TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE
_and_ ROBERT GREENE
THE EVIDENCE
_By_
WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN
Tribune Publishing Co.
OAKLAND, CAL.
[Illustration]
COPYRIGHTED BY
WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN
SANTA MONICA, CAL.
FEBRUARY 26, 1912
To the Memory of
My Mother
_PREFACE._
_The design of this work is to give some account of the conspicuous
events and of some of the personages connected with the literary
history of England in that wonderful Renaissance which took place
in the Elizabethan age. All that the writer has attempted is a
concise narrative of some of the facts, grouping them together in
a compact form, with such reflections as seemed to him to be just
and appropriate. To secure this end he has labored to strip from
Shakspere’s biography the manufactured traditions which date from a
considerable period after Shakspere’s death. Where all is conjecture
let the reader do his own guessing and strive for the abatement of that
new Freak called Esthetic Criticism with which some of our critics and
commentators designate their own absurdities._
_The writer has given unusual prominence to several distinguished
personages amongst Shakspere’s contemporaries, notably Robert Greene,
William Kemp and Ben Jonson. The work is sketchy in execution because
the materials do not exist for more than an outline figure._
_The readers familiar with the old English dramatic poets do not
believe in an exclusive authorship, or uniform workmanship, of the
greatest of the Elizabethan English works. While they set up no
claimant for the writings so commonly credited to William Shakspere of
Stratford-on-Avon, they believe, nevertheless, that the Stratfordian
canon is open to demurrer._
_Conspicuous among modern and recent writers on the subject of Robert
Greene, who show the courage of their convictions by their valiant
strokes in defense of that poet’s reputation, are Professor J. M. Brown
of New Zealand, Dr. A. B. Grossart, and Professor Storojenko. The
citations borrowed from their works attest the writer’s obligation to
them, and are sufficiently indicated in the text._
_WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN_
_Santa Monica, California._
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE AND ROBERT GREENE
THE EVIDENCE
I
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.
II
There now arises the crucial enquiry concerning the charge that William
Shakspere was thus lampooned in 1592 by Robert Greene in his celebrated
address “To those Gentlemen of his own fellowship that spend their wits
making plaies”—inferentially, Marlowe, Nash and Peele. The exigency of
the case demands, in the opinion of Shakspere’s modern biographers,
the appropriation of Greene’s reproachful reference to Shakspere,
(though no name is mentioned) yet the actor referred to by Greene the
children in London streets well knew and acclaimed; and every student
of Elizabethan literature, history and bibliography, should know
that the reference is identifiable with William Kemp, the celebrated
comic actor, jig-dancer, and jester, who was, in his own conceit, the
“only Shake-scene (dance-scene) in a country,” “Shake-scene” and
(dance-scene) being interchangeable compounds in the old meaning; but
the votaries of Shakspere, posing as his biographers, in the urgency
of their desire to remove doubts which had existed respecting the
beginning of Shakspere’s early literary productivity as play-maker, or
as an elaborator of the works of other men, prior to the year 1592,
crave some notation of literary activity in the young man who went up
from Stratford to London in 1587 (probably).
As the immortal plays were coming out anonymously and surreptitiously,
there is a very strong desire to appropriate or embezzle “the only
Shake-scene” reference, for, in the similarity and sound of the
compound word “Shake-scene” in one of its elements there is that which
fits it to receive a Shakespearean connotation, thus catching the
popular fancy of Shakespere’s biographers and academic commentators.
The compound word “Shake-scene” is made by the joining of two words
generic in both its elements, and, in combination having generic
characteristics pertaining to a large or comprehensive class—that is
to say, the words “shake” and “scene” bear a sense in which they are
descriptive of all the various things to which they are applied, and
of all other things that share their common properties. The fanciful
biographers of William Shakspere rely on these words of reproof and
censure as being the initial notice of his worth and work which was
to lift him from his place of obscurity in the year 1592. The meaning
of Greene’s words in the idiom of the times, as in their contextural
and natural sense, yield nothing which is confirmatory of such
contention; for “dance” is connoted under the term “shake,” answering
to the first element in “Shake-scene,” which in the old meaning meant
“dance,” generic for quick action; and “scene” meant “stage” instead
of “scenery” as in the modern meaning, for the theatres were then in a
state of absolute nudity—in other words, “Shake-scene” meant a dancing
performance upon the stage. In the plain unobtrusive language of our
day, as well as in Elizabethan English, the word “shake”—the first
element in “Shake-scene” is interchangeable with “dance,” and, when
given a specialized meaning with a view to theatrical matters in the
year 1592, with Kemp and Shakspere claimants for Greene’s reproof, who
could doubt that the name which was so loudly acclaimed is identifiable
with the spectacular luminary of the times, William Kemp? In setting up
the comic actor and jig-dancer as claimant for Greene’s objurgation,
we promise the reader attestative satisfaction by establishing the
truth of our contention by particular passages in “the address” when
explained by the context as transcriptive of Kemp’s actual history.
We now direct the attention of the reader specifically to the arrogant
and boastful comedian, William Kemp. This man, according to Robert
Greene’s view, was the personification of everything detestable in
the actor—whose profession he despised. We think the biographers and
commentators have mistaken the spectacularity of William Kemp for the
rising sun of William Shakspere. In the closing years of the sixteenth,
and the early years of the seventeenth, century there lived in London
the most spectacular comic actor and clown of his day, the greatest
“Shake-scene” or (dance-scene) of his generation, William Kemp, the
worthy successor of Dick Tarlton. He had a continental reputation in
1589. This year also Nash dedicated to Kemp one of his attacks upon
Martin Marprelate entitled “An Almond for a Parrot.” “There is ample
contemporary evidence that Kemp was the greatest comic actor of his
time in England, and his notoriety as a morris-dancer was so great that
his journeyings were called dances. He was the court favorite famous
for his improvisions, and loved by the public,” but hated by academic
play-writers and ridiculed by ballad-makers. Kemp, in giving his first
pamphlet “The Nine Days Wonder” to the press in 1599, turned upon his
enemies and in retaliation called them “Shake-rags,” which he used
derisively and as contumeliously as Greene had used “Shake-scene.” The
use of the word “Shake-rags” by Kemp in his first and only published
work is _prima-facie_ evidence, that he also made use of the same term,
orally and in his usual acrimonious manner, either against Greene,
or those of his fellowship. The first element in the compound words
“Shake-scene” and “Shake-rags” is governed by the same general law of
movement or rhythmic action exemplified in dancing and rhymery. In 1640
Richard Brown in his “Antipodes” refers to the practice of jesters, in
the days of Tarlton and Kemp, of introducing their own wit into poet’s
plays, Kemp, writing in 1600, asserts that he spent his life in mad
jigs and merry jests, although he was entrusted with many leading parts
in farce or broad comedy. His dancing of jigs at the close of a play
gave him his chief popularity (“Camden Society Papers”). “The jigs were
performed to musical accompaniment and included the singing of comic
words. One or two actors at times supported Kemp in his entertainment,
dancing and singing with him. Some examples of the music to which Kemp
danced are preserved in a manuscript collection of John Dowland now
in the library of Cambridge University. The words were, doubtless,
often improvised at the moment, but, on occasions, they were written
out and published. The Stationers Register contains licenses for the
publication of at least four sets of words for the jigs in which Kemp
was the chief performer.”
According to Henslowe’s Diary, William Kemp was on June 15, 1592,
a member of the company of the Lord Strange players under Henslowe
and Alleyn, playing a principal comic part in the “Knack to Know a
Knave,” and introducing into it what is called on the title page his
“Applauded Merriments,” a technical term for a piece of theatrical
buffoonery. In 1593 Nash warned Gabriel Harvey “lest William Kemp
should make merriment of him.” “As early as 1586, Kemp was a member
of a company of great importance which had arrived at Elsinore where
the king held court. He remained two months in Denmark, and received
a larger amount of board money than his fellow actors. In a letter of
Sir Phillip Sidney, dated Utrecht March 24, 1586, he says, ‘I sent
you a letter by Will (Kemp), my Lord Leicester’s jesting player.’ It
was after his return from these foreign expeditions that we find Kemp
uniting his exertions with those of Alleyn at the Rose and Fortune
theatres, as Prince Henry’s servants. During this whole period from
his return in 1586 from Denmark, to the year 1598, he did not stay
uninterruptedly at the theatres of the Burbages. From February 19,
to June 22, 1592, a part of Lord Leicester’s company played under
Henslowe and Alleyn. In 1602 Kemp was again in London, acting under
Henslowe and Alleyn as one of the Earl of Worcester’s men. We gather
from Henslowe’s Diary that on March 10th, he borrowed in ready money
twenty shillings.
