Shakespeare’s Early Reputation as a Writer
Shakespeare Becomes a Playwright
Para1Sometime during the period between 1585 and 1592, William Shakespeare began a career
in the theatre. During his youth, records indicate that the Earl of Leicester’s Men
played in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1573, while the Earl of Warwick’s and the Earl of
Worcester’s Men visited in 1575. Shakespeare potentially joined one of the five theatrical
companies that toured through his hometown, but no concrete evidence indicates this.
Some speculation exists that the Queen’s Men were in Stratford in 1587 and may have
been shorthanded due to the June 1587 death of one of their actors, William Knell.
They might have hired young Shakespeare to help fill in the cast. This theory might
explain how William Shakespeare left Stratford for London.
An Upstart Crow
Para2Shakespeare as a writer first appears in print in a pamphlet published under the name
Robert Greene as A Groats-worth of Witte, Bought with a Million of Repentance, published in 1592, shortly after Greene’s death. Although published under Greene’s
name, scholars believe it was more likely written after Greene’s death by either Henry
Chettle, Greene’s publisher, or the playwright Thomas Nashe, or both. Chettle and
Nashe both published denials of their involvement. The Greene pamphlet advises fellow
playwright-scholars to quit writing for the stage because the actors were ungrateful;
specifically, it attacks a young actor-playwright who had apparently just arrived
on the scene. Greene complains that:
There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Iohannes fac totum is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey.
Para3
In modern spelling:
There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out inflate a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum jack-of-all-trades is in his own conceit belief the only Shake-scene in a country.Greene F1v
Para4 Greene clearly refers to Shakespeare, as his pun on
Shake-sceneindicates. Also, Greene parodies a line from one of Shakespeare’s first plays, Henry VI, Part 3:
O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!(1.4.137). The “upstart crow” insult refers to one of Aesop’s fables in which a crow thinks himself beautiful when adorned with peacock feathers. Greene may be accusing Shakespeare of plagiarism to his own benefit.
Motivations for Greene’s Attack
Para5Because Shakespeare was an actor and a playwright, Greene (or whoever wrote the attack)
likely objected to a mere player thinking he could write real verse. University-educated
poets and playwrights of the time may have believed that an unlearned writer such
as Shakespeare lacked the qualifications to write verse drama. Envy of Shakespeare’s
financial success may also have motivated the attack. Shakespeare had probably achieved
some financial success by 1592 (the final year when his father’s financial problems
are documented). Scholars gather good information from Greene’s pamphlet, whatever
the author’s intentions. It confirms that Shakespeare had a reputation as a writer
by 1592, enough that he was seen as a threat by other writers.
Key Print Sources
Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. W.W. Norton, 2004.
Potter, Lois. The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Key Online Sources
Best, Michael.
London: Character Assassination.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, 4 Jan. 2011, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/london.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Best, Michael.
The Upstart Crow.Shakespeare’s Life and Times.Internet Shakespeare Editions, 4 Jan. 2011, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/groatsworth2.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Best, Michael.
Why Did Greene Disparage Shakespeare?.Shakespeare’s Life and Times.Internet Shakespeare Editions, 4 Jan. 2011, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/greene.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Dickson, Andrew.
Shakespeare’s Life.The British Library. 15 Mar. 2016. https://www.britishlibrary.cn/en/articles/shakespeares-life/.
Wolfe, Heather.
Greenes, Groats-Worth of Witte: First Printed Allusion to Shakespeare as a Playwright.Shakespeare Documented. 5 Jun. 2020. https://doi.org/10.37078/86.
Image Sources
Greene, Robert.
Greenes, Groats-Worth of Witte.London: Henry Chettle, 1592. MS. Shakespeare Documented. https://doi.org/10.37078/86.
Prosopography
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Shakespeare’s Early Reputation as a Writer |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
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| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
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Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
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Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University |
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