ABSTRACT
Greenes Groatsworth of Wit tells a story about the transmission of an old usurer's estate to his two sons. The bequest punishes Roberto, the eldest son, for his opposition to his father's usury by denying him his birthright. But the father's dying words do not simply exclude Roberto from any share in the estate. They construct a chiasmus that distinguishes financial wealth from cultural wealth. Luciano, the second son, inherits the fortune and one book ("Machiavels workes at large" where he can learn "what tis to be so foole-holy as to make scruple of conscience where profit presents itselfe" [12]). Roberto, "brought up in the universitie," inherits one groat and all that books afford ("your bookes are your counsellors, and therefore to them I bequeathe you" [11 ]). The bequest to Roberto also perversely identifies him with the father who built his fortune out of one groat: "only I reserve for Roberto thy wei read brother an old groat, (being the stocke I first begun with) wherewith I wish him to buy a groats-worth of wit: for he in my life hath reproovd my manner of life, and therefore at my death, shall not be contaminated with corrupt gain" (10). In the story that follows, Roberto deliberately effects Luciano's squander of the patrimony by bringing him to a courtesan who "cause[s] him to consume in lesse than two yeeres that infinite treasure gathered by his father" (35). Though Roberto had hoped to share in the proceeds of the courtesan's cosenage, she betrays him. Dejected, he meets up with a player who suggests that he can make a living by writing plays. Eventually, "by conversing with bad company" (35), Roberto is reduced to his last groat, which, the narrator notes, was "the just proportion of his Fathers Legacie" (38). He resolves to "see if [he] can sell to carelesse youth what [he] negligently forgot to buy" (39). Immediately following, the narrator reveals Roberto's story to be his and Greene's: "Heereafter suppose me the saide Roberto and I will go on with that hee promised; Greene will send you now his groatsworth of wit" (39). The remainder of the pamphlet presents various papers in which Greene
repents of a profligate life - a poem, a set of prescriptive rules, the famous cautionary letter to gentlemen "who spend their wits in making plaies," an insect fable, and a letter of apology and farewell to his wife.
