Abstract
Every biography of Shakespeare quotes Greene’s1 death-bed attack upon ‘an absolute Iohannes fac totum’ who ‘is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey’, the earliest surviving indication that the young man from Stratford had now (September 1592) won a place for himself in the literary world of London: yet no biographer appears to have noticed that Greene had more to say about his rival in the same pamphlet. This is because, writing his autobiography in a curiously oblique way, Greene teases the reader by sliding from romance to private reminiscence to fable, from third to first person and back to third. Once his circling technique is understood, however, it becomes difficult to resist the conclusion that he proceeded from the only Shake-scene in a country to the fable of the grasshopper and the ant in order to pillory Shakespeare as the ant — a ‘waspish little worme’.
Keywords
Personal Attack Good Nature External Evidence Small Hope True NobilityPreview
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Notes and References
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