William Shakspere and Robert Greene

There is a commendative piece of writing which should be read in connection with Greene’s letter to “divers play-makers.” We refer to the preface to “Kind Hearts Dreams,” written by Henry Chettle, which was registered December 8, 1592. Chettle says, “About three months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry book-seller’s hands, among others, his ‘Groats Worth of Wit’ in which a letter written to diverse play-makers is offensively by one or two of them taken.” Chettle’s statement about many papers in sundry book-sellers hands may be discredited because of the poet’s urgent necessities, and the strong desire on the part of book-sellers to publish Greene’s writings. Of this we may be sure, that the letter was not placed in book-sellers hands by Greene or for him. He would not have called his friends to repentance in that way, for it would have given publicity to the defects in the lives of his friends as well as his own.

The letter evidences the fact of its having been written as a private letter to three of the poet’s friends (Marlowe, Nash and Peele). If sent, it did not reach them, but was surreptitiously procured, doubtless, by some hack-writer, (inferentially, Henry Chettle, who transcribed it.) Gabriel Harvey may have been accessory to its procurement, as his ghoulish instinct led him to visit the poor shoemaker’s house where Greene died, on the day following the poet’s funeral in search of matter foul and defamatory, and with ink of slander to blacken the poet’s memory. This snobbish ape of gentility, Gabriel Harvey, hated Greene because he called his father by “the craft he gets his living with.” However, when Greene learned that Harvey was ashamed of his father’s humble employment, that of ropemaker, he straightway canceled the offensive allusion, but Harvey still continued to manifest the same hateful malignity and venomous spite. The letter is a fine character study of the three poets addressed. Greene drew out the true feature of every distinguishing mark or trait, both mental and moral, of these, his fellow-craftsmen, who, though he did not name them, are asserted to be Marlowe, Nash and Peele. Greene characterized them individually, and twice he collectively admonished them thus, “Base minded men all three of you, if by my miseries ye be not warned,” and, in the concluding part of the letter, “But now return I again to you three, knowing my miseries is to you no news and let me heartily entreat you to be warned by my harmes.”

All of Shakspere’s biographers and commentators aver that Shakspere was not one of the three persons addressed. How then could Chettle’s words bear witness to his (Shakspere’s) civil demeanor or factitious grace in writing. Mr. Fleay stated many years ago (1886) that there was an entire misconception of Chettle’s language that Shakspere was not one of those who took offense. They are expressly stated to have been two of the three authors addressed by Greene. The recent Shakespearean writers have evidently mistaken Chettle’s placation of Nash or Peele, or either of the three play-makers addressed by Greene, it does not matter which, for an apology to Shakspere, who was not the object of Greene’s satire or Chettle’s placation for were not Nash, Marlowe and Peele each “excellent in the quality he professes?” Had they not lived in an age of compliment they would have merited these complimental phrases of Henry Chettle? For their names were in the trump of fame.

Christopher Marlowe, the first great English poet, was the father of English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse. He is, by general consent, identified with the first person addressed by Greene, “With thee will I first begin, thou famous gracer of tragedians, who hath said in his heart there is no God. Why should thy excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded that thou should give no glory to the giver?” The second person referred to is identifiable with Thomas Nash, “With thee I join, young juvenall, that byting satyrist,” though not with equal accord, as the first with Marlowe, as some few persons prefer to name Thomas Lodge. This predilection for Lodge is based on their having been co-authors in the making of a play (“That lastlie with me together writ a comedie”). This fact, however, signifies very little, for it is generally conceded that Marlowe, Nash, Peele, Lodge and Greene mobilized their literary activities in the production of not a few of the earlier plays called Shakspere’s.

We are convinced that Lodge was not the person addressed by Greene as young juvenall. He was absent from England at the date of Greene’s letter, having left in 1591 and did not return till 1593. Moreover, he had declared his intention long before to write no more for the theatre. In 1589 he vowed “to write no more of that whence shame doth grow.” At Christmas time in 1592 he was in the Straits of Magellan. Born in 1550, Lodge led a virtuous and quiet life. He was seventeen years older than Nash, and four years older than Greene, who would not, in addressing one four years his senior, have used these words, “Sweet boy might I advise thee.” The youthfulness of Nash fits well. He was boyish in appearance. Born in Nov., 1567, he was seven years younger than Greene, and was the youngest member of their fellowship. The mild reproof “for his too much liberty of speech” contained in the letter, justifies the belief that Thomas Nash was referred to as “young juvenall, that byting satyrist, who had vexed scholars with bitter lines.”

