SOURCE: "Lyly's Legatees," in The English Novel In The Time of Shakespeare, translated by Elizabeth Lee, T. Fisher Unwin, 1908, pp. 145–216.

In the essay below—first published in 1890 and reprinted in 1908, Jusserand compares and contrasts Greene's works to those of Lyly and discusses the plots of several of Greene's stories including Pandosto, which was used by Shakespeare in writing The Winter's Tale.

… Greene's non-dramatic works are the largest contribution left by any Elizabethan writer to the novel literature of the day. They are of four sorts: his novels proper or romantic love stories, which he called his love pamphlets; his patriotic pamphlets; his connycatching writings, in which he depicts actual fact, and tells tales of real life forshadowing in some degree Defoe's manner; lastly, his Repentances, of which some idea has already been given.¹

His love pamphlets, which filled the greatest part of his literary career, connect him with...