SOURCE: "Greene," in The Elizabethan Prodigals, University of California Press, 1976, pp. 79–104.

In the following excerpt, Helgerson describes the conflicting forces found in Greene's fiction and examines the progression of his writings from prodigality to repentance.

No one will be surprised to find prodigality linked with the name of Robert Greene. Who can forget Harvey's account of his riotous life and miserable death, the penury, the loneliness, the pitiful plea for a cup of Malmsey wine?¹ Even the printer of Greene's last work saw him as a prodigal. "And forasmuch as the purest glass is the most brickie, the finest lawn the soonest stained, the highest oak the most subject to the wind, and the quickest wit the most easily won to folly, I doubt not but you will with regard forget his follies and, like to the bee, gather honey out of [his] good counsels."² This passage carries...