Shakespeare of Stratford/The Biographical Facts/Fact 6
VI. GREENE’S INDICTMENT OF SHAKESPEARE AS ‘JOHANNES FAC TOTUM’ OF THE THEATRE (1592).
Epilogue to Robert Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance (August–September, 1592).
To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities. . . .
Base minded men all three of you, if by my misery you be not warned: for unto none of you (like me) sought those burs to cleave, those puppets (I mean) that spake from our mouths, those antics garnished in our colors. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding: is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall (were ye in that case as I am now) be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. O that I might intreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let those apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions.
Note. Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit was written during the last illness of the author, who died September 3, 1592. The title-page of the edition of that year states that the book was ‘written before his death and published at his dying request.’ The actor-playwright attacked as ‘an upstart crow,’ ‘an absolute Johannes fac totum,’ and ‘the only Shake-scene’ is undoubtedly Shakespeare. The three acquaintances of Greene whom he exhorts to give up play-writing are pretty evidently Marlowe, Peele, and Nashe. The last two are addressed in friendly and flattering terms, but the address to Marlowe (who is called ‘famous gracer of tragedians,’ atheist, and student of ‘pestilent Machiavellian policy’) has a bitter tone.