If Greene's
friends, at the moment when he wrote, were, or if any one of them
then was, by profession an actor, Greene's warning to him against
actors, directed to an actor, is not, to me, intelligible. But Mr.
Greenwood writes, "As I have shown, George Peele was one of the
playwrights addressed by Greene, and Peele was a successful player as
well as playwright, and might quite truly have been alluded to both
as having 'facetious grace in writing,' and being 'excellent in the
quality he professed,' that is, as a professional actor." {304a}
I confess that I did not know that George Peele, M.A., of Oxford, had
ever been a player, and a successful player. But one may ask,--in
1592 did George Peele "profess the quality" of an actor; was he then
a professional actor, and only an occasional playwright? If so, I am
not apt to believe that Greene seriously advised him not to put faith
in the members of his own profession. From them, as a successful
member of their profession (a profession which, as Greene complains,
"exploited" dramatic authors), Peele stood in no danger. Thus I do
not see how Chettle's professional actor, reported to have facetious
grace in writing, can be identified with Peele. The identification
seems to me impossible. Peele and Marlowe, in 1592, were literary
gentlemen; Lodge, in 1592, was filibustering, though a literary man;
he had not yet become a physician.
Pages:
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270