"Will now begin to treat of bloody Mars, Of doughty deeds and valiant victories."
seem to announce a purpose to begin a new warlike vein. The play resembles _Tamburlaine_ in bombast, in rant, in comparing a victorious warrior with the gods, in the motive of Asiatic and Mohammedan conquest, and in its double original design. Unlike _Tamburlaine_ only one of the parts was completed. There is a possibility that the two plays are mentioned in conjunction by Peele in his well-known "Farewell" verses to Sir John Norris and his companions (1589):
"Bid theatres and proud tragedians, Bid Mahomet's Poo and mighty Tamburlaine, King Charlemayne, Tom Stukeley and the rest, Adieu."
By the ingenuity of Mr Fleay we are able to conjecture that "Mahomet's Poo" probably refers to the brazen head, or poll, through which the Prophet speaks in the fourth act of the play.
That Alphonsus was not successful on the stage seems likely when one compares the play with the successful productions of the day. Its failure is indicated by the fact that, though a second part was promised in the epilogue, no such part is known to have been written. More interesting still, for the light it throws on the fortunes of this play, and on Greene's relationship with his contemporaries, is the study of the antagonism that suddenly appears in all of Greene's allusions to Marlowe. This feeling apparently dates from the beginning of 1588, or about the time of the probable first performance of _Alphonsus of Arragon_. It is first marked in the very satirical allusion to _Tamburlaine_ contained in the address to the gentleman readers prefixed to _Perimedes_ (1588). In this the author expresses a purpose to "keep my old course to palter up something in prose using mine old poesie still _Omne tulit punctum_, although lately two Gentlemen Poets made two madmen of Rome beat it out of their paper bucklers, and had it in derision for that I could not make my verses jet upon the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlaine or blaspheming with the mad priest of the sun." He ends this passage as follows: "If I speak darkly, gentlemen, and offend with this digression, I crave pardon, in that I but answer in print what they have offered on the stage." Just who the two poets and two madmen of Rome may have been it is now impossible to say. What stands out clear is that Greene has been attacked on the stage for failing to make his "verses jet upon the stage in tragical buskins," after the manner of Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_; and as Marlowe was the atheist, and not Tamburlaine, it is also clear that Greene has a feeling of resentment against his brother poet. The explanation that seems most sensible is that Greene has attempted to write a play in Marlowe's vein, has failed, and being publicly taunted for his failure, either by Marlowe himself or by his partisans, expresses his determination to continue writing in prose, the form of composition that has already brought him fame. Greene's animosity toward Marlowe continued for several years. In Nash's address prefixed to Greene's _Menaphon_ (1589)[8] the same feeling is manifested, possibly at the instigation of Greene. Here Nash, perhaps to throw contempt on Marlowe as a writer of plays, vaunts Greene as a writer of romance. _Menaphon_, he holds, excels the achievements of men who, unable to write romance, "think to outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of a bragging blank verse." The same attack is persistently pushed in the poem, also prefixed to _Menaphon_, by Thomas Barnaby (signing himself by anagram Brabine), in the words "the pomp of speech that strives to thunder from a stage man's throat." Again and again Greene and his friends return to the attack on Marlowe, now in _Francesco's Fortunes_, in a slighting reference to the trade of Marlowe's father,[9] now in _Greene's Vision_, and finally in _A Groatsworth of Wit_, in which, though in more friendly guise, Greene reproves Marlowe for his atheism.[10] There can be little doubt that thus was displayed the rancour of the unsuccessful as against the successful dramatist. The play of _Alphonsus of Arragon_ is in fact quite unworthy to be placed beside Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_ in any comparison for literary excellence. Whether Greene recognised this or not he was undoubtedly influenced in his later play composition by the failure of his first effort. Without immediately striking out in any new vein he now proceeds to burlesque and to parody where first he had imitated.