No evidence whatever can be adduced to show that Greene was in any respect indebted to Marlowe's _Edward II._ for his pseudo-chronicle on _James IV._ Present information makes it seem probable that the plays were performed about the same time, Marlowe's play being, perhaps, a few months the earlier. The plays are quite different. Each dramatist had attained to the maturity of his powers through the purification of his artistic ideals, but whereas Marlowe's last play is held to the outlines of a rigorous art with an almost poignant reticence, Greene's _James IV._ manifests the sweetening and mellowing touch of a dignified and manly philosophy. Nor can we see any indebtedness in Greene's play to Peele's _Edward I._, though the cruel abuse of the memory of Queen Elinor contained in that play can get its only justification on the theory that the play was written immediately after the Spanish Armada, and therefore two years before _James IV._ But there is one chronicle play that Greene may have seen and that may have influenced him slightly. It is not possible here to go into the question of the authorship of _Edward III._ So excellent is the play in its choicest passages that one would not be loath to assign portions of it to Marlowe, or to Shakespeare, or to impute the entire play to the collaboration of these poets. One would even welcome evidence that the hand of Greene is to be seen in the play. Fleay assigns the play to Marlowe and sets its date of production at 1590 or earlier, basing these suppositions upon a citation from this play in a presumably satirical allusion to Marlowe in Greene's _Never too Late_; perhaps a strained double hypothesis, but one that has the possibility of truth.[14] One would tend to the theory that the play was written by Marlowe, on account of the total absence of comedy and a dulcet sweetness in the blank verse. If so it was an early study and must be placed before _Edward II. Edward III._ is like _James IV._ in the fact that it is not a pure chronicle play, but is based for its most effective scenes upon a romantic episode from Painter's _Palace of Pleasure._ As _James IV._ goes back to a novella of Cinthio, the ultimate source of the romantic by-plot of _Edward III._ is a novel by Bandello. The historical portions of the play are based on Holinshed. These romantic scenes, which comprise scene 2 of the first act and the entirety of the second act, are strikingly similar to the large theme of _James IV._ The love of King Edward for the beautiful Countess of Salisbury, whose castle he has rescued, is similar in its passion and its ill-success to the love of James for Ida. Both stories deal with Scottish wars, though in _Edward III._ the romantic element arises as a result of the English king's protection of his subject, the Countess of Salisbury, against the Scots, whereas in _James IV._ the wars result from the unfortunate love of the Scottish king for his subject, Ida, and his consequent attempt to kill his English wife, Dorothea. Like James, Edward is willing to kill his queen in order to gain his love. The Countess of Salisbury's lines,