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