Career
He was apprenticed to a London stationer, became a freeman of the Stationers' Company in 1584, and worked intermittently as a printer over a number of years. Chettle came into contact with many popular writers, including Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, and Anthony Munday, and gradually turned to authorship himself. He transcribed and edited Greene's Groats-worth of Wit (1592), in which occurs the famous attack on Shakespeare as "an upstart crow".
It was natural enough for a needy writer to find employment with the theater. Chettle was sometimes hired to patch up other authors' plays. From 1598 to 1603 he received payment for 49 plays, most written in collaboration with other playwrights. Not all were finished. In his battle against poverty he often obtained advances of a few shillings on plays he never completed.
Four plays on which he collaborated were published: The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington and its sequel The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington (both 1598), with Anthony Munday; Patient Grissill (1599), with Thomas Dekker and William Haughton; and The Blind-Beggar of Bednal-Green (1600), with John Day.