have" an author, and to the playwrights a dangerous rival, in their
own fellowship. Thus we know with absolute certainty why Greene
wrote as he did. He says nothing about the superior financial gains
of the players, which Mr. Greenwood suspects to have been the "only"
cause of his bitterness. Greene gives its causes in the plainest
possible terms, as did Ben Jonson later, in his verses "Poet-Ape"
(Playwright-Actor). Moreover, Mr. Greenwood gives Greene's obvious
motives on the very page where he says that we do not know them.

Even Mr. Greenwood, {141b} anxious as he is to prove Shake-scene to
be attacked as an actor, admits that the words "supposes himself as
well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you," "do seem
to have that implication," {141c} namely, that "Shake-scene" is a
dramatic author: what else can the words mean; why, if not for the
Stage, should Shake-scene write blank verse?

Finally Mr. Greenwood, after saying "it is clear that it is as an
actor rather than as an author that 'Shake-scene' is attacked,"
{142a} concedes {142b} that it "certainly looks as if he" (Greene)
"meant to suggest that this Shake-scene supposed himself able to
compose, as well as to mouth verses." Nothing else can possibly be
meant. "The rest of you" were authors, not actors.

If not, why, in a whole company of actors, should "Shake-scene" alone
be selected for a special victim? Shake-scene is chosen out because,
as an author, a factotum always ready at need, he is more apt than
the professed playwrights to be employed as author by his company:
this is a new reason for not trusting the players.

I am not going to take the trouble to argue as to whether, in the