[In the following essay, Austin offers linguistic evidence for the hypothesis that Chettle forged Greene's Groatsworth of Wit.]

Since completing the computer-aided linguistic analysis, I have succeeded in reconstructing Chettle's procedure in fabricating the Groatsworth of Wit. For the most part, he used Greene's genuine books of the same genre (prodigal son tales), patterning his forgery on episodes and passages in Greene's Mourning Garment, Never Too Late, and the sequel to the latter, Francesco's Fortunes; but he used at least four other identifiable sources of which the most important was Thomas Nashe's prefatory epistle to Greene's Menaphon. Some passages in A Groatsworth of Wit, including the diatribe against the actors and the actor-playwright Shakespeare, are largely pastiches by Chettle from these sources. This is the true explanation, it now appears, for the parallels often noted between the Groatsworth and passages in Francesco's Fortunes and the Menaphon preface, resemblances hitherto ascribed to Greene's echoing his own, and Nashe's, earlier comments.

MORE LEXICAL EVIDENCE

An interesting discovery has followed this reconstruction of Chettle's method of fabrication. We now have the reason for what had seemed an anomaly, though a minor one, in the statistics of lexical choice for the Groatsworth of Wit. The group of Greene-favored words had indeed appeared in the Groatsworth at only one-fourth the rate characteristic of Greene's prose; but they had aggregated twenty-two occurrences, or twice the typical frequency of these words in Chettle's prose. (If the Groatsworth were genuinely Greene's, approximately 93 occurrences of his favored words were to be expected; on the other hand, on the hypothesis of Chettle's authorship, only about 11 occurrences of these words were to be expected.) The unusually high frequency of the Greene markers is clearly due to the anomalous appearance in the Groatsworth of seven Greene-favored words or senses which do not occur in the 40,000-word Chettle corpus—aim, dump(s), fancy, feign, glance, insomuch, and wax (in the sense of “become”)—as well as the high incidence, for Chettle, of the word grow (also in the sense of “become”). These eight words appear collectively 17 times.

Now it seems reasonable to suppose that Chettle, just as he imitated Greene's typical content, general style, and prominent mannerisms, would also have adopted for his forgery some of Greene's characteristic habits of word-choice. And these usages he might be expected to have carried over from the episodes in Greene's books which he focussed upon as most suitable for his imitation. (The amount of Greenean diction introduced into the spurious Groatsworth in this way would be small relative to the entire work, and in fact, as the computer analysis enables us to say, Chettle's verbal habits predominate in all parts of the book.) The tracing of Chettle's procedure in fabricating the Groatsworth now makes it possible to demonstrate that is what happened, for the eight words in question are conspicuously present in precisely those episodes and passages in Greene's books which Chettle can be shown to have used as models.

CHETTLE'S USE OF HIS MODEL

All of these words appear in the episode of Francesco and Infida in Greene's Never Too Late, which was Chettle's model for the Lucanio-Lamilia episode in the Groatsworth; and all but aim and wax occur in a noticeably repetitive way. They aggregate 33 occurrences in the Greene episode. Similarly, in the very brief episode of Francesco and the strolling players in Francesco's Fortunes, on which Chettle modelled the Groatsworth episode of Roberto's encounter with the Player, four of the same words appear even more conspicuously—aim (2), grow (9), insomuch (2), and wax (4)—aggregating 17 occurrences. In these two episodes Greene used these favored words at approximately twice his usual high frequency.

For Chettle to proceed in this way, with Greene's books in front of him as he worked, was obviously best if his counterfeit literary coinage was to ring true; and it was also the most practical way in the short time available to him. But, as we have noted earlier, even while he was adopting some of Greene's favorite words and expressions, Chettle sometimes inadvertently, or compulsively, played variations on stock locutions or “Greenisms”; and these are in themselves revealing because they never occur in Greene's works, but do in some instances turn up in Chettle's acknowledged writings.