For Chettle says that
in the Groatsworth of Wit "a letter, written to divers play-makers,
is offensively by one or two of them taken." The mysterious one is,
therefore, one of the playwrights addressed by Greene. Consequently
all the followers of Malone, who wrote before Messrs. Fleay and
Castle, are mistaken; and what Mr. Greenwood has to say about Sir
Sidney Lee, J. C. Collins, and Dr. Garnett, and Mr. Gosse, in the way
of moral reprobation, may be read by the curious in his pages. {305a}
Meanwhile, if we take Chettle to have been a strict grammarian, by
his words--"a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively
by one or two of them taken," Will is excluded; the letter was most
assuredly not written to HIM. But I, whose mind is not legal, am not
certain that Chettle does not mean that the letter, written to divers
play-makers, was by one or two makers of plays offensively taken.
This opinion seems the less improbable, as the person to whom Chettle
is most apologetic excels in a quality or profession, which is
contrasted with, and is not identical with, "his facetious grace in
writing"--a parergon, or " bye-work," in his case. Whoever this
person was, he certainly was not Marlowe, Peele, Lodge, or Nash. We
must look for some other person who had a profession, and also was
reported to have facetious grace in writing.
If Chettle is to be held tight to grammar, Greene referred to some
one unknown, some one who wrote for the stage, but had another
profession.
Pages:
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272