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.

The sense, I repeat, is pellucid. But Mr. Greenwood writes that if
Shake-scene be an allusion to Shakespeare "it seems clear that it is
as an actor rather than as an author he is attacked." {140a} As an
ACTOR the person alluded to is merely assailed with the other actors,
his "fellows." But he is picked out as presenting another and a new
reason why authors should distrust the players, "FOR there is" among
themselves, "in a player's hide," "an upstart crow"--who thinks his
blank verse as good as the best of theirs. He is, therefore,
necessarily a playwright, and being a factotum, can readily be
employed by the players to the prejudice of Greene's three friends,
who are professed playwrights.

Mr. Greenwood says that "we do not know why Greene should have been
so particularly bitter against the players, and why he should have
thought it necessary so seriously to warn his fellow playwrights
against them." {141a} But we cannot help knowing; for Greene has
told us. In addition to gaining renown solely through mouthing "OUR"
words, wearing "OUR feathers," they have been bitterly ungrateful to
Greene in his poverty and sickness; they will, in the same
circumstances, as cruelly forsake his friends; "yes, for they now