With the authorship of 'Groats-worth of Witte'
established is Robert Greene's,
let's return to the 'upstart Crow beautified with our feathers'.
The fable of the Crow in Borrowed Feathers was well known to Elizabethans,
who believed it to be by Aesop and associated it with plagiarism,
putting one's name on something that is not your own work.
Greene had referred to it in this context in an earlier pamphlet, 'Mirror of Modesty'.
'Your honor may think I play like Aesop's Crow,
which decked hisself with others' feathers, or like the proud
poet Batillus which subscribed his name to Virgil's verses,
and yet presented them to Augustus.'
Here we see Batillus again,
as someone whose name is on the poetry he didn't write and he
is linked to the Crow beautified with the feathers of others.
Given the Shakespeare apocrypha,
it's easy to see how this might be applied to Shakspere,
especially since Greene's accusation is against an actor,
one of those 'puppets',
as he calls them, that gain glory from speaking words that originated in writers' mouths.
But there is another candidate for an actor of
Greene's acquaintance who believed like a Johannes factotum -
a jack of all trades -
that he could bang out a play or two himself.
That candidate is Edward Alleyn,
one of the most famous actors of the Elizabethan era.
From April to June in the year 'Groats-worth' was written, as Greene was falling ill,
Lord Strange's Men - for whom Greene had recently been writing -
were playing a two-part play called 'Tambercam'.
Though the text hasn't survived,
there are reasons to think this was a rip-off of
Christopher Marlowe's hugely successful play 'Tamburlaine',
whose title role Edward Alleyn had made his own when it was
staged by the Lord Admiral's Men some three and a half years earlier.
It is thought to have been about another ruthless Asian warlord, Ghengis Khan.
Its style was similar too.
Ben Jonson lumped both plays together when he
complained about 'the Tamurlames and Tamerchams of
the late age, which had nothing in them but
the scenical strutting and furious vociferations to warrant them.''
A decade after Groats-worth was published,
Edward Alleyn sold Tambercam to his father-in-law Philip Henslowe.
Henslowe notes he paid 'forty shillings onto my son E.
Alleyn at the appointment of the company for his book of Tambercam.'
The possessive pronoun 'his' is important here.
In every other instance where Henslowe uses the possessive pronoun in his account book,
scholars accept that he is paying a playwright for their own creation.
It seems likely then that Tambercam was Edward Alleyn's attempt to create for
himself from his own pen another role as powerful as Tamburlaine.
Christopher Marlowe, whom Greene calls 'thou famous gracer of tragedians',
is addressed first in
the upstart Crow letter and at greater length than the other two playwrights.
If Greene's target was Edward Alleyn and the recently performed
Tambercam was his self-penned imitation of Tamburlaine,
that would explain why Greene addressed Marlowe first and foremost to warn him against
the actor who 'supposes he is as well
able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you'.
Marlowe has been widely acknowledged as the best playwright of this era,
a master of blank verse.
He was certainly the best when set against
the other two playwrights Greene addressed in
the letter, thought to be George Peele and Thomas Nash.
Tambercam also provides a context for Greene's plea,
'Let those apes imitate your past excellence and
nevermore acquaint them with your admired inventions.'
We know that Greene and all three of the people he is addressing wrote plays for Alleyn.
It is accepted, for example, that Alleyn played the lead role in Greene's Orlando Furioso.
A large portion of Orlando Furioso is among the papers at Dulwich College with additions,
perhaps early attempts at shaping his own part, in Alleyn's hand.
In the main text of Groats-worth,
Greene describes the life of 'Roberto'
whose experience, says Greene, 'has most parts agreeing with mine',
inviting it to be read as a thinly veiled autobiography.
Greene describes how Roberto met
a successful actor who offered him employment
writing plays with the promise he would be well paid.
The player is a wealthy man and Roberto was surprised to discover his profession.
'I took you rather for a gentleman of great living,
for if by outward habit men should be censured,
I tell you, you would be taken for a substantial man.'
The player confirms his wealth and his shareholder status,
saying that his share in playing apparel will not be sold for
two hundred pounds and that he's rich enough to build a windmill.
Edward Alleyn's windmill stood on Dulwich common until 1814.
There is no record of Shakspere ever building a windmill.
It is clear that the player is not only a major shareholder
but also the leading actor of his troupe and he claims to be well known.
'I am as famous for Delphrigas and the King of
Fairies as ever was any of my time,' he says.
Edward Alleyn was a sharer in Worcester's Men from the age of 16,
and by the year Groats-worth was published when he was 25,
he had already become the manager of Lord Strange's Men.
The player is a strong fit for Alleyn.
He is a poor fit for William Shakspere who doesn't appear in the records as
a shareholder in any theatre company until after Greene's death
and was never, as far as we can tell,
cast in a leading role.
'Men of my profession get by scholars their whole living,'
Greene has the player say.
That actors depend upon writers for their living and are
beholden to them is a sentiment precisely echoed by Greene
in the attached letter just ahead of the Upstart Crow passage, where he complains of being
forsaken by the actors who have benefited from
his writing and in particular by the Upstart Crow.
Greene had written against Edward Alleyn before, two years earlier in
Francesco's Fortunes, in terms very similar to those used in Groats-worth.
'Why Roseus, art thou proud with
Aesop's Crow being pranked with the glory of others' feathers?'
Roseus was a famous Roman actor.
Scholars agree that Roseus,
in this passage, stands for Edward Alleyn.
Here, even though Greene associates Alleyn with Aesop's Crow,
the accusation is not one of plagiarism.
It is that Edward Alleyn is using words supplied to him
by the writers known as the University of Wits to gain glory,
fame and importantly wealth.
In Groats-worth, contrasting the playwrights with the Upstart Crow,
Greene implies that the Crow is a usurer -
one who lends at high interest -
who has failed to provide for him in his sickness.
'I know the best husband of you all will never prove a usurer and the kindest of them all'
- he means actors - 'will never prove a kind nurse.'
Actors are 'as changeable in mind as in many attires'.
And as a result 'Robert Greene, whom they have so often flattered,
perishes now for want of comfort.'
His chief concern in 'Groats-worth' is not plagiarism, but money.
This is obvious even from the title of the publication:
'A Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance'.
A groat was a small coin worth four pence.
That Greene might have expected Alleyn, his wealthy former employer, to come to
his aid when he was ill and without other means of income is not unreasonable.
A letter from actor Richard Jones to Edward Alleyn in February of the same year
reveals that Alleyn had provided financial assistance to Jones during a recent illness.
It opens with, 'Thanks for your great bounty
bestowed upon me in my sickness when I was in great want.'
A fair explanation of both Greene's bile
against the Upstart Crow and his sense of being forsaken
is that Greene, following Richard Jones's example, had asked
Edward Alleyn for money but, unlike Jones, had been turned down.
Ros BarberDr
