Henry Chettle

Henry Chettle (?1564 - 1607?) was an English poet, dramatist, and miscellaneous writer.

Life

About Shakespeare
William Shakespeare Shakespeare's life Religion • Sexuality Bibliography Collaborations • Attribution Criticism Reputation • Influence World Bibliography Folger Shakespeare Library Books on Shakespeare
Poems
Shakespeare's Sonnets Shakespearean sonnet Petrach vs. Shakespeare "A Lover's Complaint" "Venus and Adonis" "The Rape of Lucrece" "The Phoenix and the Turtle"
Plays
Chronology • Early texts First Folio • Second Folio False Folio • Style
Comedies
The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Merry Wives of Windsor Measure for Measure The Comedy of Errors Much Ado About Nothing Love's Labour's Lost A Midsummer Night's Dream The Merchant of Venice As You Like It The Taming of the Shrew All's Well That Ends Well Twelfth Night
Histories
King John • Richard II Henry IV, Part 1 • Part 2 Henry V • Henry VI, Part 1 Henry VI, Part 2 • Part 3 Richard III • Henry VIII
Tragedies
Troilus and Cressida Coriolanus • Titus Andronicus Romeo and Juliet'' Timon of Athens Julius Caesar Macbeth • Hamlet King Lear • Othello Anthony and Cleopatra
Romances
Pericles, Prince of Tyre Cymbeline • The Winter's Tale The Tempest The Two Noble Kinsmen
Editors
Rowe • Pope • Theobald Johnson • Steevens • Malone Chalmers
Contemporaries
Elizabeth I • James I Richard Barnfield Beaumont and Fletcher Geo. Chapman • Henry Chettle Robert Davenport Tho. Dekker • Michael Drayton Thomas Freeman • John Ford Tho. Heywood • Hugh Holland Ben Jonson • Thomas Kyd John Lyly • Richard Linche Gervase Markham Christopher Marlowe John Marston • Tho. Middleton Anthony Munday • Tho. Nashe George Peele • William Percy Walter Raleigh • William Rowley Cyril Tourneur • John Webster Geo. Whetstone • Mary Wroth Elizabethan miscellanies
In performance
Shakespeare's Globe Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford Shakespeare Festival Theatre companies Film and TV adaptations BBC Television Shakespeare
Miscellaneous
Shakespeare Apocrypha Authorship question • History Jubilee • Bardolatry Shakespeare's Birthplace Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare garden

Overview

Very little is known of Chettle. He edited R. Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit (1592), is believed to have written 13 and collaborated in 35 plays, and also wrote 2 satires" Kind Harts Dreame (1593) and Pierre Plainnes Prentship (1595). He was imprisoned for debt in 1599. Among his own plays, which have considerable merit, is Hoffmann, which has been reprinted, and he had a hand in Patient Grissill (1603) (which may have influenced Shakespeare in the Merry Wives of Windsor), The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, and Jane Shore.

Youth

Chettle was the son of Robert Chettle, a London dyer. He was apprenticed in 1577 to a stationer, and in 1591 became a partner with William Hoskins and John Danter.

Career

In 1592 he published Robert Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit. In the preface to his Kind Herts Dreame (end of 1592) he found it necessary to disavow any share in that pamphlet, and incidentally he apologized to 3 persons (1 of them commonly identified with Shakespeare) who had been abused in it. Piers Plainnes Seaven Yeres Prentiship, the story of a fictitious apprenticeship in Crete and Thrace, appeared in 1595.

As early as 1598 Francis Meres includes Chettle in his Palladis Tamia as one of the “best for comedy,” and between that year and 1603 he wrote or collaborated in some 49 pieces. He seems to have been generally in debt, judging from numerous entries in Henslowe’s diary of advances for various purposes, on one occasion (17th of January 1599) to pay his expenses in the Marshalsea prison, on another (7th of March 1603) to get his play out of pawn.

Of the 13 plays usually attributed to Chettle’s sole authorship only a single play was printed. This was The Tragedy of Hoffmann; or. A revenge for a father (played 1602; printed 1631), a share in which Fleay assigns to Thomas Heywood. It has been suggested that this piece was put forward as a rival to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Among the plays in which Chettle had a share is catalogued The Danish Tragedy, which was probably either identical with Hoffmann or another version of the same story. The Pleasant Comedie of Patient Grissill (1599), in which he collaborated with Thomas Dekker and William Haughton, was reprinted by the Shakespeare Society in 1841. It contains the lyric “Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers,” which is probably Dekker’s.

In November 1599 Chettle received 10 shillings for mending the 1st part of Robin Hood, i.e. The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, by Anthony Munday; and in the 2nd part, which followed soon after and was printed in 1601, he collaborated with Munday. Both plays are printed in Dodsley’s Select Collection of Old English Plays (edited by W.C. Hazlitt, vol. viii.).

In 1603 Chettle published England’s Mourning Garment, in which are included some verses alluding to the chief poets of the time.

His death took place before the appearance of Dekker’s Knight’s Conjurer in 1607, for he is there mentioned as a recent arrival in limbo.

Recognition

Hoffmann was edited by H. B(arrett) L(ennard) (1852) and by Richard Ackermann (Bamberg, 1894).

