...the players, burrs who used to stick to him, now fallen away. "Trust them not," he tells the Wits, for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our...his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. This cut deep. Years later, Polonious says how " 'Beautified' is a vile phrase." The upstart crow,...

...Shakespeare's abundance. Robert Greene, a rival dramatist, wrote in 1592 in his Groatsworth of Wit: "there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers,...his own conceit the only Shakescene in a country" [quoted in Greenblatt 2004, 213].) The following translation of a string of invective from Rabelais'...

...he warns three university-educated playwrights against an actor who has presumed to turn playwright: There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers,...blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes-factotum [ie, jack-of-all-trades] is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country....

..."There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a...his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." After Green's death, his editor, Henry Chettle, publicly apologized to Shakespeare in the Preface to...