Chettle, Henry (c. 1560–c. 1607)

English dramatist and pamphleteer. In 1595 he published the romance story Piers Plainnes Seaven Yeres Prentisship, and between then and 1603 he wrote or collaborated on over 40 plays. Of his own plays, written for Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre, London, The Tragedy of Hoffman was the only one to be printed (1631) and the only one to survive. He also wrote the poem England's Mourning Garment (1603), an elegy on Queen Elizabeth I.

Chettle was born in London and became apprenticed to a stationer. In 1592 he published Robert Greene's A Groat's-Worth of Wit and in 1593 found it necessary to produce his own Kind Hart's Dream, apologizing to three people abused in Greene's work, of whom Shakespeare appears to have been one. Chettle's own plays include Troyes Revenge and the tragedy Polefeme. In The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill (1603) he collaborated with Thomas Dekker and William Haughton, and in The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntingdon (1601) with Anthony Munday.