Robert Greene was an English playwright and poet who rivalled William Shakespeare. He wrote Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, described by the Ninth Doctor as the "big comedy hit of 1589". By the 21st century, however, he was largely forgotten, best known for his pamphlet A Groatsworth of Wit, which he wrote about Shakespeare while on his deathbed.

Biography[]

Greene attended university. This was one of the reasons that he considered Shakespeare to be a "talentless bumpkin upstart" in comparison to him.

In 1592, Greene fell victim to a plague and was wracked with bad living. On his deathbed, he wrote the pamphlet A Groatsworth of Wit, which was a "heartfelt repentence" for his life lived. "Swollen with conceit and self-opinion", his repentence was not genuine, with it being his hatred for Shakespeare which was truly keeping him alive. Two Shadeys from a separate dimension, Bloodfinger and Woodscrape, found Greene and decided to feed on his negative energy to enable them to break into his dimension and break its time and space to bits. They appeared before him and told him they could grant his dying wish, to discover how he would be remembered. Greene agreed and was transported four hundred years into the future. He immediately sought out a bookseller and inquired with an employee about his works. The employee took Greene to the "Plays and Poetry" section and handed him a single copy of Friar Bacon and Frar Bungay, the only one in print. The employee also told him that Greene was only really remembered for what he wrote about Shakespeare, noting that his pamphlet A Groatsworth of Wit was a "big clue to the dating of the early stuff" because he quoted from one of the Henrys and was known to have died in 1592. Enraged by the prominence and quantity of the shelves and shelves of literature focusing on Shakespeare, Greene was overwhelmed by anger and used the Shadeys' influence to reap destruction on the bookshop. He then went to the Empire in Leicester Square, which was premiering Shakespeare's Shrew starring Ty Baxter as Petruchio. Greene intruded on an interview between Baxter and Liz Golding, using his newfound powers to such degree that the building was eventually levelled to the ground. The Ninth Doctor tried to convince Greene to stop by telling him he was "being used as a pawn by something evil" but, despite accepting that the Shadeys were "devils", said in response that he was dying and they had "given [him] the power to take this whole corrupted Earth down" too.

The Shadeys then returned Greene to 1592, where they used his fear of being forgotten against him to the extreme, encouraging Greene to decide to murder Shakespeare. Greene appeared before the playwright and Rose Tyler in Shakespeare's home and chased them to the Rose theatre, where the Ninth Doctor was on stage as the title character in the premiere performance of Richard III, acting as a last-minute replacement for Shakespeare who Rose had led away for his own safety. The entrance of Greene and the Shadeys severely derailed the show, effectively ending it early as the audience fled in terror. Shakespeare briefly escalated the situation by anatagonising Greene and branding it "typical" that he would try to spoil his big night. However, the Doctor and Rose convinced him to cast out the Shadeys by pledging to remember him as "bigger than Shakespeare" not for his plays and his poems, but for being "the man who saved the world". With the Shadeys banished, he was returned to the house of a poor shoemaker, where he finally passed, but not in feelings of ill will toward Shakespeare. Instead, his last thoughts were of being remembered by the Doctor and Rose as bigger than his rival playwright. (COMIC: A Groatsworth of Wit)