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"forehead that all men may know that "for a fool." It seems certain that Kemp kept his word in exhibiting his dancing powers on the continent. In Week's 'Ayers" (1688) mention is made of Kemp's skipping into France. A ballad entitled "An Excellent New Medley" (dated about 1600) refers to his return from Rome. In the Elizabethan play "Jack Drum's Entertainment" (1616), however, there is introduced a song to which Kemp's morris dance is performed. Heywood, writing at this period, in his "Apology for Actors" (1612), says William Kemp was a comic actor of high reputation, as well in the favor of Her Majesty as in the opinion of the general audience. There is also a tribute from the pen of Richard Rathway (1618). (1618). Ben Jonson, William Rowly and John Marston also make mention of him.

Pretty much all that relates to the gambols of sportive Kemp in the foregoing pages is a mere transcription from the "Camden Society Papers."

Our prime object is to establish Kemp's eligibility as claimant for Greene's censure, before alluded to. We are content to advance the claim of another if found more decisive. We would elect to name Robert Wilson, senior, an old enemy, doubtless, of Robert Greene, if we did not think that Kemp has the better claim to that distinction. According to Collier, Wilson was not only an excellent performer, but also a talented dramatist, especially renowned for his ready repartee. Some writers affirm that the authors of the dramas "Faire Emm" and "Martin Marsixtus" were one and the same person, and that this person was Robert Wilson, senior, author of "Three "Ladies of London" and "Three Lords "and Ladies of London," the first published in 1584, and the other in 1590. "Faire Emm" and "Martin Marsixtus' having been posthumously printed, Greene was severe on the author of the former for his blamphemous introduction of quotations from the Bible into his love

passages. "We know that the author at"tacked Greene's own works in return "and called them lascivious." He had not read the works, but, then, an anonymous writer may not very scrupulously confine himself to the truth. "Loth I was "to display myself to the world but for "that I hope to dance under a mask and "bluster out like the wind, which, though "every man heareth yet none can in sight 'descrie." "I must answer in print what "they have offered on the stage" are the words of Greene.

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Robert Wilson may be advanced as claimant for Greene's reproof by some persons who are of the opinion that "upstart crow" was both actor and playwright. Supposition says Kemp also wrote pamphlets and plays, although at this time he had not given his first and only work to the press. It matters little at whom he aimed, Kemp or Wilson, so long as Shakespere was not the object of the aimer. In the Parish Register of St. Giles, Cripplegate, we read, "Buried,

"Robert Wilson, yeoman, a player, 20 "Nov., 1600."

These facts and concurring events in the life of William Kemp convince us that Shakspere was not, and Kemp very probably was, the person at whom Greene leveled his satire by bearing witness to his (Kemp's) extemporizing power and his haughty and insolent demeanor in introducing improvisions and interpolations of his "own wit into poet's plays."

From the foregoing, it is evident that, at the time the letter was written, William Kemp enjoyed an unequaled and wide spread notoriety and transient fame, extending not only throughout England, but into foreign countries as well.

And further, by reason of his great prominence, in a calling which Greene loathed, and despised, he was brought easily within the range of the latter's contemptuous designation, of "upstart

III

We have now reached the crucial matter of the address which, according to the speculative opinion of many of Shakspere's biographers, contains all the words and sentences which they hope, when racked, may be made to yield support to their tramp conjecture that Robert Greene was the first to discover Shakspere as a writer of plays, or the amendor of the works of other poets. The identifiable words, so called, are contained in the following sentences: "Yes, trust them "not; for there is an upstart crow, beau"tified with our feathers, that, with his "Tyger's heart wrapt in a Player's hide.'

"Upstart Crow" in Elizabethan English meant in general, one who assumed a lofty or arrogant tone, a bragging, boastful, swaggerer suddenly raised to prominence and power, as was Kemp after the death of Richard Tarlton (1589). In an epistle prefixed to Greene's "Arcadia"