“Kemp was a very popular performer as early as 1589. We shall see
hereafter that he, following the example of Tarlton, was in the habit
of extemporizing and introducing matter of his own that has not come
down to us. ‘Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set
down for them’ (Hamlet, Act. III, Scene II.). These words were aimed
at Kemp, or one of his school, and it was about this date, according
to Henslowe’s Diary, that Kemp went over from the Lord Chamberlain to
the Lord Nottingham players. The most important duty of the clown was
not to appear in the play itself, but to sing and dance his jig at
the end of it, even after a tragedy, in order to soften the painful
impression—(Camden Society Papers)—Kemp’s jig of ‘The Kitchen Stuff
Woman’ was a screaming farce of rude verses, some spoken, others sung;
of good and bad witticism; of extravagant acting and dancing. In the
art of comic dancing Kemp was immoderately loved and admired. He paid
professional visits to all the German and Italian courts, and was even
summoned to dance his morris-dance before the Emperor Rudolph himself
at Augsburg.
“Kemp combined shrewdness with his rough humor. With a view to
extending his reputation and his profits, he announced in 1599, his
intention of dancing a morris-dance from London to Norwich; but to his
annoyance, every inaccurate report of his gambols was hawked about in
publication at the time by book-sellers or ballad-makers, like Kemp’s
farewell to the tune of ‘Kerry Merry Buff.’ In order to check the
circulation of falsehood, Kemp offered, he tells us, his first pamphlet
to the press (though at the time he was thought to have had a hand in
writing the Anti-Martinist plays and pamphlets—five pieces erroneously
attributed to his pen). The only copy known is in the Bodleian
Library. The title ran ‘Kemp’s Nine Days Wonder,’ the wonder referred
to being performed in a dance from London to Norwich then written by
himself to satisfy his friends. A woodcut on the title page shows
Kemp in elaborate costume with bells about his knees playing to the
accompaniment of a drum and tabor, which a man at his side is playing.
This pamphlet was entered in the Stationers Book April 22, 1600. The
dedicatory salutation to Anna Fritton, one of her Majesty’s maids of
honor, shows us how arrogant and conceited he must have been.
“Kemp started at seven o’clock in the morning on the first Monday in
Lent, the starting point being in front of the Lord Mayor’s house,
and half London was astir to see the beginning of the great exploit.
His suite consisted of his taborer, Thomas Sly; his servant, William
Bee; and his overseer or umpire, George Sprat, who was to see that
everything was performed according to promise. According to custom, he
put out a sum of money before his departure on condition of receiving
thrice the amount on his safe return. His own fatigues caused him
many delays and he did not arrive in Norwich until twenty-three days
after his departure. He spent only nine days in actual dancing on the
road. Kemp himself on this occasion contributed nothing to the music
except the sound of the bells, which were attached to his gaiters. In
Norwich thousands waited to receive him in the open market-place with
an official concert. Kemp, as guest of the town, was entertained at
its expense and received handsome presents from the Mayor who arranged
a triumphal entry for him. The freedom of the Merchant Adventures
Company was also conferred upon him, thereby assuring him a share in
the yearly income to the amount of forty shillings—a pension for life.
The very buskins in which he had performed his dance were nailed to
the wall in the Norwich Guild Hall and preserved in perpetual memory
of the exploit, which was long remembered in popular literature. In an
epilogue Kemp announced that he was shortly to set forward as merrily
as I may; whither, I myself know not,” and begged ballad makers to
abstain from disseminating lying statements about him. Kemp’s humble
request to the impudent generation of ballad-makers, as he terms
them, reads in part, “My notable Shake-rags, the effect of my suit
is discovered in the title of my supplication, but for your better
understanding for that I know you to be a sort of witless bettle-heads
that can understand nothing but that is knocked into your scalp; so
farewell and crosse me no more with thy rabble of bold rhymes lest at
my return I set a crosse on thy forehead that all men may know that
for a fool.” It seems certain that Kemp kept his word in exhibiting his
dancing powers on the continent. In Week’s “Ayers” (1688) mention is
made of Kemp’s skipping into France. A ballad entitled “An Excellent
New Medley” (dated about 1600) refers to his return from Rome. In the
Elizabethan play “Jack Drum’s Entertainment” (1616), however, there is
introduced a song to which Kemp’s morris dance is performed. Heywood,
writing at this period, in his “Apology for Actors” (1612), says
William Kemp was a comic actor of high reputation, as well in the favor
of Her Majesty as in the opinion of the general audience. There is also
a tribute from the pen of Richard Rathway (1618). Ben Jonson, William
Rowley and John Marston also make mention of him.
