Review : Greene's Groatsworth of Witte (Bought With a Million of Repentance) , by (pen-name) 'Robert Greene' (later a.k.a. 'William Shakespeare') edited by D. Allen Carroll, 1994, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, Binghamton, N.Y. | 166 pp., Preface, Introduction, Text, Textual Notes, Appendices A - H, index.

Suffice it to say that this is a work from the same brilliant mind which gave us what we foolishly persist in referring to as the works of "William Shakespeare."

"Robert Greene" is another pen-name of Edward de Vere (1), 17th Earl of Oxford. This work of his is brilliant, naturally. It's hilarious, naturally. It's full of insight, naturally.

It should never have come as a great surprise that, in Elizabethan England, an ingenious playwright should invent not only characters and scenarios for the theatre but also invent numerous pen-name personalities as a mask for his own identity; and this is especially so if, as was the case with Edward Oxford, such a literary genius was a member of the nobility. Such a genius could not both write and publish under his own real name during his lifetime and at the same time maintain his dignity in peer social-relations. Oxford's writing and his involvement with theatre as a benefactor and playwright took a toll on his reputation even as it was. But somehow this important aspect is hard for orthodox professors in Shakespeare studies to grasp.

Almost as funny as "Greene's" Witte is the spectacle of very serious adult men and women seriously analyzing the inner-workings of "Greene" 's mind, as though he were not a fictive pen-name invention. They wonder: did he write this? Did he write some of it? Which parts? Who else had a hand? How about Chettle? Maybe it was his work. What do the stylometrics tell us? How do we love thee? Let us count the (number of) words (which do or do not correspond to prior writings' trends).

Hilarious.

"Greene" was "Shakespeare" before there was a "Shakespeare", that iohannes fac totum, believing himself able to bombast out a blank verse as well as any and, in his own conceit, the "onely Shake-scene in a countrey."

Read the book. And remember, its author wrote pamphlets about "Cony-catching." So try not to get caught as a conie by the Evil Conny-catchers while you're at it.

"Fox made a Friday face" ...

;^) This is wonderful stuff. This is "Shake-speare"-- that is, it's de Vere, Edward Oxford and it's to be read.

From Appendix A:

"But here I meete with an Exit: the Prologue's ended, and I must off: Now Reader, (for I will not call thee gentle till I know whether thou wilt bite or no) behold a drie and withered shaddow, (which once was Greene) appeare in his native colour; new dipt, and a fresh glosse set on him; ready to enter upon the Stage of triall, to answer upon's Cu (cue), and speake his own part. -- Yours; if not, the care's taken, I.H. "
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Ponder that.

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Note
(1) See: Stephanie Hopkins Hughes' paper,
King of the Paper Stage (1997, The Oxfordian) (the link loads a .pdf file of the paper.) Hopkins Hughes is also the first Shakespeare scholar I know of who has argued that the use of pen-names by members of the nobility was a common practice, something extending well beyond the single case of Edward Oxford. She has presented a fascinating argument for the more frequent use by nobles of a mask to cover their own identities as published writers. It makes wonderful plain sense when one thinks about it. But, somehow, no one did until she pointed it out.

Hopkins Hughes is editor of the the web-log, PoliticWorm, and has researched topics in the history of the author of Shakespeare's works since the 1980s . ( )