CHAPMAN, GEORGE English poet and dramatist, translator of Homer, was born near Hitchin. There is no record of his university career, though Anthony Wood (Athen. Oxon. ii. 575) claims that he spent some time in Oxford. He had become a play-writer in London, and had published some poems when he appeared in Henslowe's Diary on Feb. 12, as the author of the Blind Beggar of Alexandria. Thence forward his name repeatedly appears in connection with payments for various plays until 1599, after which date he appears to have written masques for the Children of the Chapel (afterwards of the Revels) in the intervals of working on the translation of Homer. In 1 598 he had completed Marlowe's poem, Hero and Leander. Apparently he was imprisoned for a short time for his share in the play Eastward Hoe, which gave offence to James I. by certain quips against the Scots. He was encouraged in his translation of Homer by Prince Henry, to whom he was server in ordinary, but on the prince's death in 1612 Chapman lost his appointment and the promise of a life pension made by the prince was not fulfilled. He found a new patron in Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, to whom the two folio volumes The Whole Works of Homer, Prince of Poets, in his Iliads and Odysses (I 6) are dedicated. The Crowne of all Homer's W orkes, Batrachomyomachia, or the Battaile of Frogs and Mise. His Hymns and Epigrams appeared in 1624. The poet died on May 12, 1634.
Chapman enjoyed the friendship and admiration of his great contemporaries. John Webster in the preface to his White Devil praised his "full and heightened style," and Ben Jonson told Drum mond of Hawthornden that Fletcher and Chapman "were loved of him." But the good relations with Jonson were apparently inter rupted later. It was suggested by William Minto, who has been followed by later writers, that Chapman was the "rival poet" of Shakespeare's sonnets. Sir E. K. Chambers, however, thinks that the assumption would be more plausible if any relation between the earl of Southampton and Chapman, earlier than a stray dedica tion shared with others in 1609, could be established.
Chapman's Homer gives him a high place in English literature. Swinburne, in the criticism contributed to an earlier edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, gave an admirable and considered judg ment of the work. "The objections," he said, "which a just and adequate judgment may bring against Chapman's master-work, his translation of Homer, may be summed up in three epithets : it is romantic, laborious, Elizabethan. The qualities implied by these epithets are the reverse of those which should distinguish a translator of Homer ; but setting this apart, and considering the poems as in the main original works, the superstructure of a ro mantic poet on the submerged foundations of Greek verse, no praise can be too warm or high for the power, the freshness, the indefatigable strength and inextinguishable fire which animate this exalted work." On the great qualities of his tragedies and comedies Swinburne wrote : "The most notable examples of his tragic work are com prised in the series of plays taken, and adapted sometimes with singular licence, from the records of such parts of French history as lie between the reign of Francis I. and the reign of Henry IV., ranging in date of subject from the trial and death of Admiral Chabot to the treason and execution of Marshal Byron. The two plays bearing as epigraph the name of that famous soldier and con spirator are a storehouse of lofty thought and splendid verse, with scarcely a flash or sparkle of dramatic action. The one play of Chapman's whose popularity on the stage survived the Restoration is Bossy d'Ambois (d'Amboise)—a tragedy not lacking in vio lence of action or emotion, and abounding even more in sweet and sublime interludes than in crabbed and bombastic passages. His rarest jewels of thought and verse detachable from the context lie embedded in the tragedy of Caesar and Pompey, whence the finest of them were first extracted by the unerring and unequalled critical genius of Charles Lamb. In most of his tragedies the lofty and labouring spirit of Chapman may be said rather to shine fitfully through parts than steadily to pervade the whole ; they show nobly altogether as they stand, but even better by help of excerpts and selections. But the excellence of his best comedies can only be appreciated by a student who reads them fairly and fearlessly through, and, having made some small deductions on the score of occasional pedantry and occasional indecency, finds in All Fools, Monsieur d'Olive, The Gentleman Usher, and The Widow's Tears a wealth and vigour of humorous invention, a tender and earnest grace of romantic poetry, which may atone alike for these passing blemishes and for the lack of such clear-cut perfection of character and such dramatic progression of interest as we find only in the yet higher poets of the English heroic age." The list of the principal plays of George Chapman is as follows: The Blinde Begger of Alexandria ... (acted 1596, printed 1598), a popular comedy ; An Humerous dayes Myrth (May 1597; printed 1599) ; Al Fooles, A Comedy (1599, if it may be taken as identical with a play entered by Henslowe as "The World runs on wheels," printed 1605) ; The Gentleman Usher (c. 1601, pr. 16o6), a comedy; Monsieur d'Olive (1604, pr. 1606), one of his most amusing and successful comedies ; Eastward Hoe (1605) , written in conjunction with Ben Jonson and John Marston, an excellent comedy of city life; Bussy d'Ambois, A Tragedie (1604, pr. 1607, 1608, 1616, 1641, etc.), the scene of which is laid in the court of Henry III. ; The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois, a Tragedie (pr. 1613, but probably written much earlier) ; The Conspiracie, And Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, Marshall of France . . . in two plays (16o8; pr. 1608 and 1625), severely cut after its first performance, which provoked a lively pro test from the French ambassador; May-Day, A witty Comedie (pr. 1611, but probably acted as early as 1601) ; The Widdowes Teares. A Comedie (pr. 1612 ; produced perhaps as early as 1605) ; Caesar and Pompey (pr. 5631), written, says Chapman in the dedication, "long since," but never staged.
In The Tragedie of Chabot Admirall of France (c. 1613 ; pr. 1639) he collaborated with James Shirley, and in Eastward Hoe (1605, pr. 16o5), with Jonson and Marston. The memorable Masque of the two Honourable Houses or Inns of Court, was performed at court in 1613 in honour of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth.
The standard edition of Chapman is the Works, edited by R. H. Shepherd , the third volume of which contains an "Essay on the Poetical and Dramatic Works of George Chapman," by Swinburne, printed separately in 1875. The selection of his plays (1895) for the Mermaid Series is edited by W. L. Phelps. The edition by T. M. Parrott (1910-14) includes Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany, and other plays sometimes attributed to Chapman. For the sources of the plays see Emil Koeppel, "Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip Massinger's and John Ford's," in Quellen and Forschungen zur Sprach and Kulturgeschichte (vol. 82, Strassburg, 1897). The suggestion of W. Minto (see Characteristics of the English Poets, 1885) that Chapman was the "rival poet" of Shakespeare's sonnets is amplified in A. Acheson's Shakespeare and the Rival Poet (1903). For the relations between Shakespeare and Chapman, see also J. M. Robertson, Shakespeare and Chapman (1917) .
For other criticisms of his translation of Homer see Matthew Arnold, Lectures on translating Homer (1861), and Dr. A. Lohff, George Chapman's Ilias-Ubersetzung (19o3).