inherent _vis comica_; in his loving insight into human nature in its familiar aspects; in his distrust of exaggeration and his tendency to turn this to burlesque; and in his beautiful philosophy of the eternal verities. Out of the drama of Greene there developed the new romantic comedy of Shakespeare and the realism of joy of domestic drama. After _George-a-Greene_ there came the Huntingdon plays of Munday and Chettle, in which the woodland knight, Robin Hood, appears again. After _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ there came _Fair Em, A Knack to Know a Knave, John-a-Kent and John-a-Cumber,_ and Dekker's _Shoemaker's Holiday_. Heywood and Samuel Rowley and Munday and Dekker and the author of _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_ share with Shakespeare indisputable strains of his individual note.