February 28, 2015 — Stratfordian professors have long claimed that a passage in Robert Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance (1592) is a reference to William Shakspere, the man from Stratford. In Groatsworth, Greene warns other playwrights against
an upstart crow, beautified with our [playwrights’] feathers, that with his Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac-totum is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
Stratfordian Stanley Wells believes this to be the first printed reference to the man from Stratford.
In “Henry Chettle’s Apology Revisited,” however, Robert Detobel argues that the “upstart crow” is more likely a reference to Edward Alleyn (pictured left), one of the leading actors of the day. Alleyn is known to have inserted lines of his own composition into one of Robert Greene’s plays. If Detobel is correct, then a prime piece of evidence crumbles in the case for the Stratford man as author of Shakespeare’s plays.
Detobel’s article was originally published in Shakespeare Matters, v. 12, no. 3, p. 14 (Summer 2013). You may download here the original PDF version. This article published on the SOF website Feb. 28, 2015, updated 2021.
