Robert Greene and the Construction Shakespeare (Almost) Never Used.

In this Series:

·       Staring Intently into Robert Greene: Feminine Endings, etc.

·        Robert Greene and the Construction Shakespeare (Almost) Never Used.

·       Oxfraud, Robert Greene and Authorship S&M.

 

[This post was revised 7/3/24 to reflect that fact that one Daniel Cowan found as many as five uses of this construction in the works of Shakespeare apparently adopted by him to make iambic pentameter lines exactly scan.] 

Our first foray “staring intently into” the texts of Robert Greene has noted that his work utilized far fewer feminine endings than Shakespeare’s. A scholar that claims Edward de Vere wrote the works of Robert Greene as well as Shakespeare needs to explain why such is the case. And this is by no means all that requires explaining.

Greene’s first acknowledged play came well into his writing career (short as that career was). The Comicall Historie Of Alphonsvs King of Aragon is reliably dated to the year 1588. To that point he had been writing pamphlets and was well known for them.

We learn from the autobiographical portion of A Groats Worth of Wit that Roberto, having been thrown out of his brother’s house, was lamenting his fate when a well-dressed stranger appeared on  “the other side of the hedge” and engaged him in conversation. “I haue by chaunce heard you discourse some part of your greef,” the man says implying that he might be of assistance.

What is your profession, sayd Roberto? Truely sir said he, I am a player. A Player, quoth Roberto, I tooke you rather for a gentleman of great liuing, for if by outward habit men shuld be censured, I tell you, you would be taken for a substantiall man.[1]

Much impressed by the prosperous demeanor of his interlocutor, the destitute Roberto considers that he may have met with opportunity. It is perhaps the most essential skill of the freelance writer to recognize such meetings.

Roberto wastes no time getting to the point, asking “how meane you to use mee?”

Why sir, in making playes, said the other, for which you shall be well paied, if you will take the paines.[2]

Whoever the anonymous player may have been — if he was anything more himself than a creation — Greene was soon writing plays.

It seems that Alphonsus, for all of its faults, was well enough received that Greene was able to place other plays. And faults there were aplenty. In this first play he used the contractions “ere,”’nere” and “oft” in large quantities in order to get his iambic pentameter to scan. In all of his plays an unusually high percentage of his pentameter lines weigh in at exactly 10 syllables. Nearly all lines have masculine endings. Nearly all are end stopped. After Alphonsus he did increase the sophistication of his contractions and did use considerably fewer.

The opportunity to write a solo play, however, may have come to him only after agreeing to write others together with other aspiring playwrights. Among those plays may have been Titus Andronicus. In all of Greene’s work — poetry, prose and plays — we find a glaring tell.

As Richard Grant White first revealed in his “Essay on the Authorship of the Three Parts of King Henry The Sixth”:

The reader must have observed that in the passages from Greene's Looking Glass for London, &c., quoted on p. 417, and Alphonsus, quoted just above, the phrase ‘for to' occurs in this manner— "for to encounter," "for to begirt," "for to prevent," "for to deck," and so forth. He has probably, however, not noticed the important fact that Shakespeare and Marlowe never use this uncouth old idiom, which, though found in some of the literature of their day, seems even then to have been thought inelegant; and it is remarkable that in passages which are found in both the earlier and later versions of the plays under consideration, this idiom does not once occur in either version. Peele, although he was much the senior of the other three, avails himself of it but half a dozen times throughout all his works; but Greene seems to have had a fondness for it; or rather to have been driven, by the poverty of his poetical resources, to eke out his verses with this phrase,…[3]

Every acknowledged work of Greene, throughout all of his writing life, is chock-full of the antiquated usage “for to”. Shakespeare never uses it. Again, a scholar that claims Edward de Vere wrote the works of Robert Greene has some serious explaining to do.

We find “for to” on several occasions in early scenes of Andronicus. Together with other less glaring tells, this pretty much makes clear Greene’s contribution to the play. Admittedly, Peele could also be the culprit but he seems to have written other portions of the play if any. Greene, the tireless freelancer, grinding out page after page for daily bread, is further implicated as the popular anonymous ballad “Titus Andronicus's Complaint,” released after the likely composition of the play also includes several instances of “for to” together with other tells. Peele cannot be counted out but he did not share the habits of the freelancer to the same extent. It was Greene who was more in the habit of milking every possible penny from his projects.

Almost always ten iambic syllables to a line with no substitutions to give them modulation and a sense of fluent, common speech. Almost always end-stopping lines. Rarely ever allowing lines with feminine endings. Constant use of the construction “for to”. All of these are traits of Greene, none of Shakespeare.

To claim that Vere/Shakespeare included the low quality of writing and the various authorial tells in Greene-as-character in a greater play, suggests, among other things, that Vere knew the science of close textual analysis hundreds of years before it appeared on the world scene. We would have to picture him carefully, systematically planting individual words in order to give his character a life of its own unable to be traced back to any Shakespearean traits.

 

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[1] Grosart, Alexander. “Greens, Groats-worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentaunce.” The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene (1881-86), XII.97-150 @131.

[2] Grosart. XII.132.

[3] White, Richard Grant. “Essay on the Authorship of the Three Parts of King Henry The Sixth” The Works of William Shakespeare (1859). VII.413-68 @431.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Mr. Prechter’s Accidents. June 27, 2022. “Another Peele signature exists on a receipt for the production of a play acted at Oxford before Albertus de Lasco, Palatine of Siradia, in Poland, in 1583.”
• The Character Montano, in Hamlet, and Polonius’ Famous Advice. May 25, 2022. “The reader may recall that Polonius calls upon Reynaldo to suggest to Laertes’ friends that he is privy to minor misbehaviors, at which he winks,…”
• The Death of Sir Edward Vere, son of the 17th Earl of Oxford and Anne Vavasour. May 8, 2022. “Mr. Sedgwick wrote to me for a prayer for Sir Edward Vere.”
• How Shakespeare gave Ben Jonson the Infamous Purge. November 7, 2021. “Of course, De Vere could not openly accuse Jonson of having outed him as Shakespeare.”
• A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years.  Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
• Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.