William Shakspere and Robert Greene

This book was written primarily for private satisfaction, the author having no desire for approbation, and to disclose merely the true William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon; to find him as a man; to feel his personal presence; to know him as he was known by his neighbors as landowner, money lender, captain of amusements, actor, play-broker and litigant. From dusty records that do not awaken a deific impulse may be read the true story of his life, but, before directing the readers’ attention to the documentary evidence, which can be entirely depended upon in regard to himself, his family, neighbors, fellow-actors and associates, we desire to cut out the worthless conjectures which are contained in most, if not all, of the recent works on the subject of Shakespeare. Circumstances, however slight, may give rise to idle conjectures, but their worthlessness may be best discerned by setting up against them reasonable ones. To repeat apocryphal anecdotes and manufactured traditions that are not reasonable inferences from concurrent events is to dissipate mental energy; antiquity per se adds nothing to confirmation or probability. In that digest of biography, so often quoted, George Stevens tells his readers in less than fifty words all he knew with any degree of certainty concerning Shakspere, with the exception of his conjectures as to the authorship of the poems and plays. This great Shaksperean commentator indulges in no aesthetic dreams or whimsical conjectures which taint the credibility of his successors by their statement of them as proven facts.

Of all kinds of literature, biography extends the most generous hospitality. Its subjects live an after life in affiliation with the readers without regard to condition. In seeking to renew the enthusiasm of our youth for this species of writing we visit the public library and find many changes in biographical history, such as the elimination of spurious tradition and fanciful conjecture. For instance, instead of the traditional life of Washington, there is a life of the true Washington: and, instead of a caricatured life of Cromwell, there is a record of the duly attested facts of the many-sided and wondrous Cromwell. With what astonishment we survey the huge issue of books on Shakspere which stand conspicuous on the shelves! There are more than ten thousand books and pamphlets—many of them of the memoir order—almost every one of which has a biographical preface; but we find that most, if not all, the biographers of Shakspere still lead the reader into the shadow of chaotic conjecture and might-have-been, and that Shaksperean literature still lacks a book on the personal life of William Shakspere that shall be to most, if not all others, a pruning hook cutting out the reveries and guess work which unfortunately have seduced the historian and misled the reader. We hold in our hand one of the more recent of these books of fictitious biography, transmissive “fraud of the imagination” which authenticates nothing!

As co-readers, we will now focus our attention and thoughts intently upon the celebrated letter written by the dying hand of Robert Greene, and addressed to three brother poets to whom he administers a gentle reproof on account of their by-gone and present faults, of which, play-writing was most to be shunned. This remarkable letter reveals Robert Greene as the most tragical figure of his time—a sad witness of his ultimate penitence and absolute confession, a character of pathetic sincerity, weirdness and charnel-like gloom that chills the soul. This letter, so often referred to, and seemingly so little understood, is one of the most extraordinary pieces of writing in our literary annals. It has all the credibility that a dying statement can give, but it also evidences the fact that Robert Greene had previously drawn the fire of the improvising actors “who wrought the disfigurement of the poet’s work.” There is one in particular at whom he hurls a dart and hits the mark.

“Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our (poet’s) feathers, that, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute ‘Johannes Factotum,’ is in his own conceit, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.”

This sorrow-stricken man wrote these words of censure with the utmost sincerity. Earlier biographers made no attempt to read Shakspere into these lines of reproof, but those only of later times regard the allusion invaluable as being the first literary notice of Shakspere, and find pleasure in reading into Shakspere’s life the fact of his having been satirized in 1592 under the name “Shake-scene,” used by Greene contumeliously.

The letter is contained in a little work entitled “Greene’s Groats Worth of Wit,” “Bought with a Million of Repentance, originally published in 1592, having been entered at Stationers Hall on the 20th of September in that year.” “To those Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plaies.”

“With thee (Marlowe) will I first begin, thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene, who hath said with thee, like the foole in his heart, there is no God, should now give glorie unto His greatnesse; for penetrating is His power, His hand lies heavy upon me, He hath spoken unto me with a voice of thunder and I have felt He is a God that can punish enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded that thou shouldst give no glory to the giver?”....

“With thee I joyne young Juvenall, (Nash) that byting satyrist that lastlie with mee together writ a comedie. Sweete boy, might I advise thee, be advised, and get not many enimies by bitter words.... Blame not schollers vexed with sharp lines, if they reprove thy too much libertie of reproofe.”

“And thou (Peele) no less deserving than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour; driven (as myselfe) to extreame shifts; a little have I to say to thee; and were it not an idolatrous oath, I would swear by sweet S. George thou are unworthie better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. (theatre) Base minded men all three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned; for unto none of you, like me, sought those burrs to cleave; those puppits, I meane, that speake from our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding, is it not like that you to whom they all have beene beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute ‘Johannes Factotum,’ is in his own conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.”...

“But now returne I againe to you three, knowing my miserie is to you no news; and let me heartily entreate you to be warned by my harmes.... For it is a pittie men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.”

Those biographers and critics who have written concerning Shakspere and Greene misapprehensively compound an integrate letter and pamphlet. It should be made clear that Greene’s letter to his fellow poets is not an integral part of “Groats Worth of Wit,” though appended towards the end of this pamphlet. The letter is strikingly personal and impressive, not a continuance of a pamphlet describing the folly of youth, but a mere appendage not properly constituting a portion of it. It was the classical commentator, Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-85), we believe, who first made current the groundless opinion that purports to identify Shakspere as the one pointed at, but most, if not all, recent biographers and commentators state as a “proven fact” that Robert Greene was the first to bail Shakspere out of obscurity by the “reprehensive reference” to an “upstart crow.”

The effect of conjectural reading is to raise a tempest of depreciation by which Shakspere’s biographers and commentators have succeeded in handing down to posterity Greene’s reputation as a preposterous combination of infamy and envy, harping with fiendish delight on the irregularities and defects of Robert Greene’s private life, which were not even shadowed in his writings. The writings of Greene “whose pen was pure” are exceptionally clean. Why then this unmerited abuse so malignant in disposition and passion? We answer that it is because the biographers of Shakspere have been seduced from truth by a vagrant conjecture into the belief that William Shakspere was the object and recipient of Greene’s censure. It is apparent that the statement which affirms this is false, and we shall endeavor to show that Robert Greene’s detractors are on the wrong trail.