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. Very little is known about Chapman's early life, but Mark Eccles uncovered records that reveal much about Chapman's difficulties and expectations.[1] In 1585 Chapman was approached in a friendly fashion by John Wolfall Sr., who offered to supply a bond of surety for a loan to furnish Chapman money "for his proper use in Attendance upon the then Right Honorable Sir Rafe Sadler Knight." Chapman's courtly ambitions led him into a trap. He apparently never received any money, but he would be plagued for many years by the papers he had signed. Wolfall had the poet arrested for debt in 1600, and when in 1608 Wolfall's son, having inherited his father's papers, sued yet again, Chapman's only resort was to petition the Court of Chancery for equity.[2] As Sadler died in 1587, this gives Chapman little time to have trained under him.
Chapman spent the early 1590s abroad, and saw military action in the Low Countries fighting under renowned English general Sir Francis Vere. 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 Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.
Chapman's life was troubled by debt and his inability to find a patron whose fortunes did not decline: Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex, and the Prince of Wales, Prince Henry both met their ends prematurely. The former was executed for treason by Elizabeth I in 1601, and the latter died of typhoid fever at the age of eighteen in 1612. 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. He was buried at St Giles in the Fields. A monument to him designed by Inigo Jones marked his tomb, and stands today inside the church.[3]
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 willingness to experiment with dramatic form: An Humorous Day's Mirth was one of 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.
Grave marker of Chapman now inside the church of St Giles in the Fields, London. The memorial, in the form of a Roman altar, was designed and paid for by Inigo Jones, and was previously in St Giles' churchyard.
He also wrote one noteworthy play in collaboration. Eastward Ho (1605), written with Jonson and John Marston, contained satirical references to the Scottish courtiers who formed the retinue of the new king James I; this landed Chapman and Jonson in jail at the suit of Sir James Murray of Cockpool, the king's "rascal[ly]" Groom of the Stool.[4] Various of their letters to the king and noblemen survive in a manuscript in the Folger Library known as the Dobell MS, and published by AR 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 broke down, perhaps as a result of Jonson's public feud with Inigo Jones. 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; it was found in documents collected after his death.
The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron offended the French ambassador, probably because it included a scene which portrayed Henry IV's wife and mistress arguing and physically fighting, and Robert Cecil was persuaded to issue a warrant for Chapman's arrest. However, Ludovic Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, appears to have intervened to prevent its execution.[7] 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 (written 1604, published 1631), although "politically astute", can be regarded as his most modest achievement in the genre.[8][9]
Other plays
Chapman wrote The Old Joiner of Aldgate, performed by the Children of Paul's between January and February 1603 – a play which caused some controversy due to the similarities between the content of the play and ongoing legal proceedings between one John Flaskett (a local book binder) and Agnes How (to whom Flaskett was betrothed). The play was purchased from Chapman by Thomas Woodford & Edward Pearce for 20 marks (a considerable amount for such a work at the time) and resulted in a legal case that went before the Star Chamber.
Chapman's authorship has been argued in connection with a number of other anonymous plays of his era.[11]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.[12]
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 (in sonnets 78–86), although conjecture places him as one in a large field of possibilities.[13][14]
From 1598 he published his translation of the Iliad in instalments. In 1616 the complete Iliad and Odyssey appeared in The Whole Works of Homer, the first complete English translation, which until Alexander Pope's (completed 1726) was the most popular in the English language and was the way most English speakers encountered these poems. 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 often extends and elaborates on Homer's original contents to add descriptive detail or moral and philosophical interpretation and emphasis.
Chapman's translation of Homer was admired by Pope for "a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation, which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have writ", though he also disapproved of Chapman's roughness and inaccuracy.[15]John Keats expressed a fervent admiration of Chapman's Homeric authenticity in his famous poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer". Chapman also drew attention from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and T. S. Eliot. [16]
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.[17]
The Irish playwright Oscar Wilde quoted the same verse in his part fiction, part literary criticism, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.".[18]
I could have written as good prose and verse
As the most beggarly poet of 'em all,
Either Accrostique, Exordion,
Epithalamions, Satyres, Epigrams,
Sonnets in Doozens, or your Quatorzanies,
In any rhyme, Masculine, Feminine,
Or Sdrucciola, or cooplets, Blancke Verse:
Y'are but bench-whistlers now a dayes to them
That were in our times....
^Mark Eccles, "Chapman's Early Years", Studies in Philology43.:2 (April 1946):176-93.
^For the text of Chapman's petition for relief, see A. R. Braunmuller, A Seventeenth Century Letter-Book: A Facsimile Edition of Folger MS. V. A. 321 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983), 395.
^Thornbury, Walter. "St Giles-in-the-Fields." Old and New London: Volume 3. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1878. 197-218. British History Online Retrieved 28 April 2023.
