Few of Shakespeare's immediate precursors can be more notorious than Robert Greene, or more enigmatic. His purported excesses and his miserable end make a dubious substitute for accurate biography but an unequaled point of departure for lurid conjectures and simplistic moral critiques; only lately have scholars and critics begun to consider that Greene's image may well be as artful a fiction as any of his novels or plays, and at least as resistant to cursory survey.

What we know of Greene's life all derives from four sources: documentary evidence, including publication records; comments by Greene's contemporaries; personal statements in works which are definitely by Greene; personal statements in two well-known posthumous pamphlets, purportedly by Greene, which are more likely to be partly forgeries. Greene once signed himself "Norfolciensis" ("Of Norfolk"), and once elsewhere, "Nordouicensis" ("Of Norwich"); J. C. Collins discovered a baptismal record for one "Robert Greene, son...