Pretty much all that relates to the gambols of sportive Kemp in the
foregoing pages is a mere transcription from the “Camden Society
Papers.”
Our prime object is to establish Kemp’s eligibility as claimant for
Greene’s censure, before alluded to. We are content to advance the
claim of another if found more decisive. We would elect to name
Robert Wilson, senior, an old enemy, doubtless, of Robert Greene, if
we did not think that Kemp has the better claim to that distinction.
According to Collier, Wilson was not only an excellent performer, but
also a talented dramatist, especially renowned for his ready repartee.
Some writers affirm that the authors of the dramas “Faire Emm” and
“Martin Marsixtus” were one and the same person, and that this person
was Robert Wilson, senior, author of “Three Ladies of London” and
“Three Lords and Ladies of London,” the first published in 1584, and
the other in 1590. “Faire Emm” and “Martin Marsixtus” having been
posthumously printed, Greene was severe on the author of the former
for his blasphemous introduction of quotations from the Bible into his
love passages. “We know that the author attacked Greene’s own works
in return and called them lascivious.” He had not read the works, but,
then, an anonymous writer may not very scrupulously confine himself to
the truth. “Loth I was to display myself to the world but for that I
hope to dance under a mask and bluster out like the wind, which, though
every man heareth yet none can in sight descrie.” “I must answer in
print what they have offered on the stage” are the words of Greene.
Robert Wilson may be advanced as claimant for Greene’s reproof by some
persons who are of the opinion that “upstart crow” was both actor and
playwright. Supposition says Kemp also wrote pamphlets and plays,
although at this time he had not given his first and only work to the
press. It matters little at whom he aimed, Kemp or Wilson, so long as
Shakespere was not the object of the aimer. In the Parish Register of
St. Giles, Cripplegate, we read, “Buried, Robert Wilson, yeoman, a
player, 20 Nov., 1600.”
These facts and concurring events in the life of William Kemp
convince us that Shakspere was not, and Kemp very probably was, the
person at whom Greene leveled his satire by bearing witness to his
(Kemp’s) extemporizing power and his haughty and insolent demeanor in
introducing improvisions and interpolations of his “own wit into poet’s
plays.”
From the foregoing, it is evident that, at the time the letter was
written, William Kemp enjoyed an unequaled and wide spread notoriety
and transient fame, extending not only throughout England, but into
foreign countries as well.
And further, by reason of his great prominence, in a calling which
Greene loathed, and despised, he was brought easily within the range of
the latter’s contemptuous designation, of “upstart crow.”
III
We have now reached the crucial matter of the address which, according
to the speculative opinion of many of Shakspere’s biographers, contains
all the words and sentences which they hope, when racked, may be made
to yield support to their tramp conjecture that Robert Greene was the
first to discover Shakspere as a writer of plays, or the amender of the
works of other poets. The identifiable words, so called, are contained
in the following sentences: “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.”
“Upstart Crow” in Elizabethan English meant in general, one who assumed
a lofty or arrogant tone, a bragging, boastful, swaggerer suddenly
raised to prominence and power, as was Kemp after the death of Richard
Tarlton (1589). In an epistle prefixed to Greene’s “Arcadia” (1587),
Thomas Nash speaks of actors “As a company of taffaty fools with their
feathers;” and “The players decked with poets’ feathers like Aesop’s
Crow” (R. B.); and again, “That with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a
Player’s hide.” Tiger in the plain language of the day stood for bully,
a noisy, insolent man, who habitually sought to overbear by clamors,
or by threats. These characteristics are identifiable with Kemp; but
the biographers of Shakspere are content to conjecture that Robert
Greene’s parody on the line “Oh Tyger’s heart wrapt in a woman’s hide”
is not only a contumelious reference to actor, William Shakspere, but
also a declaration of his authorial integrity by their assignment of
“Henry VI. Part III,” which was in action at the “Rose,” when Greene’s
celebrated address was written.
