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).