Shakespeare Book

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This is an OCR edition with typos.
Excerpt from book:
wrote the play in the form known to us as the Third Part of Henry the Sixth, kept the line unchanged. Now an old play called Henry the Sixth (probably the work of Peele or Greene, or both of them) had been presented by Shakespeare's company as early as March 1592, and had won remarkable popularity in the dramatic season of that spring and summer. The most natural interpretation of Greene's words, then, is that Shakespeare had not only won profit as actor in this popular play, but was now known to be rewriting, or to have rewritten, Marlowe's plays in the same field, and would be claiming at the same time the profit and glory of both author and actor. However this may be as to the saucy passage in question, the combination of employments seemingly alleged of Shakespeare is precisely that which we know was his during many years to come; and it is very likely, as we have seen, that in the group of chronicle-histories dealing with the reign of Henry the Sixth he found his first notable chance under this double star of his fortune. The unpleasant taste of his character which Greene's malicious words leave with us need give us no concern, for not only are they sufficiently explained by the tone and circumstances of the whole pamphlet, but they seem to have been explicitly withdrawn a little later by the editor. In December of the same year Chettle issued a pamphlet of his own, called Kind-Heart's Dream, in the preface of which he expressed regret that he had not cut out from Greene's work passageswhich had offended "one or two" of the persons referred to. "With neither of them," he proceeded, "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 assince I wish I had; . that I did not, I am as sorry as...