I do more than
demur, I defy any man to exhibit that sense in Greene's words.
"The utmost that we should be entitled to say," is, in my opinion,
what we have no shadow of a title to say. Look at the poor
hackneyed, tortured words of Greene again. "Yes, trust them not; for
there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his
TYGER'S HEART WRAPPED IN A PLAYER'S HIDE, 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."
How can mortal man squeeze from these words the charge that "Player
Shakspere" is "putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps
some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another"?
It is as an actor, with other actors, that the player is "beautified
with OUR feathers,"--not with the feathers of some one NOT ourselves,
Bacon or Mr. Greenwood's Unknown. Mr. Greenwood even says that
Shake-scene is referred to "as beautified with the feathers WHICH HE
HAS STOLEN from the dramatic writers" ("our feathers").
Greene says absolutely nothing about feathers "WHICH HE HAS STOLEN."
The "feathers," the words of the plays, were bought, not stolen, by
the actors, "anticks garnished in our colours."
Tedious it is to write many words about words so few and simple as
those of Greene; meaning "do not trust the players, for one of them
writes blank verse which he thinks as good as the best of yours, and
fancies himself the only Shake-scene in a country.
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