There is _prima-facie_ evidence that Greene authored the line, which he
semi-parodied in the address, which is found in two places. It appears
in its initial form “Oh Tyger’s heart wrapt in a serpent’s hide” in
the play called, “The Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York,” and “The Death
of Good King Henry the Sixth,” and later with “woman” substituted for
“serpent,” again, it is found in the third part of “Henry VI.”, founded
on the true tragedy, which was acted by Lord Pembroke’s company, of
which, as Nash tells us, Greene was chief agent, and for which he wrote
more than four other plays. “Henry VI. Part III” is generally admitted
to be the work of Greene, Marlowe and perhaps Peele. Furthermore,
the catchwords in the lines parodied betray their author, which is
a confirmatory fact. To borrow a citation from the pages of Dr. A.
Grosart, “Every one who knows his Greene knows that over and over again
he returns on anything of his that caught on, sometimes abridging
and sometimes expanding;” and in semi-parodying his own lines, wrapt
“Tyger’s heart” in several kinds of hides. It was William Kemp, the
comic actor and dancer, not Shakspere, whom Greene wanted to hit.
He did not consider as an author at all the “upstart crow” with his
“Tyger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide,” who bombasted orally his own
improvisions and interpolations out in blank verse.
In their great desire to discover Shakspere as the author, the
words “bombast out in blank verse” are seized upon by Shakspere’s
commentators with evident greediness. But these words yield nothing
in support of author-craft, for bombast or bombastry, in the idiom of
the time, stood for high sounding words which might have proceeded
from the mouth of a buffoon, clown, jester, montebank or actor, whose
profession was to amuse spectators by low antics and tricks, and
whose improvisions and extemporizings were destitute of rhyme, but
possessed of a musical rhythm called “blank verse.” The words “blank
verse” were doubtless intended for the ear of Marlowe, the great
innovator, who was thus reminded that the notorious jig-dancer and
clown, William Kemp, declaimed his own improvisions and interpolations
in the “swelling bombast of a bragging blank-verse,” as Nash called
it, and was an absolute “Johannes Factotum in his own conceit”—that
is, a person employed to do many things. Who could do more “in his own
conceit” than Kemp, who spent his life in mad jigs, as he says? Who
but Kemp, the chief actor in the low comedy scenes, who angered the
academic play-writers by introducing “his own wit into their plays and
make a merriment of them?”
Greene’s address to his fellow craftsmen does not convey plagiary,
or a furbishable, imputation, nor give color to, nor the slightest
circumstance for, the conjecture that Shakspere’s authorial career
had been begun as the amender of other poet’s plays anterior to the
putative authorship of “Venus and Adonis.” Halliwell-Phillips, the
most indefatigable and reliable member of the Congress of Speculative
Biographers, says that not one such play has been found revised, or
amended, by Shakspere in his early career. Still in their extremity,
Shakspere’s commentators give hospitality to stupid conjectures that
are not reasonable inferences from concurrent facts, and construe
Greene’s censure of Kemp, (inferentially) as the first literary notice
of Shakspere. It shows an irrepressible desire without proof to confer
authorship upon Shakspere one hundred and fifty years after his death.
The Shakspere votaries cannot point to a single word, or sentence,
in this celebrated address of Robert Greene which connects the
contumelious name “Shake-scene” (dance-scene) with the characteristics
of either the true, or the traditional, Shakspere.
The biographers of Shakspere never grow weary of charging Robert
Greene with professional jealousy and envy. The charge has no
argumentative value, even if granting Shakspere’s early productivity
as a play-maker, or the amender of the works of other men, for Greene’s
activities ran in other lines; play-making was of minor importance,
a sort of by-production of his resourceful and versatile pen. The
biographers of Shakspere are unfortunate in having taken on this
impression, because there is _prima-facie_ evidence that Greene had
forsworn writing for the stage a considerable time before the letter
was written; thus he followed his friend Lodge, who in 1589 “vows to
write no more of that whence shame doth grow.”
