Robert Greene

(dramatist)

Robert Greene (1558–1592) was an

English author popular in his day, and now
best known for a posthumous pamphlet
attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of
Witte, bought with a million of Repentance,
widely believed to contain an attack on
William Shakespeare. Robert Greene was a
popular Elizabethan dramatist and
pamphleteer known for his negative
critiques of his colleagues. He is said to
have been born in Norwich.[1] He attended
Cambridge, receiving a BA in 1580, and an
M.A. in 1583 before moving to London,
where he arguably became the first
professional author in England. Greene
was prolific and published in many genres
including romances, plays and
autobiography.
 Robert Greene

Woodcut of Greene "suted in deaths livery",

from John Dickenson's Greene in conceipt
(1598)

Born Tombland, Norwich

Baptised 11 July 1558

St George's Church

Died 3 September 1592

(aged 34)
London

Nationality English
Occupation Writer, dramatist,
l i h

Family
According to the author Brenda
Richardson, the "chief problem" in
compiling a biography of Robert Greene
was his name. Robert was one of the most
popular given names of the era and Greene
was a common surname.[2]

Newcomb suggests that Robert Greene

"was probably the Robert Greene, son of
Robert Greene, baptized on 11 July 1558
at St George's, Tombland, Norwich."[1]
Greene later described himself
as from Norwich on his title-
pages, and the year is
appropriate for the Robert
Greene who matriculated at St
John's College, Cambridge, as a
sizar on 26 November 1575. The
author's father was probably
one of two Robert Greenes found
later in parish records: either a
saddler who lived modestly in
the parish until 1599, or a
cordwainer who kept an inn in
Norwich from the late 1570s
 until his death in 1591. The
saddler appeals to biographers
who attribute the writer's later
low-life sympathies to a humble
birth; the innkeeper, a more
prosperous man possibly related
to landowners, interests
scholars who note the social
ambitions of Greene's early
works.

Both the Norwich cordwainer-turned-

innkeeper and the Norwich saddler left
wills, proved in 1591 and 1596
respectively, but neither will mentioned a
son named Robert.[3] However, Greene
himself implied that he had been
disinherited by his father.

Career
Greene is thought to have attended the
Norwich Grammar School, although this
cannot be confirmed as enrolment
documents for the relevant years are
lost.[1] Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
provided scholarships for students from
the Norwich grammar school, and for this
reason Greene's matriculation as a sizar at
St John's College, Cambridge, has been
considered "strange".[4][1][5] A reason
offered for Greene's enrolment at St John's
is that some of the gentry of South
Yorkshire attended St John's, and among
the dedicatees of, or authors of
commendatory verses for Greene's books
were members of the Darcy, Portington,
Lee, Stapleton, and Rogers families, all
centred at Snaith, Yorkshire; according to
Richardson, the Robert Greene from
Norwich who was an innkeeper may have
been an immigrant from Yorkshire
connected to 'a large family of Greenes'
who lived in the parish of Snaith, and may
actually have left Norwich to reside at
Snaith from 1571 to 1577.[6][1]
There is no record of Greene's having
taken part in the dramatic productions at
Cambridge in 1579 and 1580, although 18
of his classmates and Fellows of the
Cambridge colleges acted in Hymenaeus,
and 46 in Richardus Tertius.[7][8] His
academic performance as an
undergraduate at Cambridge was
mediocre; on 22 January 1580 he took his
BA, graduating 38th out of 41 students in
his college, and 115th out of the total
university graduating class that year of
205 students.[1][9] He "apparently
transferred to Clare College for his 1583
MA", where he placed 5th out of 12
students in his college, and 29th of the
129 students at the university.[1][9][10] It
was "rare for a student to migrate to
another college (as Greene did) after he
had received the baccalaureate",[11] and no
record of Greene's transfer to Clare
College has been discovered, nor does his
name appear in the Clare Hall Buttery
Book for 1580–84.[9] Greene's claim to
association with Clare College is found in
the second part of Mamillia, which was not
published until 1593, after Greene's death,
in which the dedicatory epistle to Robert
Lee and Roger Portington is signed
"Robert Greene. From my Studie in
Clarehall the vii. Of Julie".[1][12]
Title page of Greene's Farewell to Folly, 1591

According to Newcomb, "Other events of

[Greene's] youth must be derived from
autobiographical remarks that may not be
reliable".[1] In The Repentance of Robert
Greene, written in the first person, Greene
claimed to have travelled to Italy and
Spain; however, no evidence of Greene's
continental trip has been found, "or—
unless we take merely his word for it—that
he ever made the trip at all".[9] Further
doubt is cast on Greene's continental
journey by Norbert Bolz, who after
undertaking a computer analysis of the
vocabulary of The Repentance, concluded
that "The Repentance of Robert Greene was
in fact not written by Robert Greene".[13]

