SOURCE: Erne, Lukas. “Biography and Mythography: Rereading Chettle's Alleged Apology to Shakespeare.” English Studies 79, no. 5 (September 1998): 430-40.

In the following essay, Erne denies claims that Chettle apologized to Shakespeare for Greene's attacks.

Our image of Shakespeare at the beginning of his dramatic career in London is strongly shaped by the oft-quoted passages from Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592, entered in the Stationers' Register on 20 September 1592) and Chettle's ‘Epistle dedicatory’ prefacing his Kind-Harts Dreame (no date, Stationers' Register: 8 December 1592). Their importance can hardly be overstated. The former establishes Shakespeare's presence in London as both actor and playwright of considerable renown. Greene sets two groups of people in opposition to each other, the university-trained playwrights and the actors. Whereas the former are called ‘gentlemen’ according to the rank to which their university degree entitled them, the latter, and among them Shakespeare, are termed ‘rude groomes’, ‘Apes’, ‘Puppets … that spake from our...