My notable Shakerags, the effect of my suit is discovered in the title of my supplication; but for our better understandings, for that I know you to be a sort of witless beetle-heads that can understand nothing but what is knocked into your scalps, these are by these presents to certify unto your block-headships, that I, William Kemp, whom you had near hand sent in sunder with your unreasonable rhymes, am shortly, God willing, to set forward as merrily as I may; whether I myself know not.

Wherefore, by the way, I would wish ye, imploy not your little wits in certifying the world that I am gone to Rome, Jerusalem,
Venice, or any other place at your idle appoint. I know the best of ye, by the lies you writ of me, got not the price of a good hat to cover your brainless heads: if any of ye had come to me, my bounty should have exceeded the best of your good masters the Ballad-buyers, I would have apparelled your dry pates in party coloured bonnets, and bestowed a leash of my cast bells to have crowned ye with cox-combs. I have made a privy search what private jigmonger {Ballad-maker} of your jolly number hath been the Author of these abominable ballets written of me. I was told it was the great ballet-maker T.D., alias Tho Deloney, {Thomas Deloney, in 1596, had he not eluded the search of the Mayor of London, he would have been punished for writing a certain ballad, containing a complaint of great want and scarcity of corn within the realm, bringing in the Queen speaking with her people dialoguewise, in very fond and indecent sort.} Chronicler of the memorable lives of the six yeomen of the west, Jack of Newbery, the Gentle-craft, and such like honest men, omitted by Stow, Hollinshead, Grafton, Hal, Froysart, and the rest of those well deserving writers; but I was given since to understand your late general Tho died poorly, as ye all must do, and was honestly buried, which is much to be doubted of some of you. The quest of inquiry finding him by death acquitted of the inditement, I was let to wit yet another Lord of little wit, one whose imployment for the Pageant was utterly spent, he being known to be Elderton’s immediate heir, {Anthony Munday: a player, apprentice to a printer, retainer of the Earl of Oxford, messenger of her Majesty’s chamber, poet, dramatist, writer and draper} was vehemently suspected; but after due inquisition was made, he was at that time known to live like a man in a mist, having quite given over the mystery.{Art, trade}

Still the search continuing, I met a proper upright youth, only for a little stooping in the shoulders, all heart to the heel, a penny Poet, whose first making {Poetical composition} was the miserable stolen story of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, {This mention of a piece anterior to Shakespeare’s tragedy on the same subject has escaped the commentators} or Macsomewhat, for I am sure a Mac it was, though I never had the maw to see it; and he told me there was a fat filthy ballet-maker, that should have once been his Journeyman to the trade, who lived about the town, and ten to one but he had thus terribly abused me and my Taberer, for that he was able to do such a thing in print. A shrewd presumption! I found him about the bankside,{Southwark where the theatres were situated} sitting at a play; I desired to speak with him, had him to a Tavern, charged a pipe with tobacco, and then laid this terrible accusation to his charge. He swells presently, like one of the four winds; the violence of his breath blew the tobacco out of the pipe, and the heat of his wrath drunk dry two bowlfuls of Rhenish wine. At length having power to speak, “Name my accuser,” saith he, “or I defy thee, Kemp, at the quart staff.” I told him;
and all his anger turned to laughter, swearing it did him good to have ill words of a hoddy doddy, {a term of contempt also used in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour} a habber de hoy, {half a man, half a boy} a chicken, a squib, a squall, {poor effeminate creature. Middleton seems to use it in the sense of wench} one that hath not wit enough to make a ballet, that, by Pol and Aedipol, would Pol his father, Derick {Hang,—the name of the common hangman, when this tract was written; he is frequently mentioned in our old plays} his dad, do any thing, how ill soever, to please his apish humour. I hardly believed this youth that I took to be gracious had been so graceless; but I heard afterwards his mother-in-law was eye and ear witness of his father’s abuse by this blessed child on a public stage, in a merry Hoast of an Inn’s part. Yet all this while could not I find out the true ballet-maker, till by chance a friend of mine pulled out of his pocket a book in Latin, called Mundus Furiosus, printed at Cullen, written by one of the wildest and arrantest lying Cullians {scoundrels} that ever writ book, his name Jansonius, who, taking upon him to write an abstract of all the turbulent actions that had been lately attempted or performed in Christendome, like an unchristian wretch, writes only by report, partially, and scoffi ngly of such whose pages shows he was unworthy to wipe, for indeed he is now dead: farewell he! every dog must have a day.

But see the luck on’t: this beggarly lying busy-bodies name brought out the Ballad-maker, {Kemp, I conceive, alludes here to Richard Johnson, who is still remembered by his Famous "Historie of the Seven Champions of Christendome" in two parts, of which the earliest extant edition was printed in 1608} and, it was generally confirmed, it was his kinsman: he confesses himself guilty, let any man look on his face; if there be not so red a colour that all the soap in the town will not wash white, let me be turned to a Whiting as I pass between Dover and Calais.

Well, God forgive thee, honest fellow, I see thou hast grace in thee; I pray thee do so no more, leave writing these beastly ballets, make not good wenches Prophetesses, for little or no profit, nor for a six-penny matter revive not a poor fellow’s fault that is hanged for his offence; it may be thy own destiny one day; pray thee be good to them. Call up thy old Melpomene, whose strawberry quill may write the bloody lines of the blue Lady, and the Prince of the burning crown; a better subject, I can tell ye, than your Knight of the Red Crosse. {See William Morgan’s "The Mysteries of Free Masonry" of opening a lodge of entered apprentice masons including the Knight of the Red Crosse}.

So, farewell, and cross me no more, I pray thee, with thy rabble of bald rhymes, least at my return I set a cross on thy forehead that all men may know thee for a fool.

William Kemp