Biography and mythography: Rereading Chettle's alleged apology to Shakespeare

English Studies

Volumn 79, Issue 5, 1998, Pages 430-440

  Erne, Lukas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 0347173978     PISSN: 0013838X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00138389808599146     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. This, of course, is a matter of great consequence. Textual studies on Shakespeare's plays were bedeviled for many generations by the assumption that Greene accused Shakespeare of plagiarism who, it was inferred, probably started his career as a dramatist with revisions of plays by other playwrights. Consequently, The Taming of a Shrew, The Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster as well as The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke were long mistaken to be earlier plays by other dramatists rather than 'bad quartos' of The Taming of the Shrew, and 2, 3 Henry VI. For a discussion and a survey of past criticism, see Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, ed. D. Allen Carroll (Binghamton, 1994), pp. 131-145. Subsequent references to this edition will appear in my text.
2. Lodge sailed in Cavendish's second expedition which left Plymouth 26 August 1591 and did not return before June 1593.
3. Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904), II, 324.
4. Quotations are from William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford, 1986).
5. Henrie Chettle, Kind-Hartes Dreame, ed. G.B. Harrison, The Bodley Head Quartos, IV, (London, 1923), pp. 5-6.
6. See Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, I, 59.
7. A long time after Chettle diverted attention from himself and made his contemporaries believe that Greene's Groatsworth of Wit and the prefixed letter were indeed composed by Robert Greene, scholarship has voiced doubts as to the truthfulness of Chettle's claim. As early as 1844, J. Payne Collier suggested in a footnote that Chettle may have written Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. J. Payne Collier [London, 1844], I, cxxxi). This point was fully argued by Warren B. Austin, A Computer-Aided Technique for Stylistic Discrimination: The Authorship of 'Greene's Groatsworth of Wit' (U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1969) and further developed in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, ed. Carroll. Austin's and Carroll's arguments seem to support my case. Could we expect Chettle to be the author of both the attack on (even if only as a hoax) and the apology to Shakespeare? I choose not to problematize questions of authorship in this article lest they unnecessarily obfuscate my argument.
8. A long time after Chettle diverted attention from himself and made his contemporaries believe that Greene's Groatsworth of Wit and the prefixed letter were indeed composed by Robert Greene, scholarship has voiced doubts as to the truthfulness of Chettle's claim. As early as 1844, J. Payne Collier suggested in a footnote that Chettle may have written Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. J. Payne Collier [London, 1844], I, cxxxi). This point was fully argued by Warren B. Austin, A Computer-Aided Technique for Stylistic Discrimination: The Authorship of 'Greene's Groatsworth of Wit' (U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1969) and further developed in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, ed. Carroll. Austin's and Carroll's arguments seem to support my case. Could we expect Chettle to be the author of both the attack on (even if only as a hoax) and the apology to Shakespeare? I choose not to problematize questions of authorship in this article lest they unnecessarily obfuscate my argument.
9. Lines 1766-76 in The Three Parnassus Plays, ed. J.B. Leishman (London, 1949).
10. The Life and Work of George Peele, ed. Charles Tyler Prouty (New Haven, 1952), I, 65.
11. The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, ed. Edmond Malone (London, 1790), I, 274.
12. A Life of William Shakespeare (London, 1923), p. 142.
13. A Life of William Shakespeare, rev. ed. (London, 1931), p. 117.
14. William Shakespeare: A Biography (London, 1963), p. 91.
15. The Essential Shakespeare: A Biographical Adventure (Cambridge, 1932), p. 48.
16. Dutton, p. 3.
17. Shakespeare: Man and Artist (London, 1938), I, 310.
18. Shakespeare (London, 1949), p. 73.
19. See William A. Ringler, Jr., 'Spenser, Shakespeare, Honor, and Worship', Renaissance News, XIV (1961), 159-61. See also OED: 'In this Cloyster we buried many persons, some of worship, and others of honour. [= belonging to the nobility]' (1598).
20. See William A. Ringler, Jr., 'Spenser, Shakespeare, Honor, and Worship', Renaissance News, XIV (1961), 159-61. See also OED: 'In this Cloyster we buried many persons, some of worship, and others of honour. [= belonging to the nobility]' (1598).
21. 'A Mistaken Allusion to Shakespeare', Athenaeum, no. 2415, 7 Febr. 1874, 193-94.
22. A Chronical History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare (London, 1886), p. 111.
23. 'Chettles Kind Heart's Dream und die vermeintliche Ehrenerklärung für Shakespeare', Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, XLI (1905), 184-86.
24. W.H. Chapman, William Shakespeare and Robert Greene: The Evidence (Santa Monica, 1912), pp. 70-71, and Abraham Feldman, 'Shakspere and the Scholars', Notes & Queries, 194 (1949), 556.
25. W.H. Chapman, William Shakespeare and Robert Greene: The Evidence (Santa Monica, 1912), pp. 70-71, and Abraham Feldman, 'Shakspere and the Scholars', Notes & Queries, 194 (1949), 556.
26. Ronald B. McKerrow, ed., The Works of Thomas Nashe (Oxford, 1966), I, 154.
27. Quoted by R. Simpson in 'Chettle on Shakspere', The Academy, V (1874), 401.
28. Harleian MS. 6848, fols. 187-89, quoted by Arthur Freeman in Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems (Oxford, 1967), p. 27. For a detailed discussion of this portion of Kyd's life, see Freeman, pp. 25-39.
29. William Shakespeare, I, 58-59.
30. The Life and Work of George Peele, ed. Prouty, I, 71.
31. Ibid. I, 72-74.
32. McKerrow, ed., III, 323.
33. Prouty, ed., I, 82.
34. See 'The Account of George Peele' in the introduction to The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Robert Greens & George Peele, ed. Alexander Dyce (London, 1861), pp. 330-31.
35. Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook (New Haven, 1961), p. 97.
36. Quoted from The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, ed. A.R. Waller (Cambridge, 1910), IX, 210.
37. William Shakespeare: A Literary Life (London, 1989), p. 1.
38. Shakespeare: His Life, Work and Era (London, 1991), p. 46.
39. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660-1769 (Oxford, 1992).
40. Dutton, p. 2.