Goffe, a playwright active in the 1630s who also wrote plays about Turks, but Thomas Goffe was just three years old when the first edition of this play was published. The title page of the second edition of Selimus also featured a different play title, different performance attributions, and different publishers on the title page. The first edition of the play had featured a prologue but the second edition omits it. Later editions of the play, including most notably the 1898 edition, reinsert the prologue in the play. Authorship The work of the Scottish clergyman Alexander Balloch Grosart has been crucial to determining the true authorship of Selimus. It was in Grosart's 1898 reprinting of Selimus that he "reclaimed" the play as that of Robert Greene and included the play in the collected works of the playwright. He posits that the initials T.G. on the 1638 title page might have been an "unlucky misprint for R.G." Grosart used analyses of word usage and sentence composition to further link Selimus to Robert Greene. (See Preface to the 1898 edition and Life of Robert Greene vol. i of Works, pp. lxxi – lxxvii). It is possible that Robert Greene did not write Selimus alone; further "linguistic analysis indicates, however, that Selimus' co-author was [Thomas] Lodge," an ascription supported by rigorous testing conducted by Darren Freebury-Jones. Dramatis Personae The first edition of the play did not include a dramatis personae. Later editions included a character list that was taken directly from the character appearances in the play. Bajazet, the capable Emperor of Turkey but the various threats posed by his sons to the crown make him weary; he tries to protect the crown against the lustful ambitions of Acomat and Selimus but eventually knows he can no longer hold out against the power of Selimus. Selimus (or Selim), the youngest son of Bajazet, he makes no attempt to hide his ambitions for the emperorship of Turkey at the beginning of the play, yet later he is deceptive enough to convince Bajazet he has changed his ways. He has a strong support group made of janissaries and once he is in power he kills nearly all in his way. Acomat, son of Bajazet and the presumed choice to take the crown upon Bajazet's death, he had been living a life of pleasure and luxury until Selimus begins to make threats for the crown. He