The Public Domain Review examines the work of Elizabethan writer Robert Greene, the original Bohemian, and the first known reviewer of William Shakespeare:
Greene’s chief target was “an upstart Crow,” who “supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you”…He has a “tiger’s heart, wrapped in a player’s hyde”, unable to fully escape the stigma of first playing on the stage before he would write for it. This line makes more sense when placed in some context – it’s a parody London audiences would recognize…from a play called Henry VI: Part III. It was by an actor with the hubris to think he could write plays the equal of someone like Greene, a writer by the name of William Shakespeare.
