Robert Greene

Born around 1558 and associated with Norwich, he studied at Cambridge, earning a BA in 1580 and an MA in 1583 before building a career in London. He became one of the best-known professional writers of his day, producing romances, pamphlets, and plays for a wide audience.

His writing often blends adventure, moral warning, and vivid snapshots of urban life. Alongside prose works, he is linked to plays including Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and is widely remembered for the remark in Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit that appears to attack Shakespeare as an "upstart crow."

Greene died in 1592, but his reputation has lasted because his career captures the energy of early commercial writing in England. For listeners today, he offers a direct path into the lively, competitive literary world of the Elizabethan stage and print marketplace.