In The Repentance, Greene claimed to have

married a gentleman's daughter, whom he
abandoned after having had a child by her
and spent her dowry, after which she went
to Lincolnshire, and he to London.[1] In
Four Letters (1592), Gabriel Harvey prints a
letter allegedly written by Greene to his
wife in which he addresses her as "Doll".
However, "[E]xtensive searches of London
and Norwich records by successive
biographers have failed finally to locate the
record of Greene's marriage".[14]

After his move to London, Greene

published over twenty-five works in prose
in a variety of genres, becoming "England's
first celebrity author".[1]

In 1588, he was granted an MA from

Oxford University, "almost certainly a
courtesy degree".[1] Thereafter the title
pages of some of his published works
bore the phrase Utruisq. Academiae in
Artibus Magister', "Master of Arts in both
Universities".[1]

Greene died 3 September 1592,[15][16]

(aged 34 if he was the Robert Greene
baptised in 1558). His death and burial
were announced by Gabriel Harvey in a
letter to Christopher Bird of Saffron
Walden dated 5 September, first published
as a "butterfly pamphlet" about 8
September, and later expanded as Four
Letters and Certain Sonnets, entered in the
Stationers' Register on 4 December
1592.[17][18] Harvey attributed Greene's
demise to "a surfeit of pickle herring and
Rhenish wine",[19] and claimed he had been
buried in "the new churchyard near
Bedlam" on 4 September.[1][20] No record
of Greene's burial has been found.

According to The Repentance of Robert

Greene, Greene is alleged to have written
Groatsworth during the month prior to his
death, including in it a letter to his wife
asking her to forgive him and stating that
he was sending their son to her. No record
of Greene's son by his wife has been
found; however, in Four Letters, Gabriel
Harvey claimed that Greene kept a
mistress, Em, the sister of a criminal
known as "Cutting Ball" hanged at Tyburn.
Harvey described her as "a sorry ragged
quean of whom [Greene] had his base son
Infortunatus Greene". According to
Newcomb, a Fortunatus Greene was
buried at Shoreditch on 12 August 1593,
"whose folk-tale name might lie behind
Harvey's jest".[1]

Writing
Title page of Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
(1594 edition)

According to Newcomb, '[Greene's] works

evince an inexhaustible linguistic facility,
grounded in wide (if not painstaking)
reading in the classics, and extra-curricular
reading in the modern continental
languages'.[1] He wrote prolifically: From
1583 to 1592, he published more than
twenty-five works in prose, becoming one
of the first authors in England to support
himself with his pen in an age when
professional authorship was virtually
unknown.

Greene's literary career began with the

publication of a long romance, Mamillia,
entered in the Stationers' Register on 3
October 1580.[1] Greene's romances were
written in a highly wrought style which
reached its highest level in Pandosto
(1588) and Menaphon (1589). Short
poems and songs incorporated in some of
the romances attest to his ability as a lyric
poet. One song from Menaphon, Weep not
my wanton, smile upon my knee, (a
mother's lullaby to her baby son), enjoyed
immense success, and is now probably his
best-known work.[21]

In his later "coney-catching" pamphlets,

Greene fashioned himself into a well-
known public figure, telling colourful inside
stories of rakes and rascals duping young
gentlemen and solid citizens out of their
hard-earned money. These stories, told
from the perspective of a repentant former
rascal, have been considered
autobiographical, and have been thought
to incorporate many facts of Greene's own
life thinly veiled as fiction: 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. However,
according to Newcomb, in his later prose
works "Greene himself built his persona
around a myth of prodigal decline that
cannot be taken at face value".[1] His plays
earned himself the title as one of the
"University Wits", including George Peele,
Thomas Nashe, and Christopher Marlowe.

Richardson makes a similar argument,

concluding that Greene's later works
'prejudice the examination of all the work
before them', and that the prose works
prior to the coney-catching and repentance
pamphlets establish that 'initially at least
Greene was respectable'. Richardson
considers that Greene:[22]

claimed from the outset a moral

or civilizing purpose in his
writing. His tales repeatedly
illustrate the disastrous
disruptions caused in life by
passion and laud the life of
restraint. His views are basically
conservative ... He equivocates
and hesitates over the defence of
 the values of a conservative
culture, virginity, true devotion,
strict moral probity.

