Robert Greene’s charge against “upstart crow” stands unshaken. Henry Chettle, the hack writer, and self admitted transcriber of the letter, does not retract Greene’s statement. He denies nothing on behalf of an “upstart crow” (Kemp); for the author of “Kind Hearts Dreams” does not identify “Shake-scene” (dance-scene) with Shakspere, or Shakespeare, who was not one of those who took offense. It is expressly stated that there were two of the three fellow dramatists, addressed by Greene (Marlowe, Nash and Peele). Still we are told by Shakespearean writers that the dying genius was pained at witnessing the proficiency of another in the very activity (play-making), which he had come to regard as congruous with strolling vagabondism. He enjoined his friends to seek better masters “for it is a pittie men of such rare wit should be subject to the pleasure of such rude groomes, painted monsters, apes, burrs, peasants, puppets,” not play-makers, but actors, who had been beholden to him and his fellow craftsmen whom he addressed. There is another aspect in which the charge of professional jealousy presents itself to the mind of the reader; those who covet that which another possesses, or envies success, popularity or fortune. To charge Greene with envy is most uncharitable by reason of his versatility. Now what was there in the possession of William Shakspere in 1592 that could have awakened in the mind of Robert Greene so base a passion as envy. The name Shakspere had no commercial value in 1592, for Shakspere of the stage is described many years after this date as merely a “man player” and “a deserving man.” Note this admission by Dr. Ingleby: “Assuredly no one during the century had any suspicion that the genius of Shakespeare was unique.” “His immediate contemporaries expressed no great admiration for either him, or his works.” There is not a particle of evidence to show that Robert Greene was envious of any writer of his time; nor had he cause to be; but the way his contemporaries and successors robbed and plundered him proves the reverse to be true. “Nay, more, the men that so eclipst his fame, Purloynde his plumes; can they deny the same?” The fact is, Shakspere passed through and out of life without having attained the distinction, or celebrity, won by Greene in his brief literary career of but nine short years. The more truthful of Shakspere’s biographers concede that the subject of their memoirs was not, in his day, highly regarded, and that his obscurity in 1592 is obvious. There was not the least danger of the author of “Hamlet” “driving to penury” the dean of English novelists, Robert Greene, who was supreme in prose romance, a species of literature, which appealed to the better class of the reading public. Rival-hating envy! Robert Greene cannot be brought within the scope of such a charge, for in 1592, he was not striving to obtain the same object which play writers were pursuing.