leaving many papers in sundry booksellers’ hands, among other his Groatsworth of Wit, in which a letter written to divers play-makers is offensively by one or two of them taken, and because on the dead they cannot be avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceits a living author . . . With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be. The other, whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that, as I have moderated the heat of living writers and might have used my own discretion (especially in such a case, the author being dead), 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 than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art.
Note. It appears that Marlowe and Shakespeare, personally or through their friends, had resented the allusions in Greene’s Groatsworth, posthumously published under the editorship of Chettle. The playmaker with whom Chettle does not wish to be acquainted is almost certainly Marlowe; and the other, whose ‘uprightness of dealing’ and ‘facetious grace in writing’ Chettle praises, is undoubtedly Shakespeare.
VIII. SHAKESPEARE’S FORMAL DEBUT AS A POET (1598).
Dedication of Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton.
To the Right Honorable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield.
