O that a yeare were graunted me to liue,
And for that yeare my former wits restored:
What rules of life, what counsell would I giue?
How should my sinne with sorrow be deplorde!
But I must die of euery man abhorred.
Time loosely spent will not againe be wonne;
My time is loosely spent, and I undone.
ROBERT GREENE: Greenes Groats-Worth of Witte, Bought with a Million of Repentance (1592)
Born in Norwich, Greene studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, received a degree from Oxford five years later, and spent some time in France and Italy at the insistence (if we are to believe him) of the ‘lewd wags’ (such as Nashe and Peele) who were his university friends. He married in 1585 but soon abandoned his wife for a dissolute life in London, where he eked out a precarious living, writing plays and pamphlets. He was a prolific writer and produced many pastoral romances modelled on Sidney’s Arcadia, the most important of which were, perhaps, Pandosto (1588), the direct source of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and Menaphon (1589), which contains the lovely poem ‘Weepe not, my wanton’, set by Benjamin Britten in A Charm of Lullabies. His eight plays, all published posthumously, include Orlando Furioso (1594), Frier Bacon, and Frier Bungay (1594) and James the Fourth (1598). Among his many pamphlets are Greenes Mourning Garment and Greenes Never Too Late (1590). Greenes Groats-Worth of Witte (1592) contains the first reliable reference to Shakespeare, whom he describes as ‘an vpstart 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 being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey’. This outburst was probably due to the fact that Shakespeare, who had not gone to university like Greene, Nashe, Peele and Marlowe, was considered by Greene to be an outsider. Greene dressed as a Bohemian, lived a life of excess and relished low company. He repented at the end of his life, and his decline and death were described in detail by himself and his contemporaries. His death was allegedly caused by ‘a fatal banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled herring’ – but he probably died of the plague, which was rife in London in 1592.
Weepe not, my wanton, smile vpon my knee;
When thou arte old ther’s griefe inough for thee.
Mothers wagge, pretie boy,
Fathers sorrow, fathers ioy;
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and mee,
He was glad, I was woe;
Fortune changde made him so,
When he left his pretie boy,
Last his sorrowe, first his joy.
Weepe not, my wanton, smile vpon my knee;
When thou arte old ther’s griefe inough for thee.
[Streaming teares that neuer stint,
Like pearle drops from a flint
Fell by course from his eyes,
That one anothers place supplies:
Thus he grieud in euerie part,
Teares of bloud fell from his hart,
When he left his pretie boy,
Fathers sorrow, fathers joy.]
Weepe not, my wanton, smile vpon my knee;
When thou arte old ther’s griefe inough for thee.
The wanton smilde, father wept:
Mother cride, babie lept:
More he crowde, more we cride,
Nature could not sorowe hide:
He must goe, he must kisse
Childe and mother, babie blisse:
For he left his pretie boy,
Fathers sorowe, fathers ioy.
Weepe not, my wanton, smile vpon my knee;
When thou arte old ther’s griefe inough for thee.