“Let us, however, examine some of these allusions to Shakspere, real or supposed,” says the critic. {138a} He begins with the hackneyed words of the dying man of letters, Robert Greene, in _A Groatsworth of Wit_ (1592). The pamphlet is addressed to Gentlemen of his acquaintance “that spend their wits in making plays”; he “wisheth them a better exercise,” and better fortunes than his own. (Marlowe is supposed to be one of the three Gentlemen playwrights, but such suppositions do not here concern us.) Greene’s is the ancient feud between the players and the authors, between capital and labour. The players are the capitalists, and buy the plays out and out,—cheap. The author has no royalties; and no control over the future of his work, which a Shakspere or a Bacon, a Jonson or a Chettle, or any handyman of the company owning the play, may alter as he pleases. It is highly probable that the actors also acquired most of the popular renown, for, even now, playgoers have much to say about the players in a piece, while they seldom know the name of the playwright. Women fall in love with the actors, not with the authors; but with “those puppets,” as Greene says, “that speake from our mouths, these anticks, garnished in our colours.” Ben Jonson, we shall see, makes some of the same complaints,—most natural in the circumstances: though he managed to retain the control of his dramas; how, I do not know. Greene adds that in his misfortunes, illness, and poverty, he is ungratefully “forsaken,” by the players, and warns his friends that such may be _their_ lot; advising them to seek “some better exercise.” He then writes—and his meaning cannot easily be misunderstood, I think, but misunderstood it has been—“Yes, trust them not” (trust not the players), “FOR there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his _Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide_” (“Player’s” in place of “woman’s,” in an old play, _The Tragedy of Richard_, _Duke of York_, &c.), “supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute _Johannes Factotum_, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.” The meaning is pellucid. “Do not trust the players, my fellow playwrights, for the reasons already given, for they, in addition to their glory gained by mouthing _our_ words, and their ingratitude, may now forsake you for one of themselves, a player, who thinks his blank verse as good as the best of yours” (including Marlowe’s, probably). “The man is ready at their call” (“an absolute _Johannes Factotum_”). “In his own conceit” he is “the only Shake-scene in a country.” “Seek you better masters,” than these players, who have now an author among themselves, “the only Shake-scene,” where the pun on Shakespeare does not look like a fortuitous coincidence. But it may be, anything may happen.