"
But "Greene here accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his
own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was
really indebted to another," this is "the utmost we should be
entitled to say," even if the allusion be to Shakspere. How does Mr.
Greenwood get the Anti-Willian hypothesis out of Greene's few and
plain words?
It is much safer for him to say that "Shake-scene" is not meant for
Shakespeare. Nobody can prove that it IS; the pun MAY be a strange
coincidence,--or any one may say that he thinks it nothing more; if
he pleases.
Greene nowhere "refers to this Shake-scene as being an impostor, an
upstart crow beautified with the feathers WHICH HE HAS STOLEN FROM
THE DRAMATIC WRITERS ("our feathers")" {145a}--that is, Greene makes
no such reference to Shake-scene in his capacity of writer of blank
verse. Like all players, who are all "anticks garnisht in our
colours," Shake-scene, AS PLAYER, is "beautified with our feathers."
It is Mr. Greenwood who adds "beautified with the feathers which he
has STOLEN from the dramatic writers." Greene does not even remotely
hint at plagiarism on the part of Shake-scene: and the feathers, the
plays of Greene and his friends, were not stolen but bought. We must
take Greene's evidence as we find it,--it proves that by "Shake-
scene" he means a "poet-ape," a playwright-actor; for Greene, like
Jonson, speaks of actors as "apes.
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