Chapman, George

Chapman, George, 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).

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Chapman, George 

Born 1559 in Hitchin; died 1634 in London. English poet and dramatist.

Chapman, a graduate of Oxford University, was a writer of the Late Renaissance. His comedies reveal traits of the poetic comedy of the 1590’s, for example, The Gentleman Usher and Monsieur d’Olive (both published 1606) and of B. Jonson’s comedies of manners, for example, An Humourous Day’s Mirth (1599) and All Fools (published 1605). Chapman’s best-known comedy, Eastward Ho!, which was written together with J. Marston and Jonson (published 1605), contains elements of political satire.

Chapman’s tragedies represent a return to pre-Shakespearean drama, with its romantic pathos; they include Bussy d’Ambois (published 1607) and The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (parts 1–2, published 1608). Chapman’s heroes stoically confront the coincidences of fate in such works as The Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois (published 1613) and Caesar and Pompey (published 1631).

Chapman also translated Homer, Hesiod, and Juvenal and completed C. Marlowe’s narrative poem Hero and Leander (1598).

WORKS

The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists: G. Chapman. London-New York, 1895.
In Russian translation:
“Vse v durakakh.” In the collection Sovremenniki Shekspira, vol. 1. Moscow, 1959.

REFERENCES

Ellis-Fermor, U. The Jacobean Drama. London [1958].
Spivack, C. George Chapman. New York [1967].

A. IA. LIVERGANT