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Robert Greene's is a sad story. He was an educated man and had master’s degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge.
But, by 1592, he had sunk as low as any playwright or man of words and letters could. He was eking an existence churning out pamphlets on the cardsharps, the boarding houses, the brothels and all the low-life of London that he knew only too well.
He had a faithful servant a man nicknamed "Cutting Bull," a thickset, square-jawed ox of a man who was quick to defend his master whenever one of his creditors came in search of repayment. Indeed on one occasion, Bull had actually forced the server of the writ to sit down in a public house and eat the entire writ, wax seal and all.
Although Greene had a wife, he had long since deserted her and he now lived with Cutting Bull's sister with whom he had a child that he, somewhat ironically, named fortunatus.
With the downturn in his fortunes, Greene was drinking heavily and, by 1592, his liver and kidneys were rotting away.
On June 11th that year there was a riot in Southwark. The Lord Marshall's men had gone round to arrest a felt maker. The apprentices who at the time were attending a theatre, resented the involvement of the Lord Marshall's men, and they responded by attacking them. The Lord Marshall's men retaliated with cudgels and daggers and within moments a full scale riot had erupted.
Who was to blame? It matters not. The effect on the play-actors was immediate. The theatres were closed down. The play-actors lost their source and responded as they so often did in times of plague by leaving London and going around the countryside on tour.
Robert Greene though had been abandoned. He lay there on his bed of straw crawling with lice. And as he did so, resentment crawled within him. He thought of the play-actors touring the country, making money out of his lines his plays. And he turned that resentment on one person in particular. A man whom he believed had no right to assume the mantle of a playwright.
Greene penned a letter. A letter that was intended for Christopher Marlow, Thomas Nash and George Peel. Fellow playwrights - and in that letter he unleashed a venomous tirade against William Shakespeare.
"Base minded men all three of you, if by my misery you be not warned. For unto non of you sought those burrs to cleave those puppets that spake from our mouths. Those antics garnished in our colours. Yes. Trust them not, for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes that he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you. And being an absolute Johannes Factotum is in his conceit the only Shakescene in the country."
Greene's was a personal and direct attack but in all fairness, he was not responsible for its circulation, for he died on September the 2nd 1592 and before his body was even cold several London printers had swooped like vultures and bundled together whatever papers they could lay their hands on.
The attack appeared in print on September the 20th under the title, Greene's Groats worth of wit bought with a millionth of repentance.
The dying poet's words now spat their venom from beyond the grave and Shakespeare's pride was evidently wounded.
That Printer was Mr Henry Chettel, publisher of Greene's Groats worth of wit and Shakespeare decided to pay him a visit. During that visit he so impressed Chettel that, in December 1592, he published an apology. He claimed not to have met Shakespeare before the visit, but on meeting him he had found him to be an honest fellow who was diligent in his business dealings and dedicated in the art of writing.
The up and coming playwright's good name was restored but he had yet to establish himself alongside the great writers of his age.