In discussing contemporary allusions to William Shakspere or Shakespeare (or however you spell the name), I have not relied on Chettle’s remarks (in Kind-Hart’s Dreame, 1592) concerning Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit.  Chettle speaks of it, saying, “in which a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken.”  It appears that by “one or two” Chettle means two.  “With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted” (at the time when he edited the Groatsworth), “and with one of them I care not if I never be.”  We do not know who “the Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance,” addressed by Greene, were.  They are usually supposed to have been Marlowe, Peele, and Lodge, or Nash.  We do not know which of the two who take offence is the man with whom Chettle did not care to be acquainted.  Of “the other,” according to Chettle, “myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes” (that is, “in his profession,” as we say), “besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty; and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art.”

Speaking from his own observation, Chettle avers that the person of whom he speaks is civil in his demeanour, and (apparently) that he is “excellent in the quality he professes”—­in his profession.  Speaking on the evidence of “divers of worship,” the same man is said to possess “facetious grace in writing.”  Had his writings been then published, Chettle, a bookish man, would have read them and formed his own opinion.  Works of Lodge, Peele, and Marlowe had been published.  Writing is not “the quality he professes,” is not the “profession” of the man to whom Chettle refers.  On the other hand, the profession of Greene’s “Quondam acquaintance” Was writing, “they spend their wits in making Plays.”  Thus the man who wrote, but whose profession was not that of writing, does not, so far, appear to have been one of those addressed by Greene.  It seems undeniable that Greene addresses gentlemen who are “playmakers,” who “spend their wits in making Plays,” and who are not actors; for Greene’s purpose is to warn them against the rich, ungrateful actors.  If Greene’s friends, at the moment when he wrote, were, or if any one of them then was, by profession an actor, Greene’s warning to him against actors, directed to an actor, is not, to me, intelligible.  But Mr. Greenwood writes, “As I have shown, George Peele was one of the playwrights addressed by Greene, and Peele was a successful player as well as playwright, and might quite truly have been alluded to both as having ‘facetious grace in writing,’ and being ’excellent in the quality he professed,’ that is, as a professional actor.” {304a}