Greene died in “most woefull and rascall estate” at the house of a poor shoemaker near Dowgate.  He had previously written his “Groat’s-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance;” in which he warns his former companions and “gentlemen who spend their wits in making playes,” to take warning by his fate.  He could get none of his friends to visit him at the last but Mistress Appleby, and the mother of “his base sonne Infortunatus Greene.”  He gave the following note for his wife—­whom he had not seen for six years—­to the shoemaker: 

“Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth, and by my soule’s rest, that thow wilte see this man paide; for if hee and his wife had not succoured me, I had died in the streetes.

“ROBERT GREENE.”

Gabriel Harvey writes, “My next businesse was to inquire after the famous author who was reported to lye dangerously sicke in a shop neere Dowgate, not of plague, but of a surfett of pickle herringe and rennish wine.”

Thomas Nash was one of Greene’s jolly companions at this fatal banquet.  After Greene’s death Harvey replied to some reflections made upon him by Greene, and called him in accordance with the amenities of the times, “a wilde head, ful of mad braine and a thousand crotchets; a scholler, a discourser, a courtier, a ruffian, a gamester, a lover, a souldier, a trauailer, a merchant, a broker, an artificer, a botcher, a pettifogger, a player, a coosener, a rayler, a beggar, an omnium-gatherum, a gay-nothing, a stoare-house of bald and baggage stuffe, unworth the answering or reading, a triuall and triobular autor for knaves and fooles,” &c., &c.

Nash, although he seems to have forsaken Greene in his last distress, became the defender of his character after his death, and answered this vituperation by still coarser abuse and invective, saying, “Had hee lived, Gabriel, and thou shouldest vnartifically and odiously libel against him as thou hast done, he would have made thee an example of ignominy to all ages that are to come, and driven thee to eate thy owne booke buttered, as I saw him make an Appariter once in a tavern eate his Citation, waxe and all, very handsomely served ‘twixt two dishes.’”

From this he proceeds to caricature Gabriel’s person.  “That word complexion is dropt forth in good time, for to describe to you his complexion and composition entred I with this tale by the way.  It is of an adust swarth chollericke dye, like restie bacon, or a dried scate-fish; so leane and so meagre, that you wold thinke (with the Turks) he observed 4 Lents in a yere, or take him for a gentleman’s man in the courtier, who was so thin-cheeked, and gaunt, and starv’d, that as he was blowing the fire with his mouth the smoke took him up like a light strawe, and carried him to the top or funnell of the chimney, wher he had flowne out God knowes whither if there had not been crosse barres overthwart that stayde him; his skin riddled and crumpled like a piece of burnt parchment; and more channels and creases he hath in his face than there be fairie circles on Salsburie Plaine, and wrinckles and frets of old age, than characters on Christ’s sepulcher in Mount Calvarie, on which euerie one that comes scrapes his name, and sets his marke to shewe that hee hath been there; so that whosoever shall behold him