George Chapman

The English poet, dramatist, and translator George Chapman (1559/1634) is best known for his rhyming verse translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

George Chapman was born in Hitchen, a country town near London. He may have attended Oxford, although he claimed to have been selftaught. He spent a few years in the household of a nobleman and in 1591-1592 was engaged in military service on the Continent.

Chapman became an important literary figure with the publication of his first work, The Shadow of Night (1594). This obscure philosophical poem has led some to speculate that Chapman at this time belonged to the "School of Night"—a group of avant-garde thinkers who supposedly challenged traditional beliefs. Although the existence of such a formal "school" is still in doubt, it is clear that Chapman was acquainted with some of the more exciting thinkers of his day.

Chapman's reputation as a man of letters was firmly established by Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595) and his continuation of Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1598), both of them amatory, erotic poems in the vein of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593). He began writing for the stage about 1595 and in the following 10 years composed a number of comedies, including A Humorous Day's Mirth (1597), the earliest example of the "comedy of humours" closely identified with Ben Jonson. Chapman's best-known dramatic work, however, is the heroic tragedy Bussy D'Ambois (1604), which celebrates the lofty aspirations of Renaissance individualism. The title character, modeled on a Frenchman who died in 1579, claims to be superior to ordinary mortals. In The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, a sequel written some 6 years later, Chapman presents a different kind of heroic virtue in the person of Bussy's brother Cleremont, who is noted for his extraordinary stoic forbearance and self-control.

Despite his success as a poet and a dramatist, Chapman led a very insecure existence. In 1600 he was imprisoned for debt, and in 1605 he suffered the same punishment for his part in Eastward Ho!, a play written in collaboration with Jonson and John Marston. For a time he was patronized by Prince Henry; when Henry died unexpectedly in 1612, Chapman found himself again in precarious straits.

Chapman's literary energies after 1613 were devoted almost exclusively to his monumental translation of Homer, which he had begun many years earlier and which he considered his most significant literary achievement. The completed translation, published in 1624, has been immortalized by John Keats's sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816). Chapman died on May 12, 1634.

Further Reading

A full sketch of Chapman's life, with excerpts from his letters, is in Charlotte Spivack's George Chapman (1967). For an account of Chapman's ideas on the nature of poetry see Phyllis Brooks Bartlett's introduction to The Poems of George Chapman (1941).

Additional Sources

Hunt, R. A., The Startup papers: on Shakespeare's friend, Upton-upon-Severn: Images, 1993.

Ellis, Havelock, Chapman, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976. □

Chapman, George (?1559–1634), born near Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. After more than a decade as a professional playwright he turned to his major work of translating Homer, completed in 1616. Chapman's earliest published works include non-dramatic poems: The Shadow of Night (1594); a pair of complex Neoplatonic poems; and his completion of Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1598). Seven comedies are extant: The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1598), An Humorous Day's Mirth (1599), All Fools (1605), The Gentleman Usher and Monsieur D'Olive (1606), May-Day (1611), and The Widow's Tears (1612). He collaborated with Jonson and John Marston (1576–1634) on a further comedy, Eastward Hoe, in 1605, which led to a short period of imprisonment for Jonson and Chapman because of its anti-Scottish satire. The tragedies consist of two two-part plays, Bussy D'Ambois (1607) and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (1613), The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron and The Tragedy of Byron (1608), and one single play, Caesar and Pompey (1631). The Tragedy of Chabot (1639) appears to be a Chapman tragedy revised by James Shirley. Chapman also collaborated with Fletcher, Jonson, and Massinger in writing The Bloody Brother (c.1616, pub. 1639). The hasty publication of the first of his Homeric translations, Sevaen Bookes of the Iliades of Homere (1598), marked the earl of Essex's embarkation for Ireland; 12 books of the Iliad and Odyssey were published together as The Whole Works of Homer; Prince of Poetts (1616). Jonson praised Chapman as second only to himself as a writer of masques. Chapman was long the favourite candidate for the ‘rival poet’ referred to in Shakespeare's Sonnets. In more recent times Chapman has been seen as a crucial figure in a secret society of freethinkers called the School of Night, of which Marlowe, Harriot, and Matthew Roydon were also members. Though there are links between Chapman and all these figures, it is not now thought that they took such a formal shape. As poet and dramatist, Chapman is most often seen as a genius manqué, whose learning and energy were never sufficently disciplined. Perhaps the only lines of Chapman's poetry that are still well known are these from Bussy D'Ambois:Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream
But of a shadow, summ'd with all his substance.

Chapman, George (c. 1560–1634), English poet and dramatist, author of the translation of Homer which inspired Keats's sonnet. He may be the original of Shakespeare's Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost and Thersites in Troilus and Cressida. Little is known of his early life, but in 1596 he was on Henslowe's payroll as accredited dramatist to the Admiral's Men. Most of these early plays are lost, but enough remains of his later works, given mainly by the boy companies, to ensure his acceptance as a major playwright. His best comedies are probably May-Day (1602) and All Fools (c.1604). Of the surviving tragedies the most important is Bussy d'Ambois (also 1604) with its sequel The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois (1610). Chapman was one of the authors, with Jonson and Marston, of the comedy Eastward Ho! (1605) which gave offence to James I and resulted in a term of imprisonment for himself and Jonson; he narrowly escaped a second term of imprisonment for his Charles, Duke of Byron (1608) which upset the French Ambassador.

George Chapman 1559?–1634, English dramatist, translator, and poet. He is as famous for his plays as for his poetic translations of Homer's Iliad (1612) and Odyssey (1614–15). Chapman was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of the Stoic philosophers, Epictetus and Seneca. In his best-known tragedies, Bussy D'Ambois (1607) and The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron (1608), the stoical hero is in classical tragedic style destroyed by some innate flaw. Chapman wrote and collaborated on nearly a dozen comedies, the most notable being All Fools (1605) and Eastward Ho! (1605), the latter written with Ben Jonson and John Marston. Included among his other works are several metaphysical poems, a completed version of Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1598), and translations of Petrarch and Hesiod.

Bibliography: See studies by M. MacLure (1966), C. Spivack (1967), and L. A. Cummings (1985).

Chapman, George (1560–1634) English poet, dramatist, and translator. He completed Christopher Marlowe's unfinished poem Hero and Leander (1598), and worked with Ben Jonson and John Marston. His own works include the poem The Shadow of Night (1594), the plays The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1598) and Bussy D'Ambois (1604), and translations of Homer's Iliad (1611) and Odyssey (1614–15).