Home > Henry Chettle

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. 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 deny any share in that pamphlet, and apologised to three people (one of them thought to be William 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 forty-nine pieces.

It is thought Chettle may have been co-author of the Q1 of Romeo and Juliet and there is strong evidence that he was a coauthor of Sir Thomas More.

He seems to have been generally in debt, judging from numerous entries in Philip Henslowe's diary of advances for various purposes, on one occasion ( January 17January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 348 days remaining (349 in leap years) Events 1562 Huguenots were recognized under the Edict of St. 1773 Captain James Cook becomes the first explorer to cross the Antarctic Circl, 1599Events Swedish King Sigismund III Vasa is replaced by his brother Charles IX of Sweden. First reported performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in London. Births February 13 Pope Alexander VII (+ 1667) March 22 Anthony van Dyck, painter (+ 1641) April 2) to pay his expenses in the MarshalseaMarshalsea was a debtor's prison in Southwark, London best known for being the central location in Charles Dickens' book Little Dorrit''. It is not known when the original prison was built but it must have been before 1381 as it is known that it was attac prison, on another ( March 7March 7 is the 66th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (67th in Leap years). There are 299 days remaining. Events 1799 Napoleon I of France captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives. 1848 The Great, 1603Events March 24 Death of Elizabeth I of England her cousin King James VI of Scotland succeeds her uniting the crowns of Scotland and England April 28 Funeral of Elizabeth I of England in Westminster Abbey July 17 or July 19 Sir Walter Raleigh arrested for) to get his play out of pawn. Of the thirteen plays usually attributed to Chettle's sole authorship only one was printed. This was The Tragedy of Hoffmann: or a Revenge for a Father (played 1602; printed 1631), a share in which Mr Fleay assigns to Thomas HeywoodThomas Heywood (died about 1650) was an English dramatist and miscellaneous author. He was born about 1575 in Lincolnshire, and said to have been educated at the University of Cambridge and to have become a fellow of Peterhouse. Heywood is mentioned by Ph. It has been suggested that this piece was put forward as a rival to Shakespeare's HamletThe Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare and one of his most well-known and oft-quoted plays. Written between 1598 and the summer of 1602, this masterpiece of Elizabethan theatre first appeared in print in 1603 in a ver.

One of the plays on which Chettle collaborated is listed as 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 DekkerThomas Dekker (~1570 ~1632) was an Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer. He is thought to have been born in London, but little else is known about his life, apart from the fact that he spent time (including the years 1613-1619) in prison for debt. The fi 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 ten shillings for "mending" the first part of "Robin Hood," - The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, by Anthony Munday; and in the second part, which followed soon after and was printed in 1601, The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntingdon, he collaborated with Munday. Both plays are printed in Robert Dodsley's Select Collection of Old English Plays (ed. William 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 some time before the appearance of Dekker's Knight's Conjurer in 1607, for he is there mentioned as a recent arrival in limbo.

Hofmann was edited by H Barrett Lennard (1852) and by Richard Ackermann (Bamberg, 1894).