Robert Greene (16th century)

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An allegorical image of Greene in his funeral shroud, from John Dickenson's Greene in conceipt (1598)
An allegorical image of Greene in his funeral shroud, from John Dickenson's Greene in conceipt (1598)

Robert Greene (1558 – September 3, 1592) was an English author and well-known personality. He was born in Norwich, England, and attended Cambridge University, receiving a BA in 1580, and a MA in 1583 before moving to London, where he became perhaps the first professional author in England, publishing autobiography, plays, romances, and in other genres while capitalizing on a scandalous reputation.

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[edit] 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 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 September 3, 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.

[edit] 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.[1]

[edit] Greene and Shakespeare

Groats-worth of Wit
Groats-worth of Wit

He 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 most scholars agree contains the earliest known mention of Shakespeare as a member of the London 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.

In any case, 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, is one candidate) hoping to capitalize on it with a lurid tale of death-bed repentance.

Greene's colorful and irresponsible character have led some, for example Stephen Greenblatt, to speculate that Greene may have served as the model for Shakespeare's Falstaff.

[edit] Principal Works

Plays:

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)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Logan and Smith, pp. 81-5.

[edit] References

  • Baskervill, Charles Read, ed. Elizabethan and Stuart Plays. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1934.
  • Crupi, Charles. Robert Greene (1986) ISBN-10: 0805769056
  • Dickenson, Thomas H. "Introduction" from The Complete Plays of Robert Greene (New Mermaid Edition, 1907)
  • Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World (2005)
  • Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1973.

[edit] External links