Robert Greene (1560-92) began with writing idyllic romances, in the manner of Lyly and Sidney it the best of his romances being Pando to which supplied the plot of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
However, he soon gave up his genre and turned to the writing of series of realistic tales called The Connie- Catching Tracts. In these tales he paints realistically the under world of London of which he had such intimate knowledge. The style is realistic in keeping with the realistic them. In these short stories, “the abandons euphuism for a simple manner, and he thus enters on the road which led to Defoe” (Legouis). The Tracts is the most popular and original work of Greene.