the author of “Venus and Adonis”; from Henry Willobie in 1594 (he first writes the name with a hyphen: Shake-speare); from Francis Meres and Richard Barnfeld in 1598; from Gabriel Harvey in 1599; from John Weever and many others. Not one of these people ever even suggested that Shaksper, the actor, was also SHAKESPEARE, the author.
Will Shaksper never claimed to have been William Shakespeare the author; he never even wrote his name that way. That is why Willobie, Meres, Barnfield, Harvey and all the others wrote of William Shakespeare the author, and never of Will Shaksper the actor. That is why Professor Stanley Wells and all other English literature scholars would be well advised to realize once and for all: During his lifetime there was never a syllable written claiming that William Shaksper, the actor from Stratford was William Shakespeare the author.
In 1598 Will Shaksper played a part in “Every Man in his Honour” by Ben Jonson. In 1603, the same actor played a part in Sejanus by the same author. In 1616 (after the death of Will Shaksper) Ben Jonson put the names SHAKESPEARE and SHAKE-SPEARE on the cast lists of the two plays, in the Folio-edition of his works. This is the first time ever that any author had suggested that the actor Will Shaksper and the author William Shakespeare are one and the same person. He plays on this trick in 1623 in the foreword to “Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies.”
(The notorious forger John Payne Collier (1789-1883) inserted a childish anecdote about the actors “William Shakespeare” and James Burbage into a diary from John Manningham, thereby claiming to have made an important discovery. This forgery was denounced by Sydney Race in 1950.)
“Ah but...” resounds the unified voice of the academy; “Ah but.......what about Greene’s outburst against the “upstart crow”? The fact that the envious playwright calls his rival an “upstart” shows us that Shaksper, the man from the rank and file is meant and not his aristocratic ghost writer.
With the greatest respect, ladies and gentlemen, you are mistaken! In “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit” (1592) the first author in England who could make a living out of writing gives a verbal trouncing to an actor who, overrating his own abilities, feels that he can compose blank verse as well as a dramatist. The fact of the matter is: Greene means neither Will Shaksper, the actor nor William Shakespeare, the poet. He is talking about an actor, one who shakes the scene and thinks himself the “onely Shake-scene in a countrey”. Greene’s tirade against the actors is part of a warning that he would have fellow dramatists heed. He warns them of “atheism, moneylenders and actors”. Greene’s warning goes out, in general, to “those gentlemen who spend their wits making plays”, and particularly to the Machiavellian and “famous grazer [shepherd] of tragedians” (Christopher Marlowe), “the young Juvenal, that biting satirist” (Thomas Nashe) and- “I would swear by sweet Saint George” -to the “nothing inferior” writer (George Peele). Robert Greene says that actors are nothing but burrs who cling on to a play and ruin it, enriching themselves at the cost of the author.
The well worn passage from “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit” is as follows:
Unto none of you (like me) sought those burrs to cleave, those puppets (I mean) that spake from our mouths, those antics garnished 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 been beholding, shall (were you in that case as 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 ‘tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide’ supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. O that I might entreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let those apes imitate your past excellence, and nevermore acquaint them with your admired inventions.
Greene’s rebuke of the acting profession reminds us of the entertaining poetry in Humphrey Coningsby’s lyrical miscellany (British Library, Harleian MS. 7392) that was compiled ten years earlier. The unknown author suggests a coat of arms for two actors, the brothers John and Laurence Dutton, who deserted their theatre company and laid claim to the title of “Gentlemen”. (In those days an honour.)
The wreathe is a chayne of chaungeable red,
To shew they are vayne and fickle of head;
The creste is a Castrylle [kestrel!] whose feathers ar blew,
In signe that these fydlers will never be trew;
Whereon is placed the horne of a goate,
Because they ar chast [chased], to this is theyr lotte,
For their bravery, indented and parted,
And for their knavery inebulliated [boiled to vapour].
With the words “an upstart crow” Greene rebuked a contemporary ham actor, a notorious ranter (shake-scene) changing the words of the best dramatist in a clumsy way (“that ... supposes he is as able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you”). But whom did Greene mean when he spoke of “the best of you”?
The actor in question is said to have used the sentence “with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide”. This is a parody on a quote from Shakespeare “O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide!” (3Henry VI, I/4)
Greene took up, or probably invented this parody on a sentence of the “best” to show that the actor in question was indeed a disrespectful villain. And that “the best” was Shakespeare.
“Gotcha!” cries the auditorium. This parody on a quote from Shakespeare is the proof that the actor, who was the cause of Greene’s chagrin, and the author of the Shakespearian works, are indeed one and the same person.
If that is your opinion dear reader, then you really ought to think this thing through again. There’s no such thing as an author who gets on a stage and does a parody on his own work. There never has been. There is only one logical solution; the annoying actor and the author must have been two separate individuals; some professional truth-benders might have a problem with that, but there it is.
To sum up: The quote from “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit”, which has been repeated ad nauseum, when interpreted correctly proves Greene’s adoration of a singular dramatist, later renowned as William Shakespeare.
(In any case we are surprised to see a reference to the author’s name “Shakespeare”, a name first made public in the summer of 1593 with the appearance of “Venus and Adonis”. In January 1593 Thomas Nashe made references to a certain “Master William” just three months after “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit”.)
We can say with a high degree of certitude that the actor in question was the popular Edward Alleyn, a member of “The Admiral’s Men “. He was the son-in-law of Philip Henslowe who left James Burbage’s theatre company in 1592, ensuing the rivalry between the two leading theatre companies, “The Admiral’s Men” and “The Lord Chamberlain’s Men”.
The irony of the matter is that this self-satisfied address to the other leading playwrights of the day was, in all likelihood, not written by Robert Greene at all. “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit” went to press two months after its young author’s death. The printer, Henry Chettle, was also a playwright. The main theme of “Greene’s Groatswort of Wit” is the life story of an actor which ends abruptly on page 39. The address to the playwrights, and the chiding of the annoying actor, seem to be grafted on to the end of the book. It is hard to imagine that Greene would have done such a thing on his death bed.
Greene writing from out of his funeral shroud, taken from John Dickenson‘s
“Greene in Conceipt” (1598)
In view of the fact that Henry Chettle was known for his very liberal views in the matter of plagiarism, it would seem that Chettle used “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit” to hide behind the name of Robert Greene and pontificate