Credulous to False Prints: Shakespeare, Chettle, Harvey, Wolfe

Abstract

Women, says Isabella in Measure for Measure, are ‘credulous to false prints’ (2.iv.130).¹ The metaphor might be variously explained but, given the conjunction of ‘credulous’ and ‘print’, the sense ‘believing of false printed publications’ can scarcely be excluded.² Mopsa in The Winter’s Tale shows just such a credulity, naively enthusing T loue a ballet in print, a life, for then we are sure they are true’ (4.iv.258–9). In an undertow to the main drift of these lines, Shakespeare uses implicitly anti-female positions as a means to discredit the medium of print, or at least certain manifestations of it. After the attack on his professionalism as a dramatic writer in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit (1592), Shakespeare would have had good reason to mistrust assertions of truth emanating from the less prestigious end of print culture. Henry Chettle, author of the earliest known praise of Shakespeare in his Kind-Heart’s Dream, was probably also responsible for the earlier detraction of him in the Groatsworth.³ He originated ‘false prints’ in various senses of the expression, in activities ranging from literary authorship to editing to participation in the printing of books, and may indeed have had a hand in the preparation of the ‘bad’ first quarto of Romeo and Juliet.⁴