The equal unanimity and general consent which identifies the first with Marlowe, identifies the third and last person, who had been co-worker in drama making of the same fellowship, with George Peele, “and thou no less deserving than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferior” driven (as myself) to “extreame shifts, a little have I to say to thee.” Chettle could, however, have bourne witness to Peele “his civil demeanor and factitious grace in writing.” Peele held the situation of city poet and conductor of pageants for the court. His first pageant bears the date of 1585, his earliest known play, “The Arraignment of Paris” was acted before 1584. “Peele was the object of patronage of noblemen for addressing literary tributes for payment. The Earl of Northumberland seems to have presented him with a fee of three pounds. In May, 1591, when Queen Elizabeth visited Lord Burleigh’s seat of Theabald, Peele was employed to compose certain speeches addressed to the queen, which deftly excused the absence of the master of the house, by describing in blank verse in his ‘Polyphymnic,’ the honorable triumph at tilt. Her majesty was received by the Right Honorable the Earl of Cumberland.” In January, 1595, George Peele, Master of Arts, presented his “Tale of Troy” to the great Lord Treasurer through a simple messenger, his eldest daughter, “necessities servant.” Peele was a practised rhetorician, who embellished his writings with elegantly adorned sentences and choice fancies. He was a man of polished intellect and social gifts, and possessed of a very winsome personality. “His soft, caressing woman voice” low, sweet and soothing, may have had a considerable effect upon Chettle, and could not have been unduly honored by Chettle’s apology in witnessing “his civil demeanor and factitious grace in writing.”

As Henry Chettle had been brought into some discredit by the publication of Greene’s celebrated letter, and his admission that he re-wrote it, we know that the letter must have been surreptitiously procured as evidenced by its contents. The letter is as authentic, doubtless, as any garbled or mutilated document may be; but Chettle’s foolish statement contained in his preface to “Kind Hearts Dreams” has awakened the suspicion, in regard to the authorship of “Groats Worth of Wit,” that, while the letter (or as much as Chettle chose to have published) is genuine, “I put something out,” the pamphlet “Groats Worth of Wit” is spurious, and evidently not the work of Robert Greene. Who can be content to believe Chettle’s statement that Greene placed this criminating letter in the hands of printers, or that it was left in their hands by others at his request? A private letter, written to three friends, who have been co-workers in drama-making, calling them to repentance, charging one (Marlowe) with diabolical atheism! This was a very serious charge in those times, when persons were burnt at the stake for professing their unbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity.

Chettle was the first to make current the charge of atheism against Marlowe, the one of them that took offense, and whose acquaintance he (Chettle) did not seek. Chettle reverenced Marlowe’s learning, and would have his readers believe that he did greatly mitigate Greene’s charge, but the contents of the letter as transcribed by Chettle and printed by the bookmakers, discredit Chettle’s statement, as the charge of diabolical atheism was not struck out, and was, if proven, punishable by death.

There is no evidence adduced to show that Marlowe was indignant because of Greene’s admonition, contained in a private letter written to three play-makers of his own fellowship, but resented the public charge of atheism, for which he, Chettle, as accessory and transcriber, was chiefly responsible in making public. We know that Marlowe was in retreat at the time of his death at Deptford, for in May, 1593, following the publication of Greene’s letter printed at the end of the pamphlet, “Groats Worth of Wit,” the Privy Council issued a warrant for Marlowe’s arrest. A copy of Marlowe’s blasphemies, so called, was sent to Her Highness, and endorsed by one Richard Bame, who was soon after hanged at Tyburn for some loathsome crime. But a few days later, before Marlowe’s apprehension, they wrote in the parish-book at Deptford on June 1st “Christopher Marlowe slain by Francis Archer.” At the age of thirty, he, “the first and greatest inheritor of unfulfilled renown,” went where “Orpheus and where Homer are.”