In addition to his prose works, Greene also

wrote several plays, none of them
published in his lifetime,[1] including The
Scottish History of James IV, Alphonsus,
and his greatest popular success, Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay, as well as Orlando
Furioso, based on Ludovico Ariosto's
Orlando Furioso.

In addition to the plays published under his

name after his death, Greene has been
proposed as the author of several other
dramas, including a second part to Friar
Bacon which may survive as John of
Bordeaux, The Troublesome Reign of King
John, George a Greene, Fair Em, A Knack to
Know a Knave, Locrine, Selimus, and
Edward III, and even Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus and Henry VI plays.[23][1]

Greene and Shakespeare

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Greene's Groats-worth

Greene is most familiar to Shakespeare

scholars for his pamphlet Greene's Groats-
Worth of Wit, which alludes to a line, "O
tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide",
found in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3 (c.
1591–92):
 ... 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.

Greene evidently complains of an actor

who believes he can write as well as
university-educated playwrights, alludes to
the actor with a quotation that appears in
both the True Tragedy quarto and
Shakespeare's Folio version of Henry VI,
Part 3, and uses the term "Shake-scene", a
unique term never used before or after
Greene's screed, to refer to the actor. The
Oxford English Dictionary notes that it is
"Of uncertain or vague meaning: used by
Greene in his attack on Shakespeare."

Some scholars have hypothesized that all

or part of Groatsworth was written shortly
after Greene's death by Henry Chettle or
another one of his fellow writers, hoping to
capitalise on a lurid tale of death-bed
repentance.[24][25] Hanspeter Born argues
that Greene wrote the whole of
Groatsworth, and that his deathbed attack
on the "upstart Crow" was provoked by
Shakespeare's interference with a play
attributed to Greene, A Knack to Know a
Knave.[26]

Greene's colourful and irresponsible

character has led some, including Stephen
Greenblatt, to speculate that Greene may
have served as the model for
Shakespeare's Falstaff. His quotation has
also been used as the title for the 2016
sitcom Upstart Crow on Shakespeare's life,
written by Ben Elton, its story commencing
in 1592 (the year the quotation was
written) and featuring Greene as a
character (played by Mark Heap).[27]

Some Prose works

Mamillia: A Mirror or Looking-glass for
the Ladies of England (1583), dedicated
to Lord Darcy of the North
Mamillia: The Second Part of the Triumph
of Pallas (1593), dedicated to Robert Lee
and Roger Portington
The Anatomy of Lovers' Flatteries (1584),
dedicated to Mary Rogers, wife to
Master Hugh Rogers of Everton[28]
The Myrrour of Modestie (1584),
dedicated to Margaret, Countess of
Derby
Arbasto; The Anatomy of Fortune (1584),
dedicated to Lady Mary Talbot
Gwydonius; The Card of Fancy (1584),
dedicated to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl
of Oxford
The Debate Between Folly and Love
(1584), no dedicatee[29]
The Second Part of the Tritameron of
Love (1587), no dedicatee
Planetomachia (1585), dedicated to
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
An Oration or Funeral Sermon (1585), no
dedicatee[30]
Morando; The Tritameron of Love (1587),
dedicated to Philip Howard, 20th Earl of
Arundel
Morando; The Second Part of the
Tritameron of Love (1587), no dedicatee
Euphues: His Censure to Philautus
(1587), dedicated to Robert Devereux,
2nd Earl of Essex
Greene's Farewell to Folly (1591),
dedicated to Robert Carey, esquire
Penelope's Web (1587?), dedicated to
Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, and
Anne, Countess of Warwick
Alcida; Greene's Metamorphosis (1617),
dedicated to Sir Charles Blount
Greenes Orpharion (1599), dedicated to
Robert Carey, esquire
Pandosto (1588), dedicated to George
Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland
Perimedes (1588), dedicated to Gervase
Clifton, esquire
Ciceronis Amor (1589), dedicated to
Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange
Menaphon (1587), dedicated to Lady
Hales, wife to the late deceased Sir
James Hales[31]
The Spanish Masquerado (1589),
dedicated to Hugh Offley, Sheriff of the
City of London
Greene's Mourning Garment (1590),
dedicated to George Clifford, 3rd Earl of
Cumberland
Greene's Never Too Late (1590),
dedicated to Thomas Burnaby, esquire
Francesco's Fortunes, or The Second Part
of Greene's Never Too Late (1590),
dedicated to Thomas Burnaby, esquire
Greene's Vision, Written at the Instant of
his Death (1590?), dedicated to Nicholas
Saunder of Ewell, esquire
The Royal Exchange* (1590), dedicated
to Sir John Hart, Lord Mayor of London
A Notable Discovery of Coosnage (1591),
no dedicatee
The Second Part of Conycatching (1591),
no dedicatee
The Black Books Messenger (1592), no
dedicatee
A Disputation Between a Hee Conny-
Catcher and a Shee Conny-Catcher
(1592), no dedicatee
A Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a
Million of Repentance (1592), no
dedicatee
Philomela (1592), Bridget Radcliffe, Lady
Fitzwalter (wife of Robert Radclyffe, 5th
Earl of Sussex)
A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592),
Thomas Burnaby, esquire
 The Third and Last Part of Conycatching
(1592), no dedicatee

