George Chapman

This article deals with the English playwright and poet George Chapman, for the murderer of the same name see George Chapman (poisoner) .

George Chapman (* probably 1559 ; † May 12, 1634 in London ) was an English playwright and poet who was considered the philosopher among the playwrights among the playwrights of his time.

George Chapman, portrait by John Taylor Wedgwood, after John Thurston, 1820

Life

He was born at Hitchin in Hertfordshire and studied at Oxford University in 1574 , but without obtaining a degree. His earliest published works are the poem The Shadow of Night (1594) and Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595). He became a successful playwright towards the end of the last decade of the 16th century, working for Philip Henslowe and later for the Children of the Chapel . His comedies include An Humorous Day's Mirth (1597), All Fools (1599), Monsieur d'Olive (1606), The Gentleman Usher (1606) and May Day (1611).

George Chapman, vignette from Whole works of Homer , 1616

Chapman's earliest surviving play The Blind Beggar of Alexandria was performed in 1596 and two years later listed by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia among the best plays ( "best for tragedie" and the "best for comedie" ). His most famous tragedies borrowed their themes from recent French history Bussy D'Ambois (1607), The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608), The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (1613) and The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France (published 1639).

In his poetic work, Chapman devoted himself entirely to the Mistress Philosophy (cf. his poem A Coronet for his Mistress, Philosophy ) and sought intuitive access to the divinely inspired furor poeticus (English: "poetic enthusiasm") in contrast to the poetry of the University Wits , those mere-learn'd men , the good knowledge administrators from Chapman's point of view, with whom he himself, who most likely had never attended university, neither could nor wanted to identify himself.

In his tragedies, which he often based on events of recent history, Chapman presented his stoicist conceptions, especially in the later works . Society turns out to be corrupt; Using his protagonists, Chapman shows how they either fail because of their own lack of insight or are destroyed by society. Chapman's ideal was the Senecal man , who, in contrast to the natural, which is dominated by his passions, recognizes or sees through the laws of the world and so can stoically endure his fate without losing his integrity.

George Chapman first translated Homer into English

He wrote various plays in association with other poets, such as Eastward Ho (1605), along with Ben Jonson and John Marston , with satirical references to the Scots who put the authors in prison. The piece Rollo Duke of Normandy (date unknown), he wrote with John Fletcher , Jonson and Philip Massinger .

He also wrote poems such as The Shadow of Night (1594), which, in its obscure statements shaped by Neoplatonism and its mystical-esoteric tone, was often read by critics as a reference to the School of Night around Sir Walter Raleigh , or De Guiana, Carmen Epicum (1596), a sequel to Christopher Marlowe's unfinished Hero and Leander (1598), and Euthymiae Raptus; or the Tears of Peace (1609). Some experts recognize Chapman as the so-called " rival poet " in Shakespeare's sonnets.

Chapman's work as a playwright is in no way in contradiction to his aesthetic or philosophical ideals, as the theater has always been a didactic medium for him.

From 1598 he published his translation of the Iliad , in 1616 the complete edition Iliad and Odyssey appeared in the first complete English translation, The Whole Works of Homer . Chapman's Homer is by John Keats in his famous poem On First Looking into Chapman's Homer been highlighted. Chapman saw the Homeric epics as mysterious symbolic poetry that corresponded to his own ideal of elitist poetry, and brought his own stoicism into his transmissions.

Chapman died impoverished in the parish of St. Giles in the Fields. He was buried in the churchyard on May 12, 1634. A monument by Inigo Jones was erected in his memory .

His actual poetic achievement began to appreciate above all the literary criticism only since the Romantic period .

Work editions

• The Poems of George Chapman . Edited by Phyllis Brooks Bartlett, New York 1941 (reprinted 1969).
• The plays of George Chapman . Edited by Thomas Marc Parrott. 4 volumes. London 1910–1914, reprinted 1961.
• The plays of George Chapman: a critical edition . Edited by Allan Holaday et al., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970-1987.

literature

• W. Wieler: Gerge Chapman. The effect of stoicism upon his tragedies . New York: Kings Crown Press, 1949.
• E. Schwartz: The date of Chapman's Byron Plays . In: Modern Philology , LXIII (1961), pp. 201ff.
• A. Nicoll: The Dramatic Portrait of George Chapman . In: Modern Philology , XLI, (1962), p. 222 ff.
• R. Ornstein: The dates of Chapmans Tragedies, Once more . Modern Philology , LIX (1961), p. 61 ff.
• Millar Maclure: George Chapman. A critical study . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1966.
• Raymond B. Waddington: The mind's empire. Myth and form in George Chapman's narrative poems . Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press 1974.

Web links

• Literature by and about George Chapman in the catalog of the German National Library
• Monsieur D'Olive Online text
• Hero and Leander Online text
• Five Chapman Plays Online.
• John Keats: On first looking into Chapman's Homer Online text
• George Chapman · English writer - Entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Bernhard Fabian : The English literature. Volume 2: Authors. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 3rd edition, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-04495-0 , p. 80.
2. ↑ See Anja Müller-Wood: Chapman, George . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 108 f.
3. ↑ See Bernhard Fabian : The English literature. Volume 2: Authors. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 3rd edition, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-04495-0 , p. 81. See also Anja Müller-Wood: Chapman, George . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 108 f.
4. ↑ See Anja Müller-Wood: Chapman, George . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 109 .
5. ↑ Cf. Manfred Pfister : The early modern times: From More to Milton . In: Hans Ulrich Seeber (Ed.): English literary history . 4th ext. Ed. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-476-02035-5 , pp. 46–154, here p. 68.
6. ↑ See Bernhard Fabian : The English literature. Volume 2: Authors. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 3rd edition, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-04495-0 , p. 81.