A Groatsworth of Wit (comic story)

A Groatsworth of Wit
Doctor:	Ninth Doctor
Companion(s):	Rose
Featuring:	William Shakespeare
Main enemy:	Shadeys, Robert Greene
Main setting:	London, 1592 and the 21st century
Key crew
Publisher:	Panini
Editor:	Clayton Hickman & Scott Gray
Writer:	Gareth Roberts
Penciller:	Mike Collins
Inker:	David A. Roach
Colourist:	James Offredi
Letterer:	Roger Langridge
Release details
Printed in:	Doctor Who Magazine 363-364
Cover date:	7 December 2005 - 4 January 2006
Traded in:	The Cruel Sea
Format:	Comic - 2 parts
DWM comic stories
← Previous	The Cruel Sea
Next →	The Betrothal of Sontar

A Groatsworth of Wit was a Doctor Who Magazine comic story featuring the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler.

Summary

The Shadeys are a race that draws on negative emotions. They choose Robert Greene as a host for powerful negative emotions. By manipulating the dying Green they turn his hatred, bile and jealousy of Shakespeare "up to eleven", giving them enough power to crush the planet.

Characters

• Woodscrape
• Uncle Bloodfinger
• John Naps
• Robert Greene
• Rose Tyler
• Ninth Doctor
• Robert Greene
• Matt
• Liz Golding
• Ty Baxter
• William Shakespeare

References

• Rose mentions Joseph Fiennes.

Notes

A Groatsworth of Wit title card.

• This is the final DWM comic strip to feature the Ninth Doctor.
• Shakespeare first appears in Doctor Who in "The Executioners", the first episode of the television story The Chase. He later appeared on televised Doctor Who in The Shakespeare Code.
• The name Uncle Bloodfinger is very similar to Mother Doomfinger and Mother Bloodtide, two characters who featured in The Shakespeare Code, an episode released two years after the comic. In it, three "witches" attempt to free the other members of their race, the Carrionites. The dialogue and presentation of the enemies speaking while watching the writer work is similar to several parts of The Shakespeare Code. Both were written by Gareth Roberts.
• A tavern sign features a picture of a wolf's head and the initials "B.W.", a reference to the Bad Wolf story arc resolved in the television story The Parting of the Ways.
• No specific date is given in the scenes set on Charing Cross Road, inside the Books Unltd. bookstore, nor in Leicester Square. In Part One, Bloodfinger takes Robert Greene forward in time "four hundred years" from 1592, while a text box at the beginning of Part Two places the Leicester Square part of the story in the "present day".

Continuity

• The Fourth Doctor wrote out the first draft of Hamlet in PROSE: The Stranger, The Writer, His Wife and the Mixed Metaphor, and references it in TV: City of Death.
• The Ninth Doctor mentions the "big row" he and Rose had over interfering with time. (TV: Father's Day)