genius that of Greene and his fellows was to fade as a rush-*light before the sun.[1] The actors had something on their side to complain of, with Greene no less than with Daborne. In a remorseful moment he tells us of the 'arch-plaimaking poet' Roberto, how 'what euer he fingered aforehand was the certaine meanes to vnbinde a bargaine'; and a detractor accuses him of selling the same play to two companies, and defending himself by maintaining that no faith was to be kept with players.[2] During the seventeenth century, it is*
- ↑ The Aesopic allusion is complicated by another to the story in
Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii. 4, 30, perhaps based on Martial, xiv. 73, of the
cobbler who tried to teach a crow to say 'Ave Caesar' in flattery of
Augustus after the battle of Actium; cf. Mr. McKerrow's note to Nashe's
Pierce Penilesse (Works, iv. 105). Both ideas are suggested in Nashe's
Menaphon preface, and Greene, in Francescos Fortunes (App. C, No. xliii),
combines them with a third story, also due, perhaps through Cornelius
Agrippa (App. C, No. xii), to Macrobius (Sat. III. xiv. 12), of a debate
on the respective powers of orator and actor between Cicero and Roscius,
into an obviously apocryphal jest: 'Cicero. Why Roscius, art thou proud
with Esops Crow, being pranct with the glory of others feathers? Of thy
selfe thou canst say nothing, and if the Cobler hath taught thee to say
Aue Caesar, disdain not thy tutor, because thou pratest in a kings chamber.'
Fleay, i. 258, chooses to identify the cobbler with Marlowe and Roscius
with Robert Wilson, and (being ignorant of Macrobius) cites the use of
the phrase 'Ave Caesar' in Edward III, I. i. 164, which he ascribes to
Marlowe, as evidence. Such equations are always hazardous. The point
of the passage is in the indebtedness of the players as a body to the poets
as a body. If any individual actor were designated as Roscius about
1590, it would be more likely to be Alleyn than another; the compliment
to him is not unusual later (cf. ch. xv). But he had hardly a monopoly
of the name; and in the present case there is really no reason to suppose
that Greene had any individual in mind, other than the historical Roscius.
The name is given to Ostler (q.v.) in 1611, and was in common generic
use for a player; cf. e.g. Marston, Satires (1598), ii. 42:
That fair-framed piece of sweetest poesy,
Which Muto put between his mistress' paps . . .
Was penned by Roscio the tragedian;and Scourge of Villainy (1598), xi. 40:
Say who acts best? Drusus or Roscio?
Similarly Fleay, ii. 279, has no real ground for supposing that the player in the Groatsworth of Wit is Wilson in particular. If, again, any individual is meant, it might just as well be James Burbage. Throughout Fleay is inclined to exaggerate the extent of the theatrical references in the pamphlets of Greene and Nashe. But R. Simpson is much worse in his hopelessly uncritical Introduction to Faire Em in The School of Shakspere, ii. 339, which is an attempt to trace a vendetta against the actors and especially Shakespeare as a main motive in Greene's writing from 1584 onwards. As far as I can see, Greene's attacks on the stage are limited to the three pamphlets named in the text, and Nashe's to the Menaphon preface. It is doubtful whether Greene was writing for the stage at all before about 1590; in any case it may be assumed that neither writer was normally engaged in tilting against his paymasters.
- ↑ Cuthbert Conny-Catcher, The Defence of Conny-Catching (1592, Greene, Works, xi. 75), 'What if I should prove you a Conny-Catcher, Maister