The loss to English letters in Marlowe’s untimely death cannot be measured, nevertheless, England of that day was spared the infamy of his execution. However, the zealots of those days found a subject, in Francis Kett, a fellow of Marlowe’s college, who was burnt in Norwich in 1589 for heresy. Unlike Marlowe, he was a pious, God-fearing man who fell a victim to the strenuousity with which he maintained his religious convictions. Another subject was found in the person of Bartholomew Leggett, who was burnt at the stake for stating his confession of faith, which was identical with the religious belief of Thomas Jefferson and President William H. Taft. The times were thirsty for the blood of daring spirits. The shores of the British Isles were strewn with the wreckage of the great Armada. In Germany, Kepler (he of the three laws) was struggling to save his poor old mother from being burnt at the stake for a witch. In Italy, they burnt Bruno at the stake while Galileo played recanter.

That Marlowe was one of the play-makers who felt incensed at the publication of Greene’s letter admits of no doubt. He most likely would have resented the public charge of atheism. “With neither of them that take offense was I acquainted (writes Chettle) and with one of them (Marlowe) I care not if I never be.” In such blood bespattered times, Chettle could and did write “for the first (Marlowe) whose learning I reverence, and at the perusing of Greene’s book (letter) struck out what in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ, or had it been true yet to publish it was intolerable.” Chettle’s conscience must have been a little seared, for he omitted to strike out the only statement of fact contained in the letter, which could have imperiled the life of Marlowe! The letter evidences the fact that all of that portion referring to Marlowe was not garbled, and that there was not any intolerable something struck out, but instead, as transcriber for the pirate publisher, he retained the fulminating passage, “had said in his heart there is no God.” Notwithstanding Chettle’s statement, we are of the opinion that the passage about Marlowe was printed in its integrity.

Chettle’s having failed to omit the charge of diabolical atheism, reveals the strong personal antipathy he had for Marlowe. Few there are who set up Marlowe as claimant for Chettle’s apology, and fewer still, who would not regard him worthy of the compliment, “factitious grace in writing,” and whose acquaintance Chettle did not seek, but whose fascinating personality and exquisite feeling for poetry was the admiration of Drayton and Chapman, who were among the noblest, as well as the best loved, of their time. George Chapman was among the few men whom Ben Jonson said he loved. Anthony Wood described him as “a person of most reverend aspect, religious and temperate qualities.” Chapman sought conference with the soul of Marlowe:

Henry Chettie’s act of placation is offered to one of two of the three play-makers addressed, and not to the actor referred to, who was not one of those addressed; therefore, “upstart crow” could not have been the recipient of Chettle’s apology, or placation, in whose behalf (“upstart crow”) Chettle retracts nothing. The following reference is to one of the offended playmakers pointed at in Greene’s address, whom Chettle wishes to placate, “The other whome at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had—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 excellent in the qualities he professes; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty and his factitious grace in writing that approves his art.” With the votaries of Shakspere, however, these words of Chettle chime with their dreams of fancy; for there is a pre-inclination and a predetermination to read Shakspere into them, as if the words of Greene and Chettle were not accessible to all inquirers—words that can be made to comprehend only one of the two playmakers that take offense, who must be one of the three (Marlowe, Nash and Peele) admonished by Greene, and who were of his fellowship. The reader, after studying Elizabethan literature and history, is content to believe that the least celebrated of the three playmakers pointed at in Greene’s address (Marlowe, Nash and Peele), stood high enough in the scale of literary merit in 1592 to be the recipient of Chettle’s praise.

The word “quality,” in “excellent in the quality he professes,” is by the fantastically inclined, made to yield a convenient connotation, but in the ordinary and contextural meaning of the word, may embrace all that makes or helps to make any person such as he is. Are these words of Chettle written in 1592 when the theatre was lying under a social ban, and the actor was still a social outcast, identifiable with a vagabond at law, or with Thomas Nash, who took his bachelor’s degree at Cambridge in 1585? “In the autumn of 1592, Nash was the guest of Archbishop Whitgift at Crogdon, whither the household had retired for fear of the plague, and, as the official antagonist of Martin Marprelate was constrained to keep up such a character as would enable divers of worship to report his uprightness of dealing,” he certainly was entitled to commendation for his “factitious grace in writing.” The appropriation of the complimentary remarks of Chettle on Nash, or any one of the three playmakers addressed, to Shakspere, who was not one of those addressed, and therefore, could not have been the recipient of Chettle’s apology, so called, is one of the fancies in which critics of the highest reputation have indulged. There is nothing equal to this in all the annals of literature, unless it be “Cicero’s famous letter to Lucretius, in which he asks the historian to lie a little in his favor in recording the events of his consulship, for the sake of making him a greater man.”

Chettle lost no time in transcribing the posthumous letter. Doubts as to “Groats Worth of Wit” were entertained at the time of publication. Some suspected Nash to have had a hand in the authorship, others accused Chettle. Nash did take offense at the report that it was his. Its publication caused much excitement and the rumor went abroad that the pamphlet was a forgery. “Other news I am advised of,” writes Nash, in an epistle prefixed to the second edition of “Pierce-penniless,” “that a scald, trivial, lying pamphlet called ‘Greene’s Groats Worth of Wit’ is given out to be of my doing. God never have care of my soul, but utterly renounce me, if the least word or syllable in it proceeded from my pen, or if I were any way privy to the writing or printing of it.” We regard these words confirmatory of the fact that “Groats Worth of Wit” is not a work of unquestioned authenticity, and, furthermore, that Nash did not believe it the work of Robert Greene. Prima facie, it is spurious, for Nash spoke in high praise of Greene’s writings. He neither would, nor could, have used the words “scald, trivial, lying” of a genuine work of Robert Greene, whose writings were held in high favor by all classes. Nash could not have taken offense at the allusion of Greene, which was rather complimental, though personal, and not intended for publication; but it did, however, contain some slight mixture of censure,—“Sweet boy, might I advise thee, get not many enimies by bitter words. Blame not scholars vexed with sharp lines if they reprove thy too much liberty of reproof.” Nash was very angry, but only because Greene’s letter was given to the public by Chettle, who felt constrained to placate “that byting satyrist,” whose raillery he had reason to fear, by bearing witness to “his civil demeanor and factitious grace in writing.”

Votaries of Shakspere may take their choice of one of the three addressed. Which one shall be named? What matter it to them, with Shakspere barred, whether Nash, Peele or Marlowe be named, the least of whom was worthy of Chettle’s commendation?

There is not a crumb of evidence adduced for Shakspere as a putative author of plays until 1598, and then only in the variable and shadowy Elizabethan title page. Chettle terms Greene “the only comedian of a vulgar writer,” meaning he was a writer in the vernacular tongue or common language, a fact which proves Shakspere’s nihility as playmaker in 1592. Now the fact of the matter is that this “lying pamphlet,” so called by Nash, was not authored by Greene. It should be called, “Chettle’s Groats Worth of Wit,” for the pamphlet proper is from his pen or some other hack writer’s. The letter alone was authored by Greene, addressed as a private letter to three fellow poets, and surreptitiously procured for Chettle and transcribed by him. Chettle writes, “I had only in the copy this share—it was ill written—licensed it must be, ere it could be printed, which could never be if it might not be read. To be brief I writ it over and as nearly as I could follow the copy. Only, in that letter I put something out, but in the whole book, not a word in, for I protest it was all Greene’s, not mine, nor Master Nash’s, as some unjustly have affirmed.”

The letter and pamphlet both in Greene’s handwriting would have been the best possible evidence of the genuineness of its contents and legibility. Chettle’s not offering in evidence the original letter is strong presumptive proof of the commission of a forgery. He, if not the chief actor in the offense, was an accessory after the fact, and should, in his appeal to the public in defense of his reputation, have brought forward the pamphlet itself, embracing the whole matter, for examination and comparison; for we feel satisfied that such an examination would prove that the celebrated letter was authored and in the handwriting of Robert Greene, and not so ill written that it could not be read by the printers, who must have been familiar with the handwriting of the largest contributor of the prose literature of his day. For ourselves, what we have adduced convinces us that the tract, “Groats Worth of Wit,” was authored and written by one of Philip Henslowe’s hacks, presumedly, Henry Chettle, a literary dead beat, and an indigent of many imprisonments, who was always importuning the old play-broker for money. Since the tract, “Groats Worth of Wit,” was in Chettle’s own handwriting, he strove to fool the printers by transcribing Greene’s letter and binding both together, through that “disguised hood” to fool the public. Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, “You may fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” It is possible that Chettle may have fooled some of the people of his own generation some of the time, but in later times, through the misapprehension of his quoted words, he has fooled the Shaksperolators all of the time. Chettle, however, would not permit the letter to come forward in its integrity and speak for itself, disclosing the nature of the intolerable something “stroke out,” which piques our curiosity, but not in anticipation of any of those indecencies that taint the writings of Ben Jonson and the work of many writers of that age, not excepting Shakespeare, who is also amenable in no slight degree to the charge of the same coarseness of taste which excites repulsion in the feelings of Leo Tolstoy.

The fact of the whole matter appears to be that Henry Chettle, wishing to profit financially by the great commercial value of Robert Greene’s name, was accessory to the embezzlement and the commission of a forgery, and was the silent beneficiary of the fraud. The mutual connection of hack writer and pirate publisher is so obvious that a jury of discerning students, with the exhibits, presented together with the presumptive proofs and inferential evidence contextured in both letter and preface, should easily confirm our opinion of the incredibleness of Chettle’s statements contained in the preface to “Kind Hearts Dreams.” The evidence of their falsity is, prima-facie, destitute of credible attestations.

We are made to see, in our survey of the age of Elizabeth, much that is in striking contrast with the spirit and activities of our time. There is a notable contrast between the public play house of those days, where no respectable woman ever appeared, and with the theatre of our day—the rival of the church as a moral force. In the elder time “the permanent and persistent dishonor attached to the stage,” and the stigma attached to the poets who wrote for the public playhouse, attached in like manner to the regular frequenters of public theatres, the majority of whom could neither read nor write, but belonged chiefly to the vicious and idle class of the population. At all the theatres, according to Malone, it appears that noise and show were what chiefly attracted an audience in spite of the reputed author. There was clamor for a stage reeking with blood and anything ministering to their unchaste appetites. The spectacular actor and clown was relatively advantaged, as he could say much more than was set down for him. Kemp’s extemporizing powers of histrionic buffoonery, gagging, and grimacing, paid the running expenses of the playhouse.

“It must be borne in mind that actors then occupied an inferior position in society, and that in many quarters even the vocation of a dramatic writer was considered scarcely respectable.” Ben Jonson’s letter to the Earl of Salisbury, lets us see very clearly that he regarded play writing as a degradation. We transcribe it in part as follows:

We see how keenly Jonson felt the disgrace, not on account of the charge of reflecting on some one in a play in which they had federated, for he protested his own and Chapman’s innocence, but he felt that their degradation lay chiefly in writing stage poetry, for drama-making was regarded as a degrading kind of employment, which poets accepted who were struggling for the meanest necessities of life, and were driven by poverty to their production, and to the slave-driving play-brokers, many of whom became very rich by making the flesh and blood of poor play-writers their maw.

In looking into Philip Henslowe’s old note-book, we see how the grasping play-brokers of the olden time speculated on the poor play-writers necessities, when plays were not regarded as literature; when the most strenuous and laborious of dramatic writers for the theatre could not hope to gain a competence by the pen alone, but wrote only for bread; when play-writers were in the employ of the shareholding actors, as hired men; and when their employers, the actors, were social outcasts who, in order to escape the penalty for the infraction of the law against vagabondage, were nominally retained by some nobleman. In further proof of the degradation which was attached to the production of dramatic composition, “when Sir Thomas Bodley, about the year 1600, extended and remodeled the old university library and gave it his name, he declared that no such riff-raff as play-books should ever find admittance to it.” “When Ben Jonson treated his plays as literature by publishing them in 1616 as his works, he was ridiculed for his pretentions, while Webster’s care in the printing of his plays laid himself open to the charge of pedantry.”