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George Chapman

[chap-muhn]

George Chapman (c. 1559 – May 12 1634) was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets. Chapman is best remembered for his translations of Homer's Iliad, Odyssey, and Batrachomyomachia.

Life and work

Chapman was born at Hitchin in Hertfordshire. There is conjecture that he studied at Oxford but did not take a degree, though no reliable evidence affirms this. He spent the early 1590s abroad, possibly seeing military action in the Low Countries, and on his return, entered the service of Sir Ralph Sadler, a rich householder of Hitchin. His earliest published works were the obscure philosophical poems The Shadow of Night (1594) and Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595). The latter has been taken as a response to the erotic poems of the age such as Phillip Sydney's Astrophel and Stella and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. Chapman's life was troubled by debt and his inability to find a patron whose fortunes didn't decline. Chapman's erstwhile patrons Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and the Prince of Wales, Prince Henry, each met their ends prematurely; the former was executed for treason by Elizabeth I, and the latter died of typhoid fever at the age of eighteen. Chapman's resultant poverty did not diminish his ability or his standing among his fellow Elizabethan poets and dramatists.

Chapman died in London, having lived his latter years in poverty and debt.

Plays

Comedies
By the end of the 1590s, Chapman had become a successful playwright, working for Philip Henslowe and later for the Children of the Chapel. Among his comedies are The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1596; printed 1598), An Humorous Day's Mirth (1597; printed 1599), All Fools (printed 1605), Monsieur D'Olive (1605; printed 1606), The Gentleman Usher (printed 1606) May Day (printed 1611), and The Widow's Tears (printed 1612). His plays show a will to experiment with dramatic form: An Humorous Day's Mirth was one the first plays to be written in the style of 'humours comedy' which Ben Jonson later used in 'Every Man in his Humour' and 'Every Man Out of his Humour'. With 'The Widow's Tears' he was also one of the first writers to meld comedy with more serious themes, creating the tragicomedy later made famous by Beaumont and Fletcher.

He also wrote one noteworthy play in collaboration. Eastward Ho (1605), written with Ben Jonson and John Marston, contained satirical references to the Scots which landed Chapman and Jonson in jail. Various of their letters to the king and other nobleman survive in a manuscript in the Folger library known as the Dobell MS, and published by A.R. Braunmuller as 'A Seventeenth Century Letterbook'. In the letters, both men renounced the offending line, implying that Marston was responsible for the injurious remark. Jonson's 'Conversations With Drummond' refers to the imprisonment, and suggests there was a possibility that both authors would have their 'ears and noses slit' as a punishment, but this may have been Jonson elaborating on the story in retrospect.

Chapman's friendship with Jonson, however, broke down, perhaps as a result of Jonson's public feud with Inigo Jones, and some satiric, scathing lines, written sometime after the burning of Jonson's desk and papers, provide evidence of the rift. The poem lampooning Jonson's aggressive behaviour and self-believed superiority remained unpublished during Chapman's lifetime, and exists only in documents collected after his death.

Tragedies
His greatest tragedies took their subject matter from recent French history, the French ambassador taking offence on at least one occasion. These include Bussy D'Ambois (1607), The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608), The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (1613) and The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France (published 1639). The two Byron plays were banned from the stage—though when the Court left London the plays were performed in their original and unexpurgated forms by the Children of the Chapel. The French ambassador probably took offence to a scene which portrays Henry IV's wife and mistress arguing and physically fighting. On publication, the offending material was excised, and Chapman refers to the play in his dedication to Sir Thomas Walsingham as 'poore dismembered Poems'. His only work of classical tragedy, Caesar and Pompey (ca. 1613?) is generally regarded as his most modest achievement in the genre.

Other plays
Chapman wrote one of the most successful masques of the Jacobean era, The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, performed on Feb. 15, 1613.

Chapman's authorship has been argued in connection with a number of anonymous plays of his era. F. G. Fleay proposed that his first play was The Disguises. He has been put forward as the author, in whole or in part, of Sir Giles Goosecap, Two Wise Men And All The Rest Fools, The Fountain Of New Fashions, and The Second Maiden's Tragedy.Of these, only 'Sir Gyles Goosecap' is generally accepted by scholars to have been written by Chapman (The Plays of George Chapman: The Tragedies, with Sir Giles Goosecap, edited by Allan Holaday, University of Illinois Press, 1987).

In 1654, bookseller Richard Marriot published the play Revenge for Honour as the work of Chapman. Scholars have rejected the attribution; the play may have been written by Henry Glapthorne. Alphonsus Emperor of Germany (also printed 1654) is generally considered another false Chapman attribution.

The lost plays The Fatal Love and A Yorkshire Gentlewoman And Her Son were assigned to Chapman in Stationers' Register entries in 1660. Both of these plays were among the ones destroyed in the famous kitchen burnings by John Warburton's cook. The lost play Christianetta (registered 1640) may have been a collaboration between Chapman and Richard Brome, or a revision by Brome of a Chapman work.

Poet and translator

Other poems by Chapman include: De Guiana, Carmen Epicum (1596), on the exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh; a continuation of Christopher Marlowe's unfinished Hero and Leander (1598); and Euthymiae Raptus; or the Tears of Peace (1609). Some have considered Chapman to be the "rival poet" of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

From 1598 he published his translation of the Iliad in installments. In 1616 the complete Iliad and Odyssey appeared in The Whole Works of Homer, the first complete English translation. The endeavour was to have been profitable: his patron, Prince Henry, had promised him £300 on its completion plus a pension. However, Henry died in 1612 and his household neglected the commitment, leaving Chapman without either a patron or an income. In an extant letter Chapman petitions for the money owed him; his petition was ineffective. Chapman's translation of the Odyssey is written in iambic pentameter, whereas his Iliad is written in iambic heptameter. (The Greek original is in dactylic hexameter.) Chapman's translation of Homer was much admired by John Keats, notably in his famous poem On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, and also drew attention from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and T. S. Eliot.

Chapman also translated the Homeric Hymns, the Georgics Of Virgil, Hesiod's Works and Days, The Hero and Leander of Musaeus, and The Fifth Satire Of Juvenal.

Chapman's poetry, though not widely influential on the subsequent development of English poetry, did have a noteworthy effect of the work of T. S. Eliot.

Homage

In Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, The Revolt of Islam, Shelley quotes a verse of Chapman's as homage within his dedication "to Mary__ __", presumably his wife Mary Shelley:

There is no danger to a man, that knows
What life and death is: there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.

Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde, quoted the same verse in his part fiction, part literary criticism, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.".

The English poet Keats wrote "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" for his friend Charles Cowden Clarke in October 1816. The poem begins "Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold" and is much quoted. For example, P.G. Wodehouse in his review of the first Flashman novel that came to his attention: "Now I understand what that ‘when a new planet swims into his ken’ excitement is all about. Arthur Ransome uses two references from it in his children's books, the Swallows and Amazons series.