Life
Greene was born in Norwich in 1558; however, biographers disagree whether Greene was the son of a humble saddler or of a more prosperous innkeeper with landowning relatives. He took his B.A. in 1580 and his M.A. in 1583 at St John's College, Cambridge, and became an M.A. of Oxford in 1588. Greene claimed to have married a well-off woman named Doll, and to have later abandoned her, after spending a considerable sum of her money.
In London, Greene managed to support himself through his own writing. He lived as a notorious intellectual and rascal, cultivating this reputation himself in pamphlets describing his adventures amid the seamier characters of Elizabethan England, and through a memorable appearance, with fashionable clothing and his pointy red beard.
He died on 3 September 1592, from what Nashe called a "banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled herring," perhaps having written on his death bed the famous Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance and having dispatched a letter to his wife asking her to forgive him and to settle his debts.
Read more about this topic: Robert Greene (dramatist)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“All mothers need instruction, nurturing, and an understanding mentor after the birth of a baby, but in this age of fast foods, fast tracks, and fast lanes, it doesn’t always happen. While we live in a society that provides recognition for just about every life event—from baptisms to bar mitzvahs, from wedding vows to funeral rites—the entry into parenting seems to be a solo flight, with nothing and no one to mark formally the new mom’s entry into motherhood.”
—Sally Placksin (20th century)
“Being so wrong about her makes me wonder now how often I am utterly wrong about myself. And how wrong she might have been about her mother, how wrong he might have been about his father, how much of family life is a vast web of misunderstandings, a tinted and touched-up family portrait, an accurate representation of fact that leaves out only the essential truth.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)