Metafiction
The play's text contains a bit of meta-theater, in that Greene in the role of Bubble refers to himself during performance:
- Geraldine: Why, then, we'll go to the Red Bull: they say Greene's a good clown.
- Bubble: Greene! Greene's an ass.
- Scattergood: Wherefore do you say so?
- Bubble: Indeed I ha' no reason; for they say he is as like me as ever he can look.
Ben Jonson would work the same trick in 1616 in his The Devil is an Ass, by referring in his text to actor Richard Robinson, who starred in the original production. And Thomas Killigrew would give his version of the trick in The Parson's Wedding (1641).
Read more about this topic: Greene's Tu Quoque