Fun Facts Friday: Robert Greene

Robert Greene (baptized on July 11, 1558-3 September, 1592) was an Elizabethan dramatist, well known during his lifetime.

Fun Facts about Robert Greene:

1. We don’t know much about Robert Greene, even his baptism date is an estimate. One of the reasons is because “Robert Greene” was a very popular and common name at the time. In addition, Mr. Greene himself implied that he has been disinherited by his father which makes tracing his roots even more difficult.
2. Scholars think that Greene attended Cambridge University. We know nothing about his education previously.
3. To make matters even stranger, even though all of his classmates at Cambridge (18) acted in dramatic plays, there is no record of him taking part in any of the productions.
4. Mr. Greene wrote that he transferred to Clare College to get his MA. At the time it was a rarity to transfer to another institution to get one’s advanced degree. Even though we know he graduated, there’s not record of his transfer, nor does his name appear in the college’s records.
5. Due to an inability to account for many of what he wrote, scholars take Robert Greene’s biography with a grain of salt. Other claims the author makes, which cannot be verified, include his trips abroad, or his marriage to a gentleman’s daughter which he abandoned with a child after spending her dowry.
6. Once he started living in London, Mr. Green became a prolific writer, publish over 25 works, and a celebrity of the time. In fact, he is known as “England’s first celebrity author”.
7. Gabriel Harvey’s letter to Christopher Bird (later published as a butterfly pamphlet along with other letters) is how scholars know of Robert Greene’s death at the age of 34.
8. The reason given to his untimely death is an over indulgence of pickled herring, and drinking too much Rhenish wine (German wine from the Rhine region).
9. At this point, it’s no a surprise to learn that we have no record of Greene’s burial.
10. After his death, Robert Greene’s pamphlet Greene’s Groats-Worth of Witte, bought with a million Repentance became very popular. The pamphlet is an account of brothers Roberto and Luciano’s visit to Lamilla, a courtesan. It’s famous today for a passage alluding to a young William Shakespeare

Zohar – Man of la Book
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