C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Critical and Biographical Introduction
By George Chapman (1559?–1634)
G
He occupies a position unique among the Elizabethans, because of his wide culture and the diverse character of his work. Though held together by his strong personality, it yet can be divided into the distinct groups of comedies, tragedies, poems, and translations. The first of these is the weakest, for Chapman was not a comic genius. ‘The Blind Beggar of Alexandria’ and ‘An Humorous Day’s Mirth’ deserve but a passing mention. In 1605 ‘All Fooles’ was published, acted six years earlier under the name ‘The World Runs on Wheels.’ It is a realistic satire, with some good scenes and character-drawing. ‘The Gentleman Usher’ is full of poetry and ingenious situations. ‘Monsieur D’Oline’ contains also some good comedy work. ‘The Widow’s Tears’ tells the well-known story of the Ephesian matron; though coarse, it is handled not without comic talent. In his comedy work Chapman is neither new nor original; he followed in Jonson’s footsteps, and suggests moreover Terence, Plautus, Fletcher, and Lyly. He has wit, satire, and sarcasm; but along with these, poor construction and little invention. He was going against his grain, and we have here the frankest expression of “pot-boiling” to be found among the Elizabethan dramatists. Writing for the stage was the only kind of literature that really paid; the playhouse was to the Elizabethan what the paper-covered novel is to a modern reader. This accounts for the enormous dramatic productivity of the time, and also explains why the most finely endowed minds, in need of money, produced dramas instead of other imaginative work. By the time he wrote his comedies, Chapman had already won his place as poet and translator, but it earned him no income. Pope, one hundred and twenty-five years later, made a fortune by his translation of Homer. But then the number of readers had increased, and publishers could afford to give large sums to a popular author. Chapman takes rank among the dramatists mainly by his four chief tragedies: ‘Bussy d’Ambois,’ ‘The Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois,’ ‘The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron,’ and ‘The Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron.’ They are unique among the plays of the period, in that they deal with almost contemporary events in French history; not with the purpose of exciting any feeling for or against the parties introduced, but in calm ignoring of public opinion, they bring recent happenings on the stage to suit the dramatist’s purpose. He drew his material mainly from the ‘Historiæ Sui Temporis’ of Jacques Auguste de Thou, but he troubled himself little about following it with accuracy, or even painting the characters of the chief actors as true to life. In these tragedies, more than in the comedies, we get sight of Chapman the man; indeed, it is his great failing as playwright that his own individuality is constantly cropping out. He alone, of all the great Elizabethan dramatists, was unable to go outside of himself and enter into the habits and thoughts of his characters. Chapman was too much of a scholar and a thinker to be a successful delineator of men. His is the drama of the man who thinks about life, not of one who lives it in its fullness. He does not get into the hearts of men. He has too many theories. Homer had become the ruling influence in his life, and he looked at things from the Homeric point of view and presented life epically. He is at his best in single didactic or narrative passages, and exquisite bits of poetry are prodigally scattered up and down the pages of his tragedies. Next to Shakespeare he is the most sententious of dramatists. He sounded the depths of things in thought which theretofore only Marlowe had done. He is the most metaphysical of dramatists.
Yet his thought is sometimes too much for him, and he becomes obscure. He packs words as tight as Browning, and the sense is often more difficult to unravel. He is best in the closet drama. ‘Cæsar and Pompey,’ published in 1631 but never acted, contains some of his finest thoughts.
Chapman also collaborated with other dramatists. ‘Eastward Ho,’ in 1605, written with Marston and Jonson, is one of the liveliest and best constructed Elizabethan comedies, combining the excellences of the three men without their faults. Some allusion to the Scottish nation offended King James; the authors were confined in Fleet Prison and barely escaped having their ears and noses slit. With Shirley he wrote the comedy ‘The Ball’ and the tragedy ‘Chabot, Admiral of France.’
Chapman wrote comedies to make money, and tragedies because it was the fashion of the day, and he studded these latter with exquisite passages because he was a poet born. But he was above all a scholar with wide and deep learning, not only of the classics but also of the Renaissance literature. From 1613 to 1631 he does not appear to have written for the stage, but was occupied with his translations of Homer, Hesiod, Juvenal, Musæus, Petrarch, and others. In 1614, at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, was performed in the most lavish manner the ‘Memorable Masque of the two Honorable Houses or Inns of Court; the Middle Temple and Lyncoln Inne.’ Chapman also completed Marlowe’s unfinished ‘Hero and Leander.’
His fame however rests on his version of Homer. The first portion appeared in 1598: ‘Seven Bookes of the Iliade of Homer, Prince of Poets; Translated according to the Greeke in judgment of his best Commentaries.’ In 1611 the Iliad complete appeared, and in 1615 the whole of the Odyssey; though he by no means reproduces Homer faithfully, he approaches nearest to the original in spirit and grandeur. It is a typical product of the English Renaissance, full of vigor and passion, but also of conceit and fancifulness. It lacks the simplicity and the serenity of the Greek, but has caught its nobleness and rapidity. As has been said, “It is what Homer might have written before he came to years of discretion.” Yet with all its shortcomings it remains one of the classics of Elizabethan literature. Pope consulted it diligently, and has been accused of at times re-versifying this instead of the Greek. Coleridge said of it:—
Keats’s tribute, the sonnet ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,’ attests another poet’s appreciation of the Elizabethan’s paraphrase. Keats diligently explored this “new planet” that swam into his ken, and his own poetical diction is at times touched by the quaintness and fancifulness of the elder poet he admired.
Lamb, that most sympathetic critic of the old dramatists, speaks of him as follows:—