"Whose glory which thy solid virtues won
Shall honour Europe while there shines a sun."
Poem to Harriot—
"When thy true wisdom by thy learning won
Shall honour learning while there shines a sun."
Chapman in several instances in this play echoes Greene's slurs against Shakespeare and, in the same manner as Peele in the Honour of the Garter, repeats the actual phrases and epithets used by Greene and Nashe.
Histriomastix—
"I scorn a scoffing fool about my throne—
An artless idiot (that like Æsop's daw
Plumes fairer feathered birds)."
These lines evince Chapman's knowledge of Nashe's phrase "idiot art-master," and of Greene's "upstart crow beautified with our feathers," and clearly pertain to the play in its earlier form (1593) when Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (published late in 1592) was still a new publication. In fact, it is not improbable that Nashe collaborated with Chapman in the early form of this play.
Again when Chapman writes the following lines:
Histriomastix—
"O age, when every Scriveners boy shall dippe
Profaning quills into Thessalies spring;
When every artist prentice that hath read
The pleasant pantry of conceipts shall dare
To write as confident as Hercules;
When every ballad-monger boldly writes," etc.