Our Namesake

We take our name from the first mention of William Shakespeare in print. Robert Greene in his tract "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance" warns fellow playwrights about an actor who has started infringe on their territory by writing plays himself:

"For there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Iohannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey."