Henry Chettle (1560–1607) published the 1592 attack on Shakespeare by Robert Greene that called the young playwright an upstart crow
. Shortly after Greene’s critique, Chettle published
Kind-Harts Dreame (1592), to address the controversy Greene began before his death and to apologize for offending. It may indicate that Shakespeare was becoming an accepted member of the fraternity of playwrights in early modern London.
Chettle’s Apology
Chettle was acknowledged by other Elizabethan writers as a skilled dramatist and was involved with as many as 49 different plays during the era, although his name does not appear on any title pages until long after his death. Francis Meres, the same commentator who praises Shakespeare so strongly and lists many of his plays of the 1590s, also praises Chettle as one of our best for comedy
.
In the modern spelling transcription below, Chettle describes the controversy and notes the attacks directed at him since Greene had recently died. Chettle defends his record and ends with an apology:
About three months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry Booksellers various publishers’ hands, among other his Groatsworth of Wit, in which a letter written to divers play-makers various playwrights, is offensively by one or two of them taken, and because on the dead they cannot be avenged, they willfully forge in their conceits create in their imaginations a living Author: and after tossing it two and fro, no remedy, but it must light on fall upon me. How I have all the time of my conversing in printing hindered the bitter inveighing attacks against scholars, it hath been very well known, and how in that I dealt I can sufficiently prove. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be. The other, whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heat of living writers, and might have used my own discretion (especially in such a case) the Author being dead, that I did not, I am as sorry, as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanor no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship various respected men have reported, his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his fatious ‘facetious’; witty? grace in writing, which approves his Art.
Chettle apparently addresses the persons of worship
, possibly Shakespeare’s patron or colleagues, who took offense at Greene’s mocking language.
Chettle’s description of Shakespeare’s fatious grace in writing
presents a puzzle. No other writer uses the word fatious
, although some scholars speculate it may be a version of the word facetious. The modern meaning of facetious (flippant, humorous) probably means more like polished in this case. It could also be a typesetting error that yields a word no one has deciphered.