Chettle's poetry was included in the New Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1950.

Publications

Poetry

• Englandes Mourning Garment. London: [E. Short?], for Thomas Millington, 1603.

Plays

• The downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington (by Anthony Munday; revised by Chettle). London: William Leake, 1601.
• The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington (with Anthony Munday). London: R. Bradock for William Leake, 1601.
• The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissil (with Thomas Dekker & William Houghton). London: 1603; London: Shakespeare Society, 1811; Tudor Facsimile Texts, 1911.
• The Tragedy of Hoffman; or, A revenge for a father. London: Iohn Norton, for Hugh Perry, 1631.
• The Blind-Beggar of Bednal Green (with John Day). London: R. Pollard, and Tho. Dring, 1659.

Novel

• Piers Plainnes Seaven Yeres Prentiship. London: I. Danter for Thomas Gosson, 1595.

Non-fiction

• Kind-harts dreame. Conteining five apparitions. London: J. Wolfe & J. Danter, for William Wright, 1593.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

List of plays

1. The Valiant Welchman, by Michael Drayton and Henry Chettle, February 1597-8. Printed in 1615.
2. Earl Goodwin and his Three Sons, Part I, by Michael Drayton, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, and Robert Wilson, March 1598. Not printed.
3. Earl Goodwin, Part II, by the same authors, and under the same date in Henslowe's papers. Not printed.
4. Piers of Exton, by the same authors, same date. Not printed.
5. Black Batman of the North, Part I, by Henry Chettle, April 1598. Not printed.
6. Black Batman of the North, Part II, by Henry Chettle and Robert Wilson. Same date. Not printed. It is mentioned in Henslowe's diary in April 1598. No extant copies of the play are known.
7. The Play of a Woman, by Henry Chettle, July 1598. Not printed.
8. The Conquest of Brute with the first finding of the Bath, by John Day, Henry Chettle, and John Singer. Same date. Not printed.
9. Hot Anger Soon Cold, by Henry Porter, Henry Chettle, and Ben Jonson, August 1598. Not printed.
10. Catiline's Conspiracy, by Robert Wilson and Henry Chettle. Same Date. Not printed.
11. Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver, by Henry Chettle, September 1598. Not printed.
12. Aeneas' Revenge, with the Tragedy of Polyphemus, by Henry Chettle, February 1598-9. Not printed.
13. Agamemnon, by Henry Chettle and Thomas Dekker, June 1599. Not printed. Malone thought that this was the same play as "Troilus and Cressida" before mentioned.
14. The Stepmother's Tragedy, by Henry Chettle, August 1599. Not printed.
15. Patient Grissel, by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle, and William Haughton, December 1599. Printed in 1603.
16. The Arcadian Virgin, by Henry Chettle and William Haughton. Same date. Not printed. Mentioned in Philip Henslowe's diary in December 1599.
17. Damon and Pithias, by Henry Chettle, January 1599-1600. Not printed.
18. The Seven Wise Masters, by Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, William Haughton, and John Day, March 1599-1600. Not printed.
19. The Golden Ass and Cupid and Psyche, by Thomas Dekker, John Day, and Henry Chettle, April 1600. Not printed.
20. The Wooing of Death, by Henry Chettle. Same date. Not printed.
21. The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, by Henry Chettle and John Day. Same date. Printed in 1659.
22. All is not Gold that Glisters, by Samuel Rowley and Henry Chettle, March 1600. Not printed.
23. Sebastian, King of Portugal, by Henry Chettle and Thomas Dekker, April 1601. Not printed.
24. Cardinal Wolsey, Part I, by Henry Chettle, August 1601. Not printed.
25. Cardinal Wolsey, Part II, by Henry Chettle, May 1602. Not printed.
26. The Orphan's Tragedy, by Henry Chettle, September 1601. Not printed.
27. Too Good to be True, by Henry Chettle, Richard Hathwaye, and Wentworth Smith, November 1601. Not printed.
28. Love Parts Friendship, by Henry Chettle and Wentworth Smith, May 1602. Not printed.
29. Tobyas, by Henry Chettle. Same date. Not printed.
30. Jeptha, by Henry Chettle. Same date. Not printed.
31. A Danish Tragedy, by Henry Chettle. Same date. Not printed.
32. Femelanco, by Henry Chettle and ---- Robinson, September 1602. Not printed.
33. Lady Jane, Part I, by Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, Wentworth Smith, and John Webster, November 1602. Not printed.
34. Lady Jane, Part II, by the same authors, Smith excepted. Same date. Not printed.
35. The London Florentine, Part I, by Thomas Heywood and Henry Chettle, December 1602. Not printed.
36. The London Florentine, Part II, by the same authors. Same date. Not printed.
37. The Tragedy of Hoffman, by Henry Chettle. Same date. Printed in 1631.
38. Jane Shore, by Henry Chettle and John Day, March 1602-3. Not printed.

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language playwrights

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Chettle, Henry". Encyclopædia Britannica. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 113.  Wikisource, Web, Dec. 24, 2017.

External links

Poems

• Henry Chettle at Poetry Nook (2 poems)
• "Englands Mourning Garment"

About

• Henry Chettle in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Chettle, Henry in the Dictionary of National Biography
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at "Chettle, Henry"