The Authorship of "King Henry VI." 191 



excellence (act your old plays), and never more acquaint them with 

 your admired inventions (refrain for the future from writing for the 

 stage). " I know," Greene continues, " the best husband of you 

 all will neuer proue an Vsurer, and the kindest of them all wil neuer 

 prooue a kinde nurse ; yet, whilst you may seeke you better Maisters ; 

 for it is pittie men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures 

 of such rude groomes." 



Considerable injustice has been done to Greene in the prevaihng 

 interpretation of this passage. ^ A certain malice appears, to be 

 sure, in the address to ^larlowe, and there is open hostility in the 

 allusion to Shakespeare — hostihty directed in the latter instance 

 rather against the actor than the poet. In general, however, 

 Greene's letter, instead of voicing petty literary spite and unfounded 

 charges of plagiarism, expresses a manly denunciation of one of the 

 crudest injustices of Elizabethan life : the heart-breaking and 

 pauperizing subservience of the dramatic poets to the managers of 

 theatrical companies. The genuineness of the grievance against 

 which the dying Greene inveighs is illustrated not only by the cases 

 cited by the writer — that of Peele and of Greene himself — but even 

 more pathetically in the detailed sketch which Henslowe's Diary 

 gives of the straitened lives of that penurious manager's emploj^es, 

 Chettle and Dekker. 



Greene's letter bears upon the True Tragedy, and inferentially 

 upon the Contention, only in so far as it suggests that Shakespeare's 

 revision of these pieces had already been completed at the time 

 of Greene's death (September, 1592), and in so far as it seems to in- 

 dicate more remotely that the original author was Marlowe. No 

 hint whatever of Peele's connexion with the plays occurs and Greene's 

 connexion appears to be positively disclaimed by the wording of 

 the passage. No accusation of plagiarism is brought against Shake- 

 speare. Such a charge would, indeed, have been absurd in view 



^ Apparently Malone in his Dissertation on King Henry VI (Boswell's 

 Malone, vol. xviii, p. 570 ff.) first concluded from the Groatswortk of Wit 

 that Shakespeare had plagiarized from Greene and Peele. Tyrwhitt (of. 

 Boswell's Malone, same volume, p. 551 f.) had previously called attention to 

 the passage in question, but only as proving that Shakespeare was author of 

 the Henry VI plays and that " they had, at the time of their appearance, a 

 sufficient degree of excellence to alarm the jealousy of the older playwrights." 

 The interpretation which I have attempted to give I find to be partially 

 anticipated in a brief note by Richard Simpson {The Acadetny, Apr. 4, 1874) 

 and in Ingleby's correction of Simpson's view. p. xi of General Introduction 

 to Shakspere Allusion- Books, Part I (1874). 



