This opinion seems the less improbable, as the person to whom Chettle is most apologetic excels in a quality or profession, which is contrasted with, and is not identical with, “his facetious grace in writing”—­a parergon, or " bye-work,” in his case.  Whoever this person was, he certainly was not Marlowe, Peele, Lodge, or Nash.  We must look for some other person who had a profession, and also was reported to have facetious grace in writing.

If Chettle is to be held tight to grammar, Greene referred to some one unknown, some one who wrote for the stage, but had another profession.  If Chettle is not to be thus tautly construed, I confess that to myself he seems to have had Shakspere, even Will, in his mind.  For Will in 1592 had “a quality which he professed,” that of an actor; and also (I conceive) was reported to have " facetious grace in writing.”  But other gentlemen may have combined these attributes; wherefore I lay no stress on the statements of Chettle, as if they referred to our Will Shakspere.

Footnotes: 

{0a} E. J. Castle, Shakespeare, Bacon, Jonson, and Greene, pp. 194- 195.

{0b} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 145.

{0c} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 340.

{0d} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 340, 341.

{0e} In Re Shakespeare, p. 54.

{0f} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 341.

{0g} Ibid., p. 470.

{0h} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 339.

{0i} The Vindicators of Shakespeare, pp. 115-116.

{0j} Ibid., p. 49.

{0k} The Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 14.

{4a} Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare.  By H. Crouch-Batchelor, 1912.

{7a} The Shakespere Problem Restated, p. 293.

{11a} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 31-37.

{13a} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 36-37.

{16a} Tue Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 20.

{17a} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 47-48.

{17b} Ibid., pp. 54-55.

{17c} Ibid., p. 54.

{17d} Ibid., p. 56.

{17e} Ibid., p. 59.

{17f} Ibid., p. 62.

{17g} Ibid., p. 193.

{18a} See his Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 210.

{19a} Vindicators, p. 187.

{19b} The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 223.

{21a} In Re Shakespeare, p. 54.

{22a} In a brief note of two pages (Cornhill Magazine, November 1911) he makes such reply as the space permits to a paper of my own, “Shakespeare or X?” in the September number.  With my goodwill he might have written thirty-two pages to my sixteen, but I am not the Editor, and never heard of Mr. Greenwood’s note till May 1912.

He says that I had represented him as stating that the Unknown genius adopted the name of William Shake-speare or Shakespeare as a good nom de guerre, without any reference to the fact that there was an actor in existence of the name of William Shakspere, whose name was sometimes written Shakespeare, and without the least idea that the works he published under this pseudonym would be fathered upon the actor . . . " (My meaning has obviously been too obscurely stated by me.)