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On the 3rd of September, 1592, Greene came to his miserable end, having sent to the press from his deathbed those two remarkable pamphlets, the "Groatsworth of Wit" and the "Repentance." For two years past, if we may believe Nash, the profligate atheism of the elder poet had estranged his friend, or at all events had kept him at a distance.
Winstanley imputes likewise to him the following pieces. Tully's Loves; Philomela, the Lady Fitzwater's Nightingale; Green's News too Late, first and second part; Green's Arcadia; Green's Farewel to Folly; Green's Groatsworth of Wit.
Now when he hears some one express desire for a copy of Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, or any other rare book of Elizabeth's time, the Bishop's thoughts fly toward the setting sun. Then he smiles a notable kind of smile, and says, 'If I could get away I'd run out to Montana and try to pick up a copy for you. There is a certain gentleman who loves the literature of Queen Anne's reign.
His look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though maligned. He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory. He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl I left behind me.
Yet Ben's words mean nothing if not that an actor is the author of works which Ben accuses of plagiarism. Mr. Greenwood put the same interpretation on Greene's words about "Shakescene," and we showed that the interpretation was impossible. Greenwood tries to find the Anti-Willian hypothesis in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit and in Ben's epigram. It is in neither.
By 1592, when Greene wrote his Groatsworth, "Shakescene" thinks he can bombast out a blank verse with the best; he is an actor, he is also an author, or a furbisher of older plays, and, as a member of the company, is a rival to be dreaded by Greene's three author friends: whoever they were, they were professional University playwrights; the critics think that Marlowe, so near his death, was one of them.
Malone, Dyce, Steevens, Collier, Halliwell-Phillipps, Knight, Sir Sidney Lee, Messrs. Gosse and Garnett, and Mr. J. C. Collins say that he is Will Shakspere. But Mr. Fleay and Mr. For Chettle says that in the Groatsworth of Wit "a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken." The mysterious one is, therefore, one of the playwrights addressed by Greene.
The man who had a special profession, and also wrote, was not one of these three; nor was he Tom Nash, a mere literary gentleman, pamphleteer and playwright. I do not know the name of any one of the three to whom Greene addressed the Groatsworth, though the atheistic writer of tragedies seems meant, and disgracefully meant, for Marlowe.
You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris; boul' Mich', I used to.
I should like to think, too, that Spenser called him "our pleasant Willy." But wise folk tell us that these words were not spoken of Shakespeare but of some one else whose name was not William at all. *Robert Greene, A groatsworth of Wit bought with a million of repentance. John Aubrey. *Ben Jonson.
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