London, September 1592. Robert Greene, a popular writer of romances, plays, and pamphlets – with an apparent predilection for pickled herring and Rhenish wine in prodigal excess – has died.
Three pamphlets are published soon afterwards, each purporting to be Greene’s autobiographical deathbed repentance. The first to appear, Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, contains a letter addressed to “those gentlemen … that spend their wits in making plays”. They were most likely George Peele, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Nashe, three fellow playwrights who, like Greene, could boast a university education – and who are entreated to find “more profitable courses” for their wits.