The biographers and commentators, agreeing in their asperities,
charge Robert Greene with that worst of passions, envy, basing it
conjecturally on the assumption of Shakspere’s proficiency as a
drama-maker, notwithstanding the sincere and earnest words contained
in his most pathetic letter, addressed to three friends, in which he
counsels them to give up play writing, which he regarded as degrading,
placing their very necessities in the power of grasping shareholding
actors, and rendering it no longer a fit occupation for gentlemen. They
fail to see the dying should be granted immunity from this ignoble and
base passion. Our own rule of law admits as good evidence the testimony
of a man who believes himself to be dying, and so the letter states,
“desirous that you should live though himself be dying.”
Robert Greene’s charge against “upstart crow” stands unshaken. Henry
Chettle, the hack writer, and self admitted transcriber of the letter,
does not retract Greene’s statement. He denies nothing on behalf of an
“upstart crow” (Kemp); for the author of “Kind Hearts Dreams” does not
identify “Shake-scene” (dance-scene) with Shakspere, or Shakespeare,
who was not one of those who took offense. It is expressly stated that
there were two of the three fellow dramatists, addressed by Greene
(Marlowe, Nash and Peele). Still we are told by Shakespearean writers
that the dying genius was pained at witnessing the proficiency of
another in the very activity (play-making), which he had come to regard
as congruous with strolling vagabondism. He enjoined his friends to
seek better masters “for it is a pittie men of such rare wit should be
subject to the pleasure of such rude groomes, painted monsters, apes,
burrs, peasants, puppets,” not play-makers, but actors, who had been
beholden to him and his fellow craftsmen whom he addressed.
There is another aspect in which the charge of professional jealousy
presents itself to the mind of the reader; those who covet that which
another possesses, or envies success, popularity or fortune. To charge
Greene with envy is most uncharitable by reason of his versatility.
Now what was there in the possession of William Shakspere in 1592 that
could have awakened in the mind of Robert Greene so base a passion
as envy. The name Shakspere had no commercial value in 1592, for
Shakspere of the stage is described many years after this date as
merely a “man player” and “a deserving man.” Note this admission by Dr.
Ingleby: “Assuredly no one during the century had any suspicion that
the genius of Shakespeare was unique.” “His immediate contemporaries
expressed no great admiration for either him, or his works.” There
is not a particle of evidence to show that Robert Greene was envious
of any writer of his time; nor had he cause to be; but the way his
contemporaries and successors robbed and plundered him proves the
reverse to be true.
“Nay, more, the men that so eclipst his fame,
Purloynde his plumes; can they deny the same?”
The fact is, Shakspere passed through and out of life without
having attained the distinction, or celebrity, won by Greene in his
brief literary career of but nine short years. The more truthful of
Shakspere’s biographers concede that the subject of their memoirs
was not, in his day, highly regarded, and that his obscurity in 1592
is obvious. There was not the least danger of the author of “Hamlet”
“driving to penury” the dean of English novelists, Robert Greene, who
was supreme in prose romance, a species of literature, which appealed
to the better class of the reading public. Rival-hating envy! Robert
Greene cannot be brought within the scope of such a charge, for in
1592, he was not striving to obtain the same object which play writers
were pursuing.
The fame of Robert Greene during his lifetime eclipsed that of his
contemporaries. “He was in fact the popular author of the day. His
contemporaries applauded the facility with which he turned his talents
to account.” “In a night and a day,” says Nash, “would he have yearked
up a pamphlet as well as in seven years, and glad was that printer that
might be so blest to pay him dear for the very dregs of his wit.”
Even Ben Jonson, “the greatest man of the last age,” according to
Dryden, had no such assurance in his day, if we may judge from his own
account of his literary life, which shows that he had to struggle for
a subsistence, as no printer was found glad, or felt himself blest, to
pay him dear for the cream, much less the very “dregs of his wit.” He
told Drummond that the half of his comedies were not in print, and that
he had cleared but 200 pounds by all his labor for the public theatre.
It has been said by one: “In the breadth of his dramatic quality, his
range over every kind of poetic excellence, Jonson was excelled by
Shakespeare alone.” (p. 437, “A Short History of the English People.”)
