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Robert Greene (16th century)
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Robert Greene (11 July 1558 – 3 September 1592) was an English author best known today for his pamphlet Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, containing a polemic attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University, receiving a BA in 1580, and a MA in 1583 before moving to London, where he arguably became the first professional author in England. Greene published in many genres including autobiography, plays, and romances, while capitalizing on a scandalous reputation.
ne was born in Norwich in 1558; however biographers disagree as to whether Greene was the son of a humble saddler, or a more prosperous innkeeper with land-owning relatives.
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Robert Greene (11 July 1558 – 3 September 1592) was an English author best known today for his pamphlet Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, containing a polemic attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University, receiving a BA in 1580, and a MA in 1583 before moving to London, where he arguably became the first professional author in England. Greene published in many genres including autobiography, plays, and romances, while capitalizing on a scandalous reputation.
Life
Greene was born in Norwich in 1558; however biographers disagree as to whether Greene was the son of a humble saddler, or a more prosperous innkeeper with land-owning relatives. He took his B.A. in 1580 and his M.A. in 1583 at St John's College, Cambridge, and became an M.A. of Oxford in 1588. Greene claimed to have married a well-off woman named Doll, and to have later abandoned her, after spending a considerable sum of her money.
In London, Greene became a principal member of the loose association known as the University Wits, and managed to support himself through his own writing. He lived as a notorious intellectual and rascal, cultivating this reputation himself in pamphlets describing his adventures amid the seamier characters of Elizabethan England, and through a memorable appearance, with fashionable clothing and his pointy red beard.
He died on 3 September 1592, from what Nashe called a "banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled herring," perhaps having written on his death bed the famous Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance and having dispatched a letter to his wife asking her to forgive him and to settle his debts.
Writing
By 1583 Greene had begun his literary career with the publication of a long romance, Mamillia, licensed in 1580. He continued to produce romances written in a highly wrought style, reaching his highest level in Pandosto (1588) and Menaphon (1589). Short poems and songs incorporated in some of the romances gave him high rank as a lyrical poet also. By rapid production of such works Greene became one of the first authors in England to support himself with his pen.
Greene wrote prolifically, struggling to support himself (and his recreational habits) in an age when professional authorship was virtually unknown. In his notorious "Coney-Catching" pamphlets, Greene fashioned himself into a well-known public figure, by telling colorful inside stories of rakes and rascals duping solid citizens out of their hard-earned money. These stories are always told from the perspective of a repentant former rascal, incorporating many facts of his own life thinly veiled as fiction. He pictures his early riotous living, his marriage and desertion of his wife and child for the sister of a notorious character of the London underworld, his dealings with players, and his success in the production of plays for them.
Greene wrote in a variety of genres. In addition to prose romances, Greene composed numerous moral dialogs, and even some scientific writings on the properties of stones and other matters.
Greene's plays include The Scottish History of James IV, Alphonsus, and his greatest popular success, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1589), as well as Orlando Furioso, based on Ludovico Ariosto's epic poem. He may also have had a hand in numerous other plays, and may have written a second part to Friar Bacon, (which may survive as John of Bordeaux).
In addition to his acknowledged plays, Greene has been proposed as the author of a range of other dramas, including The Troublesome Reign of King John, George a Greene, Fair Em, A Knack to Know a Knave, Locrine, Selimus, and Edward III, among others — even Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.
Greene and Shakespeare
The dramatist is most familiar to Shakespeare scholars for his pamphlet Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit (full title: Greene's Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance), which the majority of scholars agree contains the earliest known mention of Shakespeare as a member of then-contemporary London's dramatic community. In it, Greene disparages Shakespeare, for being an actor who has the temerity to write plays, and for committing plagiarism. The passage quotes a line which is purportedly from Shakespeare's play Henry VI, part 3, but scholars are not agreed on exactly what is meant by this cryptic allusion:
- "...for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey".
Though anti-Stratfordians argue that the early date of Greene's remark precludes a reference to Shakespeare (who in 1592 had no published works to his name), most scholars feel that Greene's comment refers to Shakespeare, who would in this period be an "upstart" new to the scene as an actor and contributor to plays such as Henry VI, Parts 1-3 and King John, which were most likely written and produced (though not published) before Greene's death.
It should be noted that all or part of the Groats-Worth may have in fact been written shortly after Greene's death by one of his fellow writers (the pamphlet's printer, Henry Chettle, being the favoured candidate) hoping to capitalize on a lurid tale of death-bed repentance.
Greene's colourful and irresponsible character have led some, including Stephen Greenblatt, to speculate that Greene may have served as the model for Shakespeare's Falstaff.
Principal Works
Plays:
- Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (published 1594)
- The History of Orlando Furioso (1594)
- A Looking Glass for London and England (1594)
- The Scottish History of James the Fourth (1598)
- The Comical History of Alphonsus, King of Aragon (1599)
- A Pleasant Conceited Comedy of George a Green (1599)
Other Works:
- Mamillia (1583)
- The Myrrour of Modestie (1584)
- The History of Arhasto, King of Denmarke (1584)
- Morando, the Tritameron of Love (1584)
- Planetomachia (1585)
- Penelope’s Web (1587)
- Pandosto (1588)
- Alcida (1588)
- Menaphon (1589)
- Greenes Never Too Late (1590)
- A Noteable Discovery of Coosnage (1591)
- Greene’s Farewell to Folly (1591)
- A Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance (1592)
- A Disputation Between a Hee Conny-Catcher and a Shee Conny-Catcher (1592)
External links
- Dyce, ed., at Google Books.
- Dyce, ed., at Google Books.
- Churton Collins ed., at the Internet Archives.
- Churton Collins ed., at the Internet Archives.
- 1594 text facsimile at the Internet Archives.
- Malone Society Reprint, 1907, at Google Books.
- at Elizabethan Drama.
- e-text at Renascence Editions (original spelling).
- e-text at Ex-Classics (modern spelling).
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