“How different from this is Shakespeare’s conception of the place of the working-man in society. In King Lear, a good servant protests against the cruelty of Regan and Cornwall toward Gloucester, and is killed for his courage.” “Give me my sword,” cries Regan, “a peasant stand up thus!” The voice of the yeoman is often heard in Greene’s drama, not as buffoon and lackey, as in Shakespeare, but as freeman whose voice is echoed at Naseby and Marston’s gory fields of glory, where the sturdy yeomanry of England strove to do and to dare for the eternal right—soldiers who never cowered from “sheen of spear,” nor blanched at flashing steel. With Greene rank is never the measure of merit as with Shakespeare. To peer and yeoman alike, he gave equal hospitality; for Robin Greene, as his friends called him, was as friendly to the poor man’s rags as to the purple Robe of King. Greene in his popular sympathies is thoroughly with the working classes, the common people, of whom Lincoln says, “God loves most, otherwise he would not have made so many of them.” His heroes and heroines are taken, many of them, from humble life. In his Pinner of Wakefield there is a very clear discernment of democratic principle in the struggle against prerogative. Half of those plays of Greene’s which we still possess, are devoted to the representation of the life of the common people which gave lineage to Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and John Bunyan. If these are any guide to his character, his is one distinguished both by his amicable and by his amiable qualities. We have in the “Coney-catching series” Greene’s exposure of the practice of sharpers and knaves, who were fleecing the country people who came to London. The author of these tracts shows great courage in his effort to abate fool-catching. Greene’s life was threatened, and it required the utmost exertion of his friends to prevent his assassination. The Coney-catching knaves, who felt the halter being drawn about their necks, threatened to cut off his hand if he would not desist. Greene, notwithstanding these threats, would not be swerved from his noble aim, but met them like a true Roman, single-handed and alone, while his literary enemies took advantage of this opportunity to blacken his good name. “Greene made these revelations for the good of the commonwealth, and displayed great courage in facing all risks in so doing. No books are more out-and-out sincere.”