Part i

(_N. S. S._ 1874), 77. Herein he speaks of himself as ‘courting it now and than’, when he was ‘yong, almost thirtie yeeres agoe’, and calls on a number of poets under fanciful names to sing the dead queen’s praise. They are Daniel, Warner, Chapman (Coryn), Jonson (our English Horace), Shakespeare (Melicert), Drayton (Coridon), Lodge (Musidore), Dekker (Antihorace), Marston (Moelibee), and Petowe (?). Chettle was therefore alive in 1603, but he is spoken of as dead in Dekker’s _Knight’s Conjuring_ (1607).

PLAYS

_The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. 1598_

_The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. 1598_

For Chettle’s relation to these two plays, see s.v. Munday.

_Patient Grissel. 1600_

With Dekker (q.v.) and Haughton.

_1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. 1600_

With Day (q.v.).

_Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1602_

With Dekker (q.v.), Heywood, Smith, and Webster, as _Lady Jane, or The Overthrow of Rebels_, but whether anything of Chettle’s survives in the extant text is doubtful.

_Hoffman_ or _A Revenge for a Father. 1602 <_

_S. R._ 1630, Feb. 26 (Herbert). ‘A play called Hoffman the Revengfull ffather.’ _John Grove_ (Arber, iv. 229).

1631. The Tragedy of Hoffman or A Reuenge for a Father, As it hath bin diuers times acted with great applause, at the Phenix in Druery-lane. _I. N. for Hugh Perry._ [Epistle to Richard Kiluert, signed ‘Hvgh Perry’.]

_Editions_ by H. B. L[eonard] (1852), R. Ackermann (1894), and J. S. Farmer (1913, _S. F. T._).--_Dissertations_: N. Delius, _C.’s H. und Shakespeare’s Hamlet_ (1874, _Jahrbuch_, ix. 166); A. H. Thorndike, _The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays_ (1902, _M. L. A._ xvii. 125).

Henslowe paid Chettle, on behalf of the Admiral’s, £1 in earnest of ‘a Danyshe tragedy’ on 7 July 1602, and 5_s._ in part payment for a tragedy of ‘Howghman’ on 29 Dec. It seems natural to take the latter, and perhaps also the former, entry as relating to this play, although it does not bear Chettle’s name on the title-page. But its completion was presumably later than the termination of Henslowe’s record in 1603. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 226) rightly repudiates the suggestion of Fleay, i. 70, 291, that we are justified in regarding _Hoffman_ the unnamed tragedy of Chettle and Heywood in Jan. 1603, for which a blank can of course afford no evidence. But ‘the Prince of the burning crowne’ is referred to in Kempe’s _Nine Daies Wonder_, 22, not as a ‘play’, but as a suggested theme for a ballad writer.

_Doubtful and Lost Plays_

Chettle’s hand has been suggested in the anonymous _Trial of Chivalry_ (_vide infra_) and _The Weakest Goeth to the Wall_.

The following is a complete list of the plays, wholly or partly by Chettle, recorded in Henslowe’s diary.

(_a_) _Plays for the Admiral’s, 1598–1603_

(i), (ii) _1, 2 Robin Hood._

With Munday (q.v.), Feb.–Mar. and Nov. 1598.

(iii) _The Famous Wars of Henry I and the Prince of Wales._

With Dekker (q.v.) and Drayton, Mar. 1598.

(iv), (v) _1, 2 Earl Godwin and His Three Sons._

With Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson, March-June 1598.

(vi) _Pierce of Exton._

With Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson, April 1598, but apparently not finished.

(vii), (viii) _1, 2 Black Bateman of the North._

With Wilson, and for