Henry Chettle

Henry Chettle (* around 1560; † around 1607) was an English playwright and versatile author of the Elizabethan era and very popular in his day.

Henry Chettle was the son of a dyer in London and from 1577 as an apprentice to a book publisher (in the Stationers Company ). In 1584 he finished his apprenticeship and in 1591 he became a partner of two other publishers, William Hoskins and John Danter. He worked with writers such as Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe (with whom he had already worked in the late 1580s) and published Greene's Groatsworth of Witte in 1592 after his death (some suspected him to be a co-author). It describes a person who is mostly identified with William Shakespeare , disparagingly as a rising crow and scene-shaker with a tiger heart , while in his satire Kind-Harts Dreame from 1592 Chettle praises Shakespeare. These references show his connection to playwrights, and after failures as a publisher, he eventually switched to writing plays himself.

He initially had a reputation as a comedy writer ( e.g. Piers Plainnes Seaven Years Prentiship , 1595) and Francis Meres named him one of the best English comedy writers in 1598. From 1598 to 1603 he is said to have been involved in 49 plays, only five of which have been published and preserved. He worked with Anthony Munday (The death of Robert, Earl of Huntington and The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, both 1601), Thomas Dekker (The pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill 1603) and John Day (The blind beggar of Bednall- Green, 1600, published 1659) together, but also with Ben Jonson . The only surviving piece by Chettle as sole author is The Tragedy of Hoffman (published 1631), but he is said to have written about 13 pieces. None of his comedies have survived.

The tragedy of Hoffman is a Thomas Kyd- style revenge tragedy with certain superficial similarities to Shakespeare's Hamlet . Hoffman is the son of an admiral who was executed as a pirate by the Duke of Lüneburg by placing a glowing iron crown on his head. The play begins in a surf cave on the coast, in which Hoffman is stranded as a castaway, together with Otho, the son of the Duke of Lüneburg. Hoffman first murders him, takes on his role with the help of his servant and so sneaks to the court of the Duke of Lüneburg, where he continues his revenge. That he falls in love with the Duchess, the mother of Otho, leads to his downfall. He will be executed in the same way as his father.

His 1603 Englands Mourning Garment is an elegy on Queen Elizabeth .

Web links

• Encyclopedia Britannica
• On Chettle, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Bartleby