reuiue Poetry . . . as, for example, Mathew Roydon, Thomas Atchelow, and George Peele; the first of whom, as he hath shewed himselfe singular in the immortall Epitaph of his beloued Astrophell, besides many other most absolute Comike inuentions (made more publike by euery mans praise, than they can be by my speech), so the second hath more than once or twice manifested his deepe witted schollership in places of credite: and for the last, though not the least of them all, I dare commend him to all that know him, as the chiefe supporter of pleasance now liuing, the Atlas of Poetrie, and primus verborum Artifex: whose first increase, the arraignement of Paris, might pleade to your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold varietie of inuention; where in (me iudice) he goeth a steppe beyond all that write. Sundry other sweete gentlemen I know, that haue vaunted their pennes in priuate deuices, and tricked vp a company of taffata fooles with their feathers, whose beauty if our Poets had not peecte with the supply of their periwigs, they might haue antickt it vntill this time vp and downe the Countrey with the King of Fairies, and dined euery day at the pease porredge ordinary with Delphrigus. But Tolossa hath forgot that it was sometime sacked, and beggars that euer they carried their fardels on footback: and in truth no meruaile, when as the deserued reputation of one Roscius is of force to enrich a rabble of counterfets; yet let subiects for all their insolence dedicate a De profundis euery morning to the preseruation of their Caesar, least their increasing indignities returne them ere long to their iugling to mediocrity, and they bewaile in weeping blankes the wane of their Monarchie.'
xliii. 1590. Robert Greene.
[From Francescos Fortunes: Or, The second part of Greenes Neuer too
Late (1590), reprinted in Works, viii. 111. For the Roscius story, cf.
No. xii and ch. xi.]
P. 129. A palmer, telling the tale of Francesco, which contains
some probably autobiographical matter on the hero's writing for the
stage (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Greene), is interrupted by a request for his
'iudgement of Playes, Playmakers and Players'. After observing
that 'some for being too lauish against that facultie, haue for their
satiricall inuectiues been well canuased', he sketches the growth of
comedy at Athens and Rome, where 'couetousnesse crept into the
qualitie' and 'the Actors, by continuall vse grewe not onely excellent,
but rich and insolent'. This is illustrated (p. 132) by a rebuke of
Cicero to Roscius, 'Why Roscius, art thou proud with Esops Crow,
being pranct with the glorie 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:
what sentence thou vtterest on the stage, flowes from the censure of
our wittes, and what sentence or conceipte of the inuention the people
applaud for excellent, that comes from the secrets of our knowledge.
I graunt your action, though it be a kind of mechanical labour; yet
wel done tis worthie of praise: but you worthlesse, if for so small
