particular play, and Henslowe seems then to have recalled the overpayment, and noted against Chettle's name in the diary, 'All his parte of boockes to this place are payde which weare dew unto hime & he reastes be syddes in my deatte the some of xxx^s.' Chettle collaborated in several other plays, which got completed during the year, but no deduction seems to have been made from his share of the fees in respect of this debt. In addition he had £5 upon A Woman's Tragedy, upon condition 'eather to deliver the playe or els to paye the mony with in one forthnyght'; he had 5s. in earnest upon Catiline's Conspiracy; and he had £1 14s. 0d. in earnest upon Brute, probably a continuation of an older 1 Brute bought by the company. When the last payment on Brute was made on 16 September Henslowe noted, 'Hary Cheattell vntell this place owes vs viij^{11} ix^s dew al his boockes & recknynges payd'. This amount is precisely made up of the 30s. due on 24 June and the sums paid on account of these three plays. By 22 October Chettle had completed 2 Brute and managed somehow to get £6 for it in full. On the same day he gave Henslowe an acknowledgement of a debt, not of £8 9s. 0d., but of £9 9s. 0d. In November he got an earnest of £1 for Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver, and £1 for 'mending' Robin Hood, and in January 1599 30s. 'to paye his charges in the Marshallsey'. Small loans of a shilling or two are also noted in the margin of the book, and appear to be quite distinct from the company's account with him, and to indicate private generosities of Henslowe. In February 1599 Chettle had finished Polyphemus, and it is recorded that in full payment of £6 he got £2 10s. down, '& strocken of his deatte which he owes vnto the companey fyftye shelenges more'. A separate entry in the diary indicates that he paid off yet another 10s. out of his fee for The Spencers in March.[1] Material is not available for the further tracing of this particular chain of transactions, but the inference that credit obtained for an unfinished play had sometimes to be redeemed out of the profits of a finished one is irresistible. Chettle, at least, does not seem to have been hardly treated, but obviously the unbusinesslike methods of the playwrights kept down the price of plays, and a familiar device of the modern Barabbas was anticipated when Henry Porter was obliged, on the receipt of an earnest, to give Henslowe 'his faythfulle promysse that I shold haue alle the boockes which he writte ether him sellfe or with any other'.[2] Whatever Henslowe's precise financial relations with the
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