ABSTRACT
In An Account of the English Dramatic Poets ( 1691), Gerard Langbaine began his section on Robert Greene by describing his doubts about his source-and then proceeded to quote the source verbatim as the basis of his survey of Greene's life and career. 1 Langbaine here set a pattern that has continued into the twentieth century: generations of scholars express uncertainty, for example, about the authenticity of the autobiographical pamphlets published just after Greene's death while relying on them for details about Greene's life; or they deplore the irresponsible attribution of anonymous plays to Greene while adding others to the list; or they argue for skepticism toward what Greene's contemporaries said of him while using their comments to analyze his character. For perhaps no other Elizabethan writer, even Shakespeare or Marlowe, do fact and conjecture so tightly intertwine. On the surface is a clear image of Greene, passed on from book to book for the past four centuries. Beneath the surface lie important questions that remain unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable. The sources of Greene's life are both unusually rich and unusually untrustworthy; too suspicious to be used without reservations, they are also, for us as for Langbaine, too suggestive not to be used at all.