When not subsidized by the court he was driven by want to write for
the London theatres; he lived in a hovel in an alley, where he took
service with the notorious play broker. To such as he, reference is
made by Henslow, who in his diary records “the grinding toil and the
starvation wages of his hungry and drudging bondsmen,” who were
struggling for the meanest necessities of life. This Titan of a giant
brood of playwrights, in the days of his declension wrote mendicant
epistles for bread, and, doubtless, in his extremity recalled Robert
Greene, the admonisher of three brother poets “that spend their wits in
making plaies.” “Base minded men, all three of you! if by my miseries
ye be not warned, for unto none of you, like me, sought those burrs to
cleave, those puppits, I mean that speak from our mouths those antics
garnisht in our colors. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have
been beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be both at
once of them forsaken?... O that I might intreate your rare wits to
be employed in more profitable courses, and let those apes imitate
your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired
inventions.”
It was one of this breed of puppets, we are told, who awakened
incarnate envy in the breast of Robert Greene, and engendered rivalship
against William Shakspere, whose votaries, in their dreams of fancy,
see him revising the dramatic writings of Robert Greene, the most
resourceful, versatile, tireless and prolific of literary men. He was
a writer of greatest discernment from the viewpoint of the people of
his time, “for he possessed the ability to write in any vein that would
sell.” He only, of all the writers of his time, gave promise of being
able to gain a competence by the pen alone, a thing which no writer
did, or could do, in that day, by writing for the stage alone. Hon.
Cushman K. Davis in “The Law in Shakespeare” says, “He (Shakspere)
is the first English author who made a fortune with his pen.” In the
absence of credible evidence, Mr. Davis assumes that the young man
who came up from Stratford was the author of the plays. The senator
does not seem aware of the fact that Shakspere of Stratford was a
shareholding actor, receiving a share in the theatre, or its profits,
in 1599; a partner in one or more of the chief companies; a play broker
who purchased and mounted the plays of other men; and that he, like
Burbage, Henslowe and Alleyn, speculated in real estate. He was shrewd
in money matters and became very wealthy, but not by writing plays.
Suppose that William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon had authored all
the plays associated with his name, that alone would not have made him
wealthy. The price of a play varied from four to ten pounds, and all
Shakspere’s labors for the public theatre would have brought no more
than five hundred pounds. The diary of Philip Henslowe makes it clear
that up to the year 1600 the highest price he ever paid was six pounds.
The Shakespeare plays were not exceptionally popular in that day, not
being then as now, “the talk of the town.” Not one of them equalled in
popularity Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy,” or Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus.”
Shakespeare was soon superseded by Fletcher in popular regard. Only one
of the Shakespeare tragedies, one historical play, and eight comedies
were presented at the Court of James First, who reigned twenty-two
years. Plays, written by such hack writers as Dearborn, or Chettle,
were quite as acceptable to princes.
Robert Greene’s romances were “a bower of delight,” a kind of writing
held in high favor by all classes. Sir Thomas Overbury describes his
chambermaid as reading Greene’s works over and over again. It is a
pleasure to see in the elder time Greene’s writings in hands so full
of household cares, since he labored to make young lives happy. Robert
Greene’s works express every variation in the changing conditions of
life. The poetry of his pastoral landscapes are vivid word pictures
of English sylvan scenes. The western sky on amorous autumn days is
mantled with sheets of burnished gold. The soft and gentle zephyr
blows over castled crag and fairy glen fragrant with the breath of
flowers.
In the manuals of our literature great prominence is given to the
fact that Greene led a dissolute, or irregular, life, as if the
debauchment of the author was transmitted by his writings. There are
no indecencies in his works to attest the passage of a debauchee.
Like many persons born to, and nurtured by, religious parents, Greene
doubtless exaggerated his own vices. He was bad, but not altogether
bad. It may truly be said of him that, in regard to all that pertains
to penitence and self abasement, he spares not himself, but like John
Bunyan, he was given to selfupbraiding. He (Bunyan) declares that it
is true that he let loose the reins on the neck of his lust; that he
delighted in all transgressions against the divine law; and that he was
the ring leader of the youth of Elstow in all vice. But, when those
who wished him ill, accused him of licentious amours, he called God
and the angels to attest his purity. No woman, he said, in heaven,
earth, or hell, could charge him with having ever made any improper
advances to her. Blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking seem to have been
Bunyan’s only transgression after all. In Robert Greene’s writings, we
have the reverse of “Herrick’s shameful pleading that if his verse was
impure, his life was chaste.” Unlike Herrick, Greene did not minister
to the unchaste appetite of readers for tainted literature, either in
his day, or in the after time. Powerless to condemn Greene’s writings,
Shakspere’s votaries would desecrate his ashes.
