Shakespeare

The charge throws a suggestive light on a little fable that Greene included in his pamphlet, which immediately succeeded the assault upon “Shake-scene” and concerned the ant and the grasshopper. Greene compared himself to the grasshopper, and we are left to wonder who the ant might be. The ant was prudent and thrifty, taking up “what winters prouision was scattered in the way” where the grasshopper was unthrifty and careless. When winter came the grasshopper, quite without provisions, begged help from the comfortably ensconced ant. But the ant scorned his requests for aid, and blamed the grasshopper for his lack of effort and refusal to work. The grasshopper characterised the ant in these terms:

The greedy miser thirsteth still for gaine,

His thrift is theft, his weale works others woe …

The charge is again that of theft or plagiarism, but the ant is also condemned as a “greedy miser.” There is also an indirect allusion to “an Vsurer.” In a later period of his life, as we shall see, Shakespeare hoarded essential provisions at time of dearth; he also acted as a money-lender or money-broker on certain occasions and he possessed a healthy respect for money, as his own commercial speculations will prove. So Greene’s attack, over-heated and exaggerated as it is, might well have been recognised as a further assault upon Shakespeare’s character. In this account he is thrifty to the point of miserliness, hard-working and inclined to scorn those who are not. “Toyling labour,” the ant states, “hates an idle guest.” It is a plausible description of the young man on the rise in London. It is certainly true that, in his drama, Shakespeare continually satirises indolence and self-indulgence.

There is another anecdote in the same pamphlet when Greene, under the pseudonym of Roberto, is approached by a player of rich and fashionable appearance. He confesses to being once a “country Author” but, as Greene says, “I tooke you rather for a Gentleman of great liuing, for if by outward habit men should be censured, I tell you, you would be taken for a substantiall man.” The newly elevated actor agrees, and confesses that “my very share in playing apparel will not be sold for two hundred pounds.”“Truly,” Greene replies, “’tis straunge that you should so prosper in that vayne practise, for that it seems to me your voice is nothing gratious.” By “gratious” is here meant courtly or refined. So perhaps he was a quondam “country Author” still with a country accent. The passage may or may not refer to Shakespeare, becoming affluent and successful, but it is at least an indication of how actors were deemed to prosper in London.

There is some dispute whether Greene actually wrote this death-bed “repentance,” or whether it was passed off under his name. It may have been written by Nashe, Greene’s colleague, or perhaps by Henry Chettle. Chettle was a printer and minor dramatist who supervised the publication of Greene’s pamphlet. He was also an occasional poet and “dresser” or reviser of other men’s plays who inhabited the purlieus of sixteenth-century London literary society; if there had been a Grub Street, he would have been a part of it. Shakespeare was offended by Greene’s portrait of him, as well he might be, and he remonstrated with Chettle, who then wrote an apology, in a pamphlet published at the end of 1592, in which he stated that “I am as sory, as if the originall fault had been my fault.” Of Shakespeare he writes that “my self haue seene his demeanor no lesse ciuil than he excellent in the qualitie he professes: Beside, divers of worship haue reported his vprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his fa[ce]tious grace in writing, which approues his Art.” In describing Shakespeare’s “facetious” gift he was not employing the adjective in its modern sense; it was instead the compliment that Cicero had applied to Plautus’s sprightly and fluent wit. Shakespeare’s professed “qualitie” was that of actor, but the “divers of worship” who supported him are not known. It confirms, at least, that he was already recognised and admired by certain eminent people. He was also himself influential enough, at this date, to elicit an apology from Chettle.

We are now entering a period when Shakespeare’s plays can be securely placed if not precisely dated. And we find what we would expect to find – that he is already a superlative writer of comedies and of histories, of farce and of tragical matter. He was indeed the “Johannes factotum,” the “jack-of-all-trades,” of Greene’s description. The Shakespearian authorship of only one play is debated, Edward the Third, but the others are universally recognised as part of Shakespeare’s work. In the early 1590s we may notice in particular The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors and Richard III.