"About three months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry booksellers' hands, among others his Groatsworth of Wit, in which a letter written to divers play-makers is offensively by one or two of them taken; and because on the dead they cannot be re-avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceites a living author: and after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must light on me. How I have, all the time of my conversing in printing, hindered the bitter inveighing against schollers, it hath been very well known; and how in that I dealt, I can sufficiently prove. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them ('Marlowe') I care not if I never be. The other ('Shakspeare'), whom at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the hate of living writers, and might have used my own discretion, (especially in such a case, the author being dead,) that I did not, I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault; because myselfe have seene his demeanour no less civil than he EXCELLENT IN THE QUALITIE HE PROFESSES. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honestie, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art. For the first, whose learning I reverence, and at the perusing of Greene's booke, strooke out what then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ; or had it been true, yet to publish it was intollerable; him I would wish to use me no worse than I deserve."[422:A]
This curious passage clearly evinces that our author was deemed EXCELLENT as an actor, (for the phrase the qualitie he professes peculiarly denoted at that time the profession of a player,) in the year 1592, only five or six years, at most, after he had entered on the stage; and consequently that the information which Aubrey had received was correct, while that obtained by Rowe must be considered as unfounded.
So well instructed, indeed, was Shakspeare in the duties and qualities of an actor, that it appears from Downes' book, entitled Roscius Anglicanus, that he undertook to teach and perfect John Lowin in the character of King Henry the Eighth, and Joseph Taylor in that of Hamlet.
Of his competency for this task, several parts of his dramatic works might be brought forward as sufficient proof. Independent of his celebrated instructions to the player in Hamlet, which would alone ascertain his intimate knowledge of the histrionic art, his conception of the powers necessary to form the accomplished tragedian, may be drawn from part of a dialogue which occurs between Richard the Third and Buckingham:—
"Glo. Come, cousin, can'st thou quake and change thy colour?
Murther thy breath in middle of a word?
And then again begin, and stop again,
As if thou wert distraught, and mad with terror?
Buck. Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;
Speak, and look big, and pry on every side,