Deplore as we must his dissolute living, it was of short duration,
for he went from earth at the age of two and thirty, and the evil
effects have been lost in Time’s abatements. His associates, doubtless
were as dissolute as he himself. Nash wrote: “With any notorious
crime I never knew him tainted, and he inherited more virtues than
vices.” The reader, at any rate, will give but little credence to
the accusations of such a hyena-dog as Gabriel Harvey. Robert Greene
was not “lip-holy,” nor heart-hollow, for, in regard to his wife and
their separation, “he took to himself all blame, breathed never a word
against her, and did not squander all of his earnings in dissipation,
but sent part of his income to the good woman, the wife of his youth,
and addressed to her in loving trust the last letter he wrote.” Gabriel
Harvey, drenched in hate, could not rob the “Sweet-wife letter of its
pathos.”
In all the galleries of noble women, Greene’s heroines deserve a
foremost place, for all the gracious types of womanhood belonged to
Greene, before they became Shakespeare’s. “Robert Greene is the first
of our play-writers to represent upon the public stage the purity
and sweetness of wife and maiden.” Unselfish love and maternity are
sketched with feminine delicacy and minuteness of touch in all the
tenderness of its purity. His writings have assuaged the sorrow of
the self-sacrificing mother, who is always a queen uncrowned, long
suffering and faithful. Robert Green “is always on the side of the
angels.” When loud mouthed detraction calls him badhearted, we should
not forget that this confessedly dissolute man could, and did, keep
inviolate the purity of his imagination; few have left a wealthier
legacy in feminine models of moral and physical beauty. What is most
characteristic in the pages of Greene is the absence of the indecencies
which attest the passage of the author of “Lear,” “the damnable scenes
which raised the anger of Swinburne and which Coleridge attempted in
vain to palliate.”
Little is known of Greene’s life; and into the little we do know,
his malignant enemy, Gabriel Harvey, has attempted to inject a
deadly virus. The inaccurate figurative expressions in his reputed
posthumously printed works (an alleged description of his manner
of life) cannot be interpreted literally, “but may be resolved in
a large measure into morbid self-upbraidings like the confession
made by the revival convert who sees and paints his past in its
very darkest colors.” But why should the modern reader linger over
the irregularities of dissolute-living authors like Greene and Poe,
whose writings are exceptionally clean. Remember Robert Burns’ noble
words, “What done we partly may compute but know not what resisted.”
The commentators and pharisaic critics, who have written concerning
Greene, are mere computists of the poet’s vices; ministers of hate,
who burlesque the poet’s soul stiffening with despair, and display
their ghoulish instincts “in travestying so pathetic and tragical a
deathbed as Greene’s.” Students of Elizabethan literature know that
Robert Greene resisted the temptation to write in the best paying vein
of the age, that of ministering to the unchaste appetites of readers
for ribaldries. “To his undying honor Robert Greene, equally with James
Thompson, left scarcely a line, that, dying, he need have wished to
blot out.”
There is no record extant of his living likeness. Chettle gives this
pleasant description of his personal appearance, “With him was the
fifth, a man of indifferent years; of face, amiable; of body, well
proportioned; his attire after the habit of scholar-like gentleman,
only his hair was somewhat long, whom I supposed to be Robert Greene,
Master of Arts.” Nash notices his tawny beard, “a jolly long red
peake like the spire of a steeple which he cherished continually
without cutting, whereat a man might hang a jewel, it was so sharp and
pendant.” Harvey, who had never seen Greene, says that he wore such
long hair as was only worn by thieves and cutthroats, and taunts Nash
with wearing the same “unseemly superfluity.” The habit of wearing the
hair long is not unusual with poets. John Milton “cherished the same
superfluity” as does also Joaquin Miller.