Robert Greene's Martinist Transformation in 1590

For students of Robert Greene, the transformation he seems to undergo as a writer around 1590 is an interesting and perhaps an enigmatic one.¹ After more than a decade of writing euphuistic and Arcadian romances, he turns, by 1590, first to explicitly repentant stories such as Mourning Garment, Never Too Late, Francesco's Fortune, and Farewell to Folly, a turn that is neatly and somewhat glibly announced by the change in his Latin mottoes on the title pages of his works: "Omne tulit punctum qui misenit utile dulci" (he who mixes profit with pleasure wins every prize) for his romances and "Sero sed serio" (late but in earnest) for the later repentance stories. He then follows these pamphlets with a handful of cony-catching pamphlets (motto: "Nascimur pro patria"—we are born for our country), a biting satire called A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, and two very explicitly autobiographical and penitent pamphlets: The Repentance of Robert Greene and Groatsworth of Wit. As one can see, his output after 1589 is quite varied both in form and content, whereas his earlier works had, almost all of them, been in the humanistic morals tradition and within the narrower Elizabethan tradition of what Richard Helgerson called the "pattern of didactic prodigality."²

Some critics have argued that the repentant stories such as Mourning Garment, Farewell to Folly, and The Repentance of Robert Greene are not so much different as merely more explicit and more autobiographical.³ Or, as Charles W. Crupi says, taking into account Greene's propensity for mixing fact and fiction, "perhaps, of course, there was no change; perhaps Greene simply found that Never Too Late was well received and so followed it up by presenting more exaggerated claims of reform in his next few works."⁴ It is true that these so-called repentant stories continue the romance themes found in Greene's earlier narratives—they are repentant in their dedications and mottoes only. Still, this view of Greene's apparent subterfuge does not fully account for the complete surprise that his cony-catching pamphlets are, nor for the vehemence and directness of the satire in A Quip, nor, indeed, for the genuine remorse found in the autobiographical Groatsworth and Repentance. That the apparent change of attitude in Greene in 1590 signals a genuine, fundamental change cannot be in dispute when one looks at his works; at the very least, there is present in these pamphlets a certain consciousness in Greene that he is changing or has changed by 1590.

This transformation is mystifying if we see it solely within the context of Greene's writing, as there is no explicit reference to any contemporary event as having affected him in any particular way (except, of course, the publication of the anonymously written The Cobbler of Canterbury and the rumor that Greene was the author of it, to which Greene refers in his Vision—of which more below). But if we see this change within the larger context of what happened in the pamphlet world, a world in which Greene had been such a big part and which he had helped shape for the better part of the 1580s, then the mystery begins to dissolve. I am referring to the phenomenon of Martin Marprelate, the shady and shadowy pamphleteer who roiled the entire nation for almost two years with his scandalous but riveting broadsides against the bishops, whose cackling voice taunted a beleaguered religious establishment, whose identity was shrouded in mystery, and whose effect on the populace was sensational. More importantly, his adroit use of wit and wordplay in his pamphlets, his mastery of the English language, both of the academic and popular variety, his brilliant projection of himself as a scholarly but deeply subversive pamphleteer, and the tactical genius of his secret and moving printing press, which proved such a daunting challenge for authorities to track down for more than a year—all of these qualities could not but have impressed the pamphleteers in London around that time. In just more than a year, Martin injected a new sense of freedom into...