It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and performance recordings show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. [30] By this time he was sufficiently well known in London to be attacked by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit: ...there is an upstart raven, beautified by our feathers, who, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, suppose he is as capable of bombarding a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute factotum of Johannes, he is, in his opinion, the only Shake scene in a country. meaning of these words,[32] but most agree that Greene accuses Shakespeare of going above his station by trying to equal academic writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself ("academic minds "). The italicized phrase parodying the phrase "Oh, the tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's skin" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, as well as the pun "Shake-scene", identifies Shakespeare as the target of Greene. This is Johannes Fa...