SOURCE: "The Age of Elizabeth," in A History of English Prose Fiction: From Sir Thomas Malory to George Eliot, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1882, pp. 60–101.

In the following excerpt, Tuckerman provides a brief overview of Greene's life and a few of his major works.

…The popularity of Euphues excited much imitation, and its influence is strongly marked in the works of Robert Greene. Born in Norfolk in 1560, Greene studied at Cambridge and received the degree of Master of Arts. After wasting his property in Italy and Spain, he returned to London to earn his bread by the pen. As a pamphleteer, as a poet, and especially as a dramatist, Greene achieved a considerable reputation. But his improvident habits and a life of constant debauchery brought his career to a close, amidst poverty and remorse, at the early age of thirty-two. He died in a drunken brawl, leaving in his...