ABSTRACT
In the oft quoted 'Address to the Gentleman Readers’ prefacing his Perimedes the Blacksmith (1588), Robert Greene refers to Marlowe, 'daring God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlan’ in a prolonged contemporary attack which is often considered to have been motivated by resentment following the apparent failure of Greene’s heavily derivative Alphonsus ofArragon (1589-1591?). It is thus strange that some time after this slander Greene appears to have imitated Marlowe’s hugely popular two part epic once more with his Selimus (1588-1590?), a play that again does not seem to have generated a particularly favourable public response.
