The name Rude Grooms comes from writer Robert Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, where he rails against Shakespeare and other players-turned-writers of the late 16th Century (Johannes factotum as the Elizabethan equivalent for “jack of all trades”). We hope Greene would hate our work and our inverted theatrical hierarchy just as vehemently.
there is an upstart Crow,
beautified with our feathers,
that with his
Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide
supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you:
and
being an absolute Johannes factotum
is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
…
it is pity men of such rare wits
should be subject to the pleasure of such
rude grooms
– Robert Greene (from Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit) on William Shakespeare