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Wrestling with This World: A View of George Chapman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert K. Presson
Robert K. Presson*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Extract

IN commenting on Chapman's tragic heroes, Robert Ornstein observes that “Dangerous as it would be to identify Chapman with his Stoic heroes, I cannot but feel that he shared their spiritual isolation and their sense of alienation from an unworthy society.”1 However dangerous (and unfashionable) it may be to look for the author himself in dramatic works, I think a case can be made that Chapman does reveal himself not only in his Stoic heroes but also in many of his poems, plays, and translations, and that he deliberately sought subject matter which best expressed his own outlook and personal feelings. Critics have had a way of not looking into Chapman's works as a whole,2 but to do so is to see a relatively constant pattern, and when the usual pattern does not occur (as sometimes it does not in his comedies and tragedies), even then we have but a variation on it. The good man's confrontation with a corrupt, harsh, hostile, and often destructive world is the image of reality Chapman favors writing about, but a quest for consolations for numerous adversities is not infrequently a concomitant part of that experience. Many characters, fictional and actual, past and present, in the essentials of their experiences, can be read as guises for Chapman's own struggles with the world.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , January 1969 , pp. 44 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy (Madison, Wis., 1960), p. 83.

2 Millar MacLure claims his book is the first full length study of all Chapman's works: George Chapman, A Critical Study (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1966), p. vii. The claim is justified. MacLure sees the Chapman I do, the lonely figure surrounded by hostile forces, but he does not stress, as I do, the quest for consolations.

3 The Poems of George Chapman, ed. Phyllis B. Bartlett (New York, 1962), p. 19—hereafter cited as Poems. Dates listed after poems are publication dates.

4 Chapman's Homer, The Odyssey, ii, II. 11–16, p. 421, ed. Allardyce Nicoll, Bollingen Series xli (New York, 1956). All references to Chapman's translations of Homer (unless otherwise indicated in the text) are to this volume, and to Vol. I, The Iliad.

5 Dedication to The Shadow of Night, 11. 39–40, Poems, p. 19.

6 Iliad (1611), i, 295.

7 “To the Imortall Memorie” (1616), Poems, p. 389.

8 LI. 320–327, Poems, p. 27.

9 LI. 111–124, Poems, p. 383.

10 LI. 266–297, Poems, p. 179.

A Free and Offencdes testification (1614), Poems, p. 331.

12 LI. 1–8, Poems, p. 220.

13 Gloss to 1. 5, Poems, p. 220.

14 “The Occasion of this Impos'd CROWNE” (1624?), The Crowne of All Homers Workes, in Chapman's Homer, ii, 511.

16 The Georgicks of Hesiod (1618), in Homer's Batrachomyomachia, ed. Richard Hooper (London, 1858), pp. 142–143.

16 Georgicks, Bk. i, 11. 300–302.

17 “To his louing friend M. Jo. Fletcher” (1609?), 11. 27–28, Poems, p. 364.

18 De Guiana (1596), 11. 123–145, Poems, p. 356.

19 Eugenia (1614), 11. 244–251, Poems, p. 277.

20 Pro Vere (1622), Poems, pp. 340–342.

21 All references to Chapman's plays (comedies and tragedies) are to The Plays of George Chapman, ed. Thomas M. Parrott (New York, repr. 1961). I follow his dating.

22 Ennis Rees, The Tragedies of George Chapman (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 181–182.

23 Irving Ribner, Jacobean Tragedy (London, 1962), p. 28.

24 Bussy D'Ambois, ed. Nicholas Brooke (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p. liii.

25 Eugene M. Waith notes that the husband appears in a less favorable light than Bussy in this courtly affair: The Herculean Hero (London, 1962), p. 107. He also calls attention to the prevailing tone of praise for Bussy in the Barrisor episode (pp. 92–93).

26 Allardyce Nicoll, Chapman's Homer, i, xii.

27 Iliad i.276-279, p. 31.

28 The Moral Vision, p. 50.

29 The Shadow of Night, 1. 10, Poems, p. 20.

30 In classical guise, 11. 235–242, Poems, p. 225; in traditional Christian, 11. 291–300, Poems, pp. 226–227.

31 LI. 662–666, Poems, pp. 187–188.

32 L. 325, Poems, p. 27.

33 LI. 120–122, Poems, p. 256.

34 Odyssey, ii, p. 14, n. 97.

35 Georgicks, pp. 142–143.

36 Probably the poem is not to be read as ironic, but see J. F. Kermode's interpretation, “The Banquet of Sense,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xxiv (1961), 84.

37 St.ix, Poems, p. 86. For a probable influence of Boethius on Shakespeare, see my article, “Boethius, King Lear, and Maystresse Philosophie,” JEGP, lxiv (1965), 406–424.

38 “For stay in competence” (1612), 1. 44, Poems, p. 240.

39 iv.i.iii. Parrott sees Strozza as giving voice to the poet's own ideas, Comedies, ii, 760.

40 “Of Friendship” (1612), 1. 54, Poems, p. 242; “Pleasd with thy place” (1612), Poems, pp. 237–238. Lord Russell has true patience: Eugenia, 11. 934–941, Poems, p. 293.

41 Phyllis B. Bartlett, “The Heroes of Chapman's Homer,” RES, xvii (1941), 269–270.

42 “A Hymne To Ovr Sauiour,” 11. 301–303, Poems, p. 227.

43 Odyssey, n, glosses on pp. 117, 133, 167, 191, etc.

44 Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1692), ii, 262.

45 LI. 924–938, Poems, pp. 193–194.

46 Bussy D'Ambois v.iv.147-153.

47 Andromeda Liberala (1614), 11. 593–605, Poems, p. 323.

48 The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois v.v.183-192.

49 Caesar and Pompey v.ii.70-88.

50 There is a marked change of attitude on Chapman's part towards suicide from the time he wrote The Gentleman Usher to the time of The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois and Caesar and Pompey. In the earlier play escape from pain by suicide is regarded as pagan sin (iv.i.85-87); Clermont is not condemned for his action which he takes to be free of the turmoils of earth and to win Heaven; Cato appears a Christian martyr eager to win Heaven and be with those already worthily enjoying it. Cato makes little of the suicide itself; much of the new life he envisages (v.ii.128-150).

51 Caesar and Pompey iv.v.133-141.

52 Caesar and Pompey v.ii.131-140.

53 The Tragedy of Chabot v.iii.206-208.

54 LI. 517–520, Poems, p. 184.

55 LI. 554–558, Poems, p. 284.

56 LI. 633–640, Poems, p. 268. 57 Gloss on p. 14.

58 Poems, p. 203.

59 Roy W. Battenhouse, “Chapman and the Nature of Man,” ELH, xii (1945), 87–107.

60 Evans notes that Monsieur in Bussy declares true nobility to be a “positive handicap” in this world (Bussy D'Ambois, ed. Maurice Evans, London, 1965, p. 106). Although the Guise does not accept this pessimistic reading of society, Monsieur sticks to this point and has the last and most eloquent word (v.ii.21-53).