e groomes" of the
previous September and a reference to Shakespeare's theatrical work and
his _Venus and Adonis_, which, though only recently published, had no
doubt been read in MS. form for some time before.

I shall now proceed to show that at the end of 1593, after Lord
Pembroke's company had returned from their unprofitable provincial tour
when they were compelled to "pawn their apparel for their charges,"
George Chapman wrote a play satirising Shakespeare and the disastrous
fortunes of this company. This play was revised by Marston and Chapman
in 1599, under the title of _Histriomastix, or The Player Whipt_, as a
counter-attack upon Shakespeare in order to revenge the satire which he,
in conjunction with Dekker and Chettle, directed against Chapman and
Marston in _Troilus and Cressida_, and in a play reconstructed from
_Troilus and Cressida_ by Dekker and Chettle, called _Agamemnon_, in
1598-99. This latter phase of the matter shall be dealt with when I come
to a consideration of the literary warfare of the later period.

It has never before been suggested that George Chapman had any hand in
the composition of _Histriomastix_, though Mr. Richard Simpson shows
clearly that it was an old play roughly revised in the form in which it
was acted in 1599. Mr. Simpson suggests that it might have been written
by Peele, in its original form, owing to certain verbal resemblances
between portions of it and Peele's dedication to his _Honour of the
Garter_. He dates its original composition in about 1590, but in doing
so had evidently forgotten that he had already written: "The early
Chrisoganus (of this play) seems to be of the time when the Earl of
Northumberland, Raleigh, and Harriot strove to set up an Academy in
London, and the spirit of the play, and even its expressions, were quite
in unison with Peele's dedication of his _Honour of the Garter_,1593."
All literary and historical references to the academical efforts of the
Earl of Northumberland, Harriot, and others point to the years 1591-93
as the time in which this attempt to establish an Academy was made.
Chapman in his dedication of _The Shadow of Night_ to Roydon, in 1594,
refers to the movement as then of comparatively recent date. "But I stay
this spleen when I remember, my good Matthew, how joyfully oftentimes
you reported unto me that most ingenious Derby, deep-searching
Northumberland, and skill-embracing Earl of Hunsdon had most profitably
entertained learnin