Page:Shakespeare of Stratford (1926) Yale.djvu/26

10 ''have been beholding: is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall (were ye 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 wrapt 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 fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. O that I might intreat 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.''

Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit was written during the last illness of the author, who died September 3, 1592. The title-page of the edition of that year states that the book was ‘written before his death and published at his dying request.’ The actor-playwright attacked as ‘an upstart crow,’ ‘an absolute Johannes fac totum,’ and ‘the only Shake-scene’ is undoubtedly Shakespeare. The three acquaintances of Greene whom he exhorts to give up play-writing are pretty evidently Marlowe, Peele, and Nashe. The last two are addressed in friendly and flattering terms, but the address to Marlowe (who is called ‘famous gracer of tragedians,’ atheist, and student of ‘pestilent Machiavellian policy’) has a bitter tone.

Preface to Henry Chettle’s Kind-Heart’s Dream, December, 1592.

About three months since died M. Robert Greene,