Shakespeare's Beasts
The secrets behind the "upstart crow" and "tiger's heart" allusions
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North Meets Shakespeare: How a Scandalous 1592 Pamphlet Exposed the Most Important Literary Relationship in History—now on holiday sale for $5.99—offers the clearest and most comprehensive explanation of Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, the notorious 1592 pamphlet that accuses William Shakespeare of plagiarism.
The pamphlet famously brands him an “upstart crow, beautified” with the feathers of other writers, describes him as an actor-dramatist, dubs him “Shake-scene,” and targets him with the line “tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide.” That phrase is an unmistakable parody of a line in 3 Henry VI—“Oh, tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide”—leaving no doubt that the author was publicly skewering Shakespeare for recycling the work of others.
Notice, however, both allusions to Shakespeare invoke creatures commonly found in fables: the crow and the tiger. Careful readers of the entire pamphlet will notice this is no accident. Groatsworth of Wit, from start to finish, overflows with beast-fables and beast-metaphors.
Immediately after the “upstart crow” passage, the pamphlet launches into the familiar fable of the ant and the grasshopper. Earlier, at the very opening of Groatsworth, we encounter a fable involving the fox, the ewe, the badger, and the shepherds. And throughout the text, animal imagery proliferates: sheep, foxes, woodcocks, vipers, adders, basilisks, worms, birds in bushes, and more.
So what’s going on here?