Verse
A Maiden's Dream (1591), dedicated to
Lady Elizabeth Hatton, wife to Sir
William Hatton[32]

Plays
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (circa
1590)
The History of Orlando Furioso (circa
1590)
A Looking Glass for London and England
(with Thomas Lodge) (circa 1590)
 The Scottish History of James the Fourth
(circa 1590)
The Comical History of Alphonsus, King
of Aragon (circa 1590)
Selimus[33] (circa 1594)

In popular culture
In the Ben Elton-written sitcom, Upstart
Crow, he is portrayed by Mark Heap as
being alive following the publication of
Groats-Worth and a constant obstacle to
Shakespeare's success.

His most famous song Weep not my

wanton, smile upon my knee is a recurring
motif in the historical novel The Grove of
Eagles by Winston Graham.

Notes
1. Newcomb 2004.
2. Richardson 1980, p. 165.
3. Richardson 1980, p. 166.
4. Richardson 1980, p. 170.
5. Parr 1962, pp. 536–7.
. Richardson 1980, pp. 160–3, 170–1.
7. Parr 1962, p. 542.
. Richardson 1980, p. 175.
9. Parr 1962, p. 540.
10. "Greene, Robert (GRN575R)" . A
Cambridge Alumni Database.
University of Cambridge.
11. Parr 1962, p. 538.
12. Newcomb states that 7 July was "the
very date in 1583 on which Greene
graduated MA from Clare College";
however according to Parr, Pruvost
"mistakenly contends that the M.A.
was always awarded in July", and
there is no record of the time of year at
which M.A. degrees were awarded in
1583, although "those of 1577–80
were awarded in March and April" (p.
540).
13. Bolz 1979, pp. 66–7.
14. Richardson 1980, p. 173.
15. Dyce 1874, p. 57.
1 . Dyce appears to be the first to give the
specific date of Greene's death, but
cites no source.
17. McKerrow I 1958, pp. 151–153.
1 . McKerrow II 1958, pp. 81–82, 87.
19. McKerrow II 1958, p. 82.
20. Hartle 2017, pp. 40–41.
21. The Oxford Companion to English
Literature 7th Edition Dinah Birch ed.
(2009) p.634
22. Richardson 1980, pp. 178–9.
23. Logan and Smith, pp. 81–85.
24. Schoone-Jongen 2008, pp. 21–28.
25. Carroll 1994, pp. 1–31.
2 . Born, Hanspeter, "Why Greene was
Angry at Shakespeare", Medieval and
Renaissance Drama in England 25
(2012), 133–173 .
27. "David Mitchell to play Shakespeare in
new BBC2 sitcom" . RadioTimes.
Retrieved 13 January 2017.
2 . Laoutaris 2008, p. 88.
29. Fleay 1891, pp. 251–2.
30. Freeman 1965, pp. 378–9.
31. Alwes 2004, p. 119.
32. Collier 1865, pp. 328–31.
33. Charry, Brinda. Robert Greene:
Selimus . The Literary Encyclopedia,
25 August 2007. Retrieved 26 March
2020

