A Groatsworth of Wit

A Groatsworth of Wit was a pamphlet written in 1592 by playwright and poet Robert Greene on his deathbed.

According to the Shadey Bloodfinger, it was a "heartfelt repentance" for his life lived. However, Greene was "swollen with conceit and self-opinion" and Woodscrape noted he was a "faker" who was "full of spite and envy", with it being his hatred for rival William Shakespeare which was truly keeping him alive. Although history recorded that Greene died filled up with these negative emotions, after choosing to save the world by banishing the Shadeys back to their own dimension, his true final thoughts were of being remembered by the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler as "bigger than Shakespeare".

By the 21st century, Greene was largely forgotten as a playwright, being best known for his writings about Shakespeare in A Groatsworth of Wit. According to an employee of Books Unltd, the pamphlet "gave a big clue to the dating of the early stuff" because Greene quoted from "one of the Henrys" and was known to have died in 1592. This staff member gave Greene's pamphlet even more credit than this, stating it "was lucky he wrote about the Bard, or we'd never have heard of him". (COMIC: A Groatsworth of Wit)

"...there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his owne conceit, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie..."

- An extract from A Groatsworth of Wit

Behind the scenes
Although it is not made explicit, the play which Robert Greene quotes from is Henry VI, Part 3. The line in question, "Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hyde", alludes to the line "O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" and does appear in the comic story A Groatsworth of Wit, but is not specifically identified.