Dear Me,

   Welp, here we go again!!   Fun Fun!

M.

Shakespeare: A Biography

by

Peter Ackroyd

Part Three

Chapter 28:  I See Sir, You Are Eaten Up with Passion

Robert Greene was one of the university wits who like many of his Oxbridge contemporaries  was obliged to earn his living by hack work.  His plays, such as The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and The History of Orlando Furioso, were considered "box office smashes" at the Rose theatre.  His pamphlets are still considered to be unrivalled accounts of sixteenth century London. However, he was extremely sensitive to slights and incredibly envious of his talented contemporaries.

He first attacked Shakespeare overtly in 1592 and in 1587 Greene condemned those "scabd Iades" who among other things "write or publish anie thing...is distild out of ballets."  The arguments still continues whether Titus Andronicus is derived from a ballad.  In the following year Greene's companion and fellow wit, Thomas Nash, continued the assault with an attack upon writers who "seek slanderous reproaches to carp at all, being often times most unlearned of all".  Kyd and Shakespeare were the only "unlearned" playwrights who had achieved success upon the public stage by this time.

In 1590, Green attacked Shakespeare again when he wrote Never Too Late.    He abuses an actor whom he names Roscius. "Why Roscius, art thou proud of Esops crow, being pranct with the glorie of others feathers?  Of thy self thou canst say nothing..."

If the intended target was Shakespeare, then we have evidence that he had a distinctive presence in the London theatrical world by the late 1580s.

This means that he had begun writing for the stage very soon after his first arrival in London.  The fact that he is also named "Roscius"  suggests that he had already won some acclaim for his skills as an actor.