Editing Henry Chettle (section)

==''The Groat's-Worth of Wit''==
[[File:Kind-Hearts-Dream-Henry-Chettle.png|thumb|Title page of ''Kind Hearts Dream'' by Henry Chettle]]In 1592 ''[[Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit]]'', supposedly the work of the recently deceased, and very popular, [[Robert Greene (16th century)|Robert Greene]], was published, having been entered in the register of the Stationer's Company "at the peril of Henry Chettle". This contained a passage criticising various playwrights, which offended at least two contemporary writers, one probably the alleged "atheist" [[Christopher Marlowe]] and the other possibly [[William Shakespeare]]. Chettle was accused of writing the work under Greene's name. He denied the charge in the preface to his ''Kind Heart's Dream'', published later that year:

<blockquote>About three months since died M. Robert Greene, 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 willfully 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.</blockquote>

The theory that ''Greene's Groatsworth'' is a forgery by Chettle has been both supported and challenged by scholars. In 1935 Harold Jenkins attributed the work to Greene, not Chettle.<ref>Harold Jenkins, "On the Authenticiy of Greene's Groatsworth of Wit and The Repentance of Robert Greene," The Review of English Studies 11 (1935): 33.</ref> However, a pioneering 1969 computer-aided stylometric analysis by Warren B. Austin firmly attributed it to Chettle. Austin's views were challenged in 2006 by Richard Westley.<ref>Richard Westley, "Computing Error: Reassessing Austin's Study of Groats-worth of Wit," Literary and Linguistic Computing 21 (2006): 363-78.</ref>