Perhaps you are persuaded that the upstart Crow is Shakespeare
because he thinks himself "in his own conceit
the only Shake-scene in a country"?
Surely the similarity between 'Shake-scene'
and 'Shakespeare' is too close to be a coincidence?
Yet the typography of the text
counts against 'Shake-scene' meaning 'Shakespeare'.
Throughout Groats-worth, most names are
printed in Italic lettering rather than blackletter,
even the name 'Johannes Factotum'.
Epithets (such as 'upstart Crow') are not.
Shake-scene is not in Italic lettering,
suggesting it is not a name, but a common noun.
Being preceded by an article -
"the ... Shake-scene' - points in the same direction;
proper nouns (names) don't need to be prefaced with 'a' or 'the'.
'Shake-scene' is simply another way for Greene to say 'actor'
without repeating the words he has already used,
as a substitution demonstrates:
the upstart Crow is
"in his own conceit
the only actor in a country".
There was a similar word in use at the time:
'shake-rag', meaning beggar.
It is found in printed sources from 1571,
and according to the Oxford English Dictionary,
means 'a ragged, disreputable person'.
By adapting 'Shake-rag'
(beggar) into 'Shake-scene' (actor),
Greene could not only refer to the physical vigor with which an actor
such as Alleyn would stride around the stage, shaking the scenery,
but also hint at a certain disreputable quality associated with the original term.
As much as we might want Greene to be referring to Shakespeare,
we should not leap upon the word Shake-scene for
the mere fact that it begins with the same first syllable.
Wishful thinking will lead us to see connections that the author never intended.
It makes no sense to identify the 'Shake-scene' here - the actor -
with William Shakspere, when the main text of Groats-worth,
and Greene's previous writings, implicate Edward Alleyn.
Robert Greene had an existing beef with Edward Alleyn,
had called him a Crow beautified with others' feathers before,
and through details in the rest of Groats-worth clearly
identifies Alleyn (not least through the ownership of a windmill)
as the wealthy Player who promised him riches
but is now allowing him to die in poverty.
There are grammatical, typographical and etymological
reasons why his 'Shake-scene' means 'actor', not 'Shakespeare'.
But what of the parodied line from
the play that would later become the third part of Henry VI?
It's time for a short quiz.
With whom do you associate the following lines?
1. 'I coulda been a contender'
2. 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn'
3. 'Go ahead, make my day'
4. 'Here's looking at you, kid' 5. 'I'll be back'
Most people would answer: Marlon Brando,
Clark Gable, Clint Eastwood,
Humphrey Bogart, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
We recall the actors who spoke the lines,
not the writers who wrote them.
Unless you're a screenwriter yourself, and even if you are,
it's most unlikely that you thought of Budd Schulberg and Malcom Johnson; Sidney Howard;
Joseph Stinson; Julius and Philip Epstein with Howard Koch;
James Cameron and Gale Ann Hurd.
Likewise, most of Greene's readership, reading the line
"Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide"
would think of the actor who played Richard Duke of York,
not the writer, whose name, in any case, they were unlikely to know.
Shakespeare was not publicly known as the author of this play for another twenty-seven years.
Indeed, we have no evidence he was known as the author of any play
(or poem) when Groats-worth was written;
'William Shakespeare' would not appear on the title page of a play for another six years.
The parody of the line from The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York
turns out to be yet another piece of evidence pointing towards Edward Alleyn
who, as the leading actor of Lord Strange's Men at this time,
was the man most likely to have taken the title role
and spoken these words.
Though some have argued that Alleyn wouldn't have
played York, because he is killed in Act 1,
the part is clearly written so as to allow it to be doubled with the part of Clarence.
You might argue that Greene's letter,
even though it was published at his request,
wasn't addressed to the general populace.
It was addressed to three playwrights,
who would very likely know who wrote the line
"Tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide".
But who was that, exactly?
The early versions of the plays that eventually became Henry VI
are widely acknowledged to be co-authored
and are not universally acknowledged,
even by orthodox scholars, to be by Shakespeare.
In fact, Tom Merriam, who undertook a computer-based stylometric analysis of Henry VI,
concluded that The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York -
this play - was written by Christopher Marlowe.
His opinion, shared by a number of well-respected scholars of the early twentieth century,
was that Marlowe's play was adopted and adapted by Shakespeare into the play we now know
as Henry VI Part 3.
This view was adopted in 2016,
with considerable fanfare, by the editors of The New Oxford Shakespeare.
In this circumstance, Robert Greene, and
"his quondam acquaintance that spend their wits in making plays"
would not have associated the 'tiger's heart' line with William Shakespeare,
but with Marlowe, the first of those people Greene warns against the 'upstart Crow'.
If this is so, Greene's parodic reference would be even more satisfying,
tying together both his target
(Alleyn) and his chief addressee.
We mustn't forget, also, that we have no evidence of
William Shakspere's involvement in the London theatre scene before 1594.
He was not, like Edward Alleyn,
a leading tragedian of the scene-shaking variety.
If he was acting before 1594,
it must have been in very minor roles,
since there were no reports of him.
Nor is there any evidence that William Shakespeare was known at this time as a writer.
To place now thought to be his
(the fore-runners of Henry VI Parts 1 and 3)
were first mentioned in 1592,
but as we've seen, their authorship has been disputed by orthodox scholars.
In 1594, the first plays of the Shakespeare canon were published,
but not with his name on.
No one had mentioned Shakespeare before Robert Greene,
and let's not forget
that Greene doesn't mention Shakespeare either.
This is a possible allusion,
not a factual reference.
Greene has no documented link to Shakspere
or Shakespeare, but has a documented relationship with Alleyn.
When he wrote Groats-worth,
he knew he was dying,
and dying in poverty.
By contrast, Edward Alleyn was wealthy and successful,
thanks to the wit and words of Greene
and his fellow playwrights.
The orthodox reading is that Greene, with his dying words,
takes a jealous swipe at an up-and-coming playwright no one has heard of,
but this would hardly be a dying man's concern.
His chief concern, which he could hardly make more obvious,
is the disparity of wealth between
successful actors and poverty-stricken gentleman scholars
(chiefly himself) who supplied the actors with the source of their riches and fame.
From its title (A Groats-worth of witte, bought with a million of Repentance),
through its main text, to its accompanying letters,
the focus of Groats-worth is on money,
and specifically on the comparatively low monetary value placed on the 'wit' of
Greene and his fellow writers, despite
the fact that it provides actors with their entire living.
That the most successful of these actors has begun to believe he can do without them,
plagiarising 'the best of [them]'' with a blank verse play of his own,
is little more than an irritated footnote in
Greene's furious diatribe against injustice.
Ros BarberDr