^Donaldson, Ian (2011). Ben Jonson : a life. Oxford University Press. p. 209. ISBN9780198129769.
^Martin Butler: George Chapman's Masque of the Twelve Months (1619). In: English Literary Renaissance 37 (Nov. 2007); pp. 360–400.
^Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1977; pp. 155–60.
^Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Popular School: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1975; pp. 151–7.
^Ellis, David (2013). The truth about William Shakespeare : fact, fiction and modern biographies. Edinburgh University Press. p. 72. ISBN9780748653881.
^Alexander Pope, "Preface" to 'The Iliad of Homer'
^Matthews, Steven. "T. S. Eliot's Chapman: 'Metaphysical' Poetry and Beyond." Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 29 No. 4 (Summer 2006), pp. 22–43.
^Hutchinson, Thomas (undated). The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Including Materials Never Before Printed in any Edition of the Poems & Edited with Textural Notes. E. W. Cole: Commonwealth of Australia; Book Arcade, Melbourne. p. 38. (NB: Hardcover, clothbound, embossed.) Published prior to issuing of ISBN.
^Wilde, Oscar (2003). "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.". Hesperus Press Limited 4 Rickett Street, London SW6 1RU. p. 46. First published 1921.
^Quoted on current UK imprint of Flashman novels as cover blurb.
^Findlay, Kirsty Nichol, ed. (2011). Arthur Ransome's long-lost study of Robert Louis Stevenson. Woodbridge, England: Boydell. p. 112. ISBN9781843836728.
Bibliography
Chapman, George. The Tragedies, with Sir Gyles Goosecappe. Ed. Allan Holaday. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987. vol. 2 of The Plays of George Chapman. 2 vols. 1970–87.
---. The Comedies. Ed. Allan Holaday. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970. vol. 1 of The Plays of George Chapman. 2 vols. 1970–87.
---. The Plays of George Chapman. Ed. Thomas Marc Parrott. 1910. New-York: Russell & Russell, 1961.
---. George Chapman, Plays and Poems. Ed. Jonathan Hudston. London: Penguin Books, 1998.
---. Bussy D'Ambois. Ed. Nicholas Brooke. The Revels Plays. London: Methuen, 1964.
---. Bussy D'Ambois. Ed. Robert J. Lordi. Regents Renaissance Drama. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964.
---. Bussy D'Ambois. Ed. Maurice Evans. New Mermaids. London: Ernst Benn Limited, 1965.
---. Bussy D'Amboise. Ed. and trans. Jean Jacquot. Collection bilingue des classiques étrangers. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1960.
---. The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. Ed. George Ray. Renaissance Drama. New-York: Garland Publishing, 1979.
---. The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron. Ed. John Margeson. The Revels Plays. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1988.
---. The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois. Introd. David P. Willbern. Menston: The Scolar Press Limited, 1968.
---. The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois. Ed. Robert J. Lordi. Salzburg Studies in English Literature. Jacobean Drama Studies 75. Salzbourg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1977.
---. The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois in Four Revenge Tragedies. Ed. Katharine Eisaman Maus. Oxford English Drama. Oxford: OUP, 1995.
---. The Tragedie of Chabot Admirall of France. Ed. Ezra Lehman. Philology and Literature 10. Philadelphia: Publications of the University of Philadelphia, 1906.
---. The Gentleman Usher. Ed. John Hazel Smith. Regents Renaissance Drama Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
---. The Poems of George Chapman. Ed. Phyllis Brooks Bartlett. New-York: Modern Language Association of America, 1941.
---. Ouids Banquet of Sence. A Coronet for his Mistresse Philosophie, and his Amorous Zodiacke. With a Translation of a Latine Coppie, Written by a Fryer, Anno Dom. 1400. London: I. R. for Richard Smith, 1595. Menston: The Scolar Press Limited, 1970.
---. The Works of George Chapman: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Ed. Richard Herne Shepherd. London: Chatto & Windus, 1875.
---. Chapman's Homer: The Iliad. Ed. Allardyce Nicoll. Bollingen Series 41. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998.
---. Chapman's Homer: The Odyssey. Ed. Allardyce Nicoll. Bollingen Series 41. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000.
---. George Chapman's Minor Translations: A Critical Edition of His Renderings of Musæus, Hesiod and Juvenal. Ed. Richard Corballis. Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Jacobean Drama Studies, 98. Salzbourg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1984.
---. Homer's Batrachomyomachia, Hymns and Epigrams, Hesiod's Works and Days, Musæus' Hero and Leander, Juvenal's Fifth Satire. Ed. Richard Hooper. London: John Russel Smith, 1858.
Chapman, George, Benjamin Jonson et John Marston. Eastward Hoe. Ed. Julia Hamlet Harris. Yale Studies in English 73. New Haven: Yale UP, 1926.
---. Eastward Ho. Ed. R. W. Van Fossen. The Revels Plays. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1979.
