In 1592, a posthumous memoir was published that included a thinly-disguised attack on Shakespeare, characterizing him as an “upstart crow” and poetical pretender. Which late rival playwright was the author of the book?
A) Christopher Marlowe B) Robert Greene ü C) Thomas Nashe D) Thomas Kyd
The broadside against Shakespeare appeared in a pamphlet entitled A Groats-worth of Witte, Bought with a Million of Repentance, written while its author was already not far from death. Greene was a talented writer who lived the kind of dissolute life for which his close friend Marlowe and other Elizabethans like George Peele were also notorious. Several years older than Shakespeare, Greene died in poverty in his early thirties. It has been suggested that his animosity towards Shakespeare (“in his own conceit the only Shakescene in the country”) was rooted in a dispute over money.