References
Bolz, Norman (1979). Habicht, Werner
(ed.). "A Statistical Computer-Aided
Investigation of the Authenticity of 'The
Repentance of Robert Greene' " . English
and American Studies in German;
Summaries of Theses and Monographs.
Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag: 66–7.
Retrieved 23 August 2013.
Carroll, D. Allen, ed. (1994). Greene's
Groatsworth of Wit. Binghamton, New
York: Centre for Medieval and Early
Renaissance Studies. pp. 1–31.
OCLC 28710470 .
Collier, J. Payne (1865). A Bibliographical
and Critical Account of the Rarest Books
in the English Language . I. London:
Joseph Lilly. pp. 328–31. Retrieved
24 August 2013.
Dyce, Alexander (1874). The Dramatic
and Poetical Works of Robert Greene &
George Peele . I. London: George
Routledge and Sons. p. 57. Retrieved
24 August 2013.
Fleay, Frederick Gard (1891). A
Biographical Chronicle of the English
Drama 1559–1642 . I. London: Reeves
and Turner. pp. 251–2. Retrieved
24 August 2013.
Freeman, Arthur (1965). "An
Unacknowledged Work of Robert
Greene" . Notes and Queries. 12 (10):
378–9. doi:10.1093/nq/12-10-378 .
Retrieved 24 August 2013.
Hartle, Robert (2017). The New
Churchyard: from Moorfields marsh to
Bethlem burial ground, Brokers Row and
Liverpool Street. London: Crossrail.
ISBN 978-1-907586-43-9.
G.R. Hibbard, ed., Three Elizabethan
pamphlets by Robert Greene; Thomas
Nash; Thomas Dekker (Folcroft, PA:
Folcroft Library Editions, 1972).
Laoutaris, Chris (2008). Shakespeare's
Maternities . Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press. p. 88.
ISBN 9780748624362. Retrieved
24 August 2013.
McKerrow, Ronald B. (1958). The Works
of Thomas Nashe. IV. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell. pp. 151–3.
McKerrow, Ronald B. (1958). The Works
of Thomas Nashe. V. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell. pp. 81–2, 87.
Newcomb, L.H. (2004). "Greene, Robert
(bap. 1558, d. 1592)". Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography (online ed.).
Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11418 .
(Subscription or UK public library
membership required.) The first edition of
this text is available at
Wikisource: "Greene, Robert (1560?–
1592)"  . Dictionary of National
Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
1885–1900.
Parr, Johnstone (1962). "Robert Greene
and His Classmates at Cambridge".
PMLA. 77 (5): 536–43.
doi:10.2307/460403 . JSTOR 460403 .
Richardson, Brenda (1980). Hunter, G.K.
and C.J. Rawson (ed.). "Robert Greene's
Yorkshire Connections: A New
Hypothesis" . The Yearbook of English
Studies. London: Modern Humanities
Research Association. 10: 160–180.
doi:10.2307/3506940 .
JSTOR 3506940 . Retrieved 23 August
2013.
Schoone-Jongen, Terence G. (2008).
Shakespeare's Companies . Farnham,
Surrey: Ashgate Publishing. pp. 21–8.
ISBN 9781409475132. Retrieved
24 August 2013.
Scott-Warren, Jason (2004). "Harvey,
Gabriel (1552/3–1631)". Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (online
ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12517 .
(Subscription or UK public library
membership required.) The first edition of
this text is available at
Wikisource: "Harvey, Gabriel"  .
Dictionary of National Biography.
London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
Baskervill, Charles Read, ed. Elizabethan
and Stuart Plays. New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 1934.
Crupi, Charles. Robert Greene (1986)
ISBN 0-8057-6905-6
Dickenson, Thomas H. "Introduction"
from The Complete Plays of Robert
Greene (New Mermaid Edition, 1907)
Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World
(2005)
Melnikoff, Kirk, ed.. "Robert Greene"
(Ashgate, 2011)
Melnikoff, Kirk and Edward Gieskes, eds.
"Writing Robert Greene: Essays on
England's First Notorious Professional
Writer" (Ashgate, 2008)
Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith,
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 Survey and Bibliography of Recent
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Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska
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External links

Wikisource has original works written

by or about:
Robert Greene

Wikiquote has quotations related to:

Robert Greene (dramatist)
Wikisource has the text of the 1911
Encyclopædia Britannica article
Greene, Robert.

Works by Robert Greene at Project

Gutenberg
Works by or about Robert Greene at
Internet Archive
The Dramatic Works of Robert Greene
(1831), vol. 1 Dyce, ed., at Internet
Archive.
The Dramatic Works of Robert Greene
(1831), vol. 2 Dyce, ed., at Google
Books.
The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene
(1905) vol. 1 Churton Collins ed., at the
Internet Archives.
The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene
(1905) vol. 2 Churton Collins ed., at the
Internet Archives.
The Honorable History of Friar Bacon and
Friar Bungay 1594 text facsimile at the
Internet Archives.
The History of Orlando Furioso Malone
Society Reprint, 1907, at Internet
Archive.
The Comical History of Alphonsus, King
of Aragon at Elizabethan Drama.
 Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit e-text at
Ex-Classics (modern spelling).
Pandosto online.
Hayashi, Tetsumaro, A Textual Study of
Robert Greene's Orlando Furioso with an
Elizabethan Text , 1973
The Pamphleteers by James A. Oliver
ISBN 978-0-9551834-4-7 (PBK) &
ISBN 978-0-9551834-5-4 (HBK)
"Archival material relating to Robert
Greene" . UK National Archives.

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