xliii. 1590. Robert Greene.
[From Francescos Fortunes: Or, The second part of Greenes Neuer too Late (1590), reprinted in Works, viii. 111. For the Roscius story, cf. No. xii and ch. xi.]
P. 129. A palmer, telling the tale of Francesco, which contains some probably autobiographical matter on the hero’s writing for the stage (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Greene), is interrupted by a request for his ‘iudgement of Playes, Playmakers and Players’. After observing that ‘some for being too lauish against that facultie, haue for their satiricall inuectiues been well canuased’, he sketches the growth of comedy at Athens and Rome, where ‘couetousnesse crept into the qualitie’ and ‘the Actors, by continuall vse grewe not onely excellent, but rich and insolent’. This is illustrated (p. 132) by a rebuke of Cicero to Roscius, ‘Why Roscius, art thou proud with Esops Crow, being pranct with the glorie of others feathers? of thy selfe thou canst say nothing, and if the Cobler hath taught thee to say Aue Caesar, disdain not thy tutor, because thou pratest in a Kings chamber: what sentence thou vtterest on the stage, flowes from the censure of our wittes, and what sentence or conceipte of the inuention the people applaud for excellent, that comes from the secrets of our knowledge. I graunt your action, though it be a kind of mechanical labour; yet wel done tis worthie of praise: but you worthlesse, if for so small a toy you waxe proud’. Publius Seruilius also bade a player ‘bee not so bragge of thy silken roabes, for I sawe them but yesterday make a great shew in a broakers shop’. The palmer concludes, ‘Thus sir haue you heard my opinion briefly of plaies, that Menander deuised them for the suppressing of vanities, necessarie in a common wealth, as long as they are vsed in their right kind; the play makers worthy of honour for their Arte: & players, men deseruing both prayse and profite, as long as they wax neither couetous nor insolent’.