I confess that I did not know that George Peele, M.A., of Oxford, had ever been a player, and a successful player.  But one may ask,—­in 1592 did George Peele “profess the quality” of an actor; was he then a professional actor, and only an occasional playwright?  If so, I am not apt to believe that Greene seriously advised him not to put faith in the members of his own profession.  From them, as a successful member of their profession (a profession which, as Greene complains, “exploited” dramatic authors), Peele stood in no danger.  Thus I do not see how Chettle’s professional actor, reported to have facetious grace in writing, can be identified with Peele.  The identification seems to me impossible.  Peele and Marlowe, in 1592, were literary gentlemen; Lodge, in 1592, was filibustering, though a literary man; he had not yet become a physician.  In 1592, none of the three had any profession but that of literature, so far as I am aware.  The man who had a special profession, and also wrote, was not one of these three; nor was he Tom Nash, a mere literary gentleman, pamphleteer and playwright.

I do not know the name of any one of the three to whom Greene addressed the Groatsworth, though the atheistic writer of tragedies seems meant, and disgracefully meant, for Marlowe.  I only know that Chettle is expressing his regrets for Greene’s language to some one whom he applauded as to his exercise of his profession; and who, according to “divers of worship,” had also “facetious grace in writing.”  “Myself have seen him no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes”; whether or not this means that Chettle has seen his excellence in his profession, I cannot tell for certain; but Chettle’s remark is, at least, contrasted with what he gives merely from report—­“the facetious grace in writing” of the man in question.  His writing is not part of his profession, so he is not, in 1592 (I conceive), Lodge, Peele, Marlowe, or Nash.

Who, then, is this mysterious personage?  Malone, Dyce, Steevens, Collier, Halliwell-Phillipps, Knight, Sir Sidney Lee, Messrs. Gosse and Garnett, and Mr. J. C. Collins say that he is Will Shakspere.  But Mr. Fleay and Mr. Castle, whose “mind” is “legal,” have pointed out that this weird being cannot be Shake-scene (or Shakspere, if Greene meant Shakspere), attacked by Greene.  For Chettle says that in the Groatsworth of Wit “a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken.”  The mysterious one is, therefore, one of the playwrights addressed by Greene.  Consequently all the followers of Malone, who wrote before Messrs. Fleay and Castle, are mistaken; and what Mr. Greenwood has to say about Sir Sidney Lee, J. C. Collins, and Dr. Garnett, and Mr. Gosse, in the way of moral reprobation, may be read by the curious in his pages. {305a}

Meanwhile, if we take Chettle to have been a strict grammarian, by his words—­“a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken,” Will is excluded; the letter was most assuredly not written to him.  But I, whose mind is not legal, am not certain that Chettle does not mean that the letter, written to divers play-makers, was by one or two makers of plays offensively taken.