George Chapman

Plays and Poems

Ben Jonson

John Marston

Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company's 2002 season presented five classical works, rarely seen in the theatre but ripe for rediscovery by a new audience. These five plays constitute a body of work written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, presenting the great diversity of the drama of the period, from city comedy to revenge tragedy, from discovery plays to the latest addition to the Shakespeare canon. Each is published in a separate volume alongside the RSC production. Teeming with energy and larger than life characters, Eastward Ho! sees Touchstone, a London goldsmith, preparing to marry off his two daughters. Touchstone's apprentices, Golding and Quicksilver, lead the wooing until the rakish fop and adventurer Sir Petronel Flash arrives on the scene. A comedy of virtue and true love triumphing over social-climbing, deception and trickery.

Eastward Ho!

The Comedies and Tragedies of George Chapman: Bussy d'Ambois. Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois. Conspiracie and tragedie of Charles, duke of Byron. May-day. Notes

Benjamin Jonson (1572-1637) was a Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor, known best for his satirical plays and lyric poems. Jonson's works are particularly recognizable because of his consistencies in style, intricacy of plot, characterization and setting. He focused on creating works that implemented elements of the realistic as well as the absurd. For a few years around the turn of the century, Jonson had participated in the War of the Theatres with his rival playwrights, John Marston and Thomas Dekker; the men satirized each other in scathing comedies. However, a few years later Jonson worked with Marston and George Chapman on a satirical city comedy called "Eastward Ho!" The collaborative effort was a remarkable success, blending three very different writings styles into a single, coherent play. The tale of contemporary London life was written in response to the immense success of Thomas Dekker and John Webster's "Westward Ho!"

Eastward Ho

An anthology containing a selection of George Chapman's poetry and plays, including Bussy D'Ambois, All Fooles, and the Widdowes Teares. In the PENGUIN DRAMATISTS series.

Homer

George Chapman's translations of Homer are among the most famous in the English language. Keats immortalized the work of the Renaissance dramatist and poet in the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." Swinburne praised the translations for their "romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur," their "freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire." The great critic George Saintsbury (1845-1933) wrote: "For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language." This volume presents the original text of Chapman's translation of the Odyssey (1614-15), making only a small number of modifications to punctuation and wording where they might confuse the modern reader. The editor, Allardyce Nicoll, provides an introduction, textual notes, a glossary, and a commentary. Garry Wills's preface to the Odyssey explores how Chapman's less strained meter lets him achieve more delicate poetic effects as compared to the Iliad. Wills also examines Chapman's "fine touch" in translating "the warm and human sense of comedy" in the Odyssey. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold. --John Keats

The Odyssey

Chapman's Homer

This volume presents the original 1611 text of George Chapman's translation, tapping into the poetic consonance between the semi-divine heroism of the "Iliad"'s warriors and the cosmological symbols of Renaissance humanism.

The Iliad

Of all the poets Francis Meres names in his famous Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598), just two rate a mention as being both 'our best for tragedy' and 'the best poets for comedy': William Shakespeare and George Chapman. All Fools, written in 1599, is the only Elizabethan comedy based directly on the plays of Terence. By taking episodes and characters from two brilliant works, The Self-Tormenter and The Brothers, Chapman creates something that is distinctly Elizabethan while remaining faithful to the spirit of the great Roman master. In this edition, an extensive introduction and commentary show how Chapman combines the literary and theatrical traditions of ancient Rome with everyday life in his own time to fashion a sparkling and innovative comedy that will delight audiences today as much as it did those of 1599.

All Fools

Christopher Marlowe

Henry Petowe

The Complete Poems and Translations

Bussy D'Ambois

Chapman based the plot of All Fools on two classical Roman comedies by Terence, the Heauton Timorumenos and the Adelphoe.[7] As to be expected with Terentian and Terence-influenced comedy, the plot of All Fools centers on two old men and their children. The two seniors are knights of Florence named Gostanzo and Marc Antonio. Gostanzo is a brashly acquisitive and manipulative old man, an "old, politique, dissembling knight" who believes that "Honesty is but a defect of wit." In contrast, Marc Antonio is a mellower-tempered gentleman who follows a course of "simple honesty." Each of the knights has two children: Gostanzo is the father of a son, Valerio, and a daughter, Bellomora, while Marc Antonio has two sons, Fortunio and Rynaldo. Valerio has received the education appropriate to a young gentleman, though his father keeps him down on the farm, busy with the tasks of husbandry; and Bellomora is secluded at home. This inhibits the love lives of both young people. Valerio has entered into a secret marriage with the comely but poor Gratiana, yet cannot acknowledge his marriage publicly due to paternal opposition. Marc Antonio's elder son Fortunio is in love with Bellamora, but has no opportunity to court her. The nosy Gostanzo happens to catch sight of the group of young people, and notes Valerio and Gratiana together. As the others retreat, the witty young Rynaldo persuades Gostanzo that Gratiana is actually the secret wife of his brother Fortunio. Rynaldo manipulatively presses Gostanzo to keep the secret; Gostanzo agrees...and instantly goes to Marc Antonio to inform him. Marc Antonio is skeptical that his son is secretly married; in response Gostanzo talks up a tower of speculation and possibility, in which Marc Antonio's righteous indignation drives Fortunio to run off to the wars and lose various limbs. Gostanzo works up his own solution to this non-existent problem: Fortunio and Gratiana will come to live in Gostanzo's house, and Gostanzo will persuade Fortunio of the error of his ways. This plan, when carried out, gives the young people exactly what they want. Valerio and his wife Gratiana are under the same roof, under his father's nose; and Fortunio can woo Bellomora. Yet Gostanzo's busybody nature cannot rest; spying on his guests, he notes that his son Valerio is too affectionate with Fortunio's "wife" Gratiana. He cooks up a further plan, to send Gratiana to the house of her "father-in-law" Marc Antonio, to prevent Fortunio from being "cuckolded" in his (non-existent) marriage. Marc Antonio remains skeptical. Gostanzo is so sure he's right that when Valerio gives a deceptive confession of his marriage, Gostanzo thinks that his son is fooling with Marc Antonio and gives his son a facetious pardon for his fault. The outcome is that once the full story comes out at the end of the play, Valerio has gained his father's public blessing of his marriage with Gratiana. Gostanzo, a self-expressed admirer of wit, has to concede his son's cleverness. Meanwhile, Fortunio has made the most of his opportunity and married Bellomora. The play has a subplot on the topic of male jealousy: Cornelio is irrationally and excessively jealous of his faithful wife Gazetta, and quarrels with the man he thinks is her lover. He duels with and wounds the courtier Doriotto, and threatens to divorce his wife - which allows opportunities for medical humor with Pock the surgeon, and legal humor with a Notary. (The Notary even provides a specific date for the play in his divorce document: 17 November 1500.) In the end, the divorce does not occur; Cornelio admits that he was only trying to teach his wife a lesson.

Widdowes teares. Masque of the Middle Temple, and Lincolns Inne. Tragedy of Caesar and Pompey. Tragedy of Alphonsus, emperor of Germany. Revenge for honour. Notes

Now First Collected with Illustrative Notes and a Memoir of the Author

Comedies and Tragedies

The Works of George Chapman ...

Chapman's The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron

Bussy d'Ambois. Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois. Conspiracie and tragedie of Charles, duke of Byron. May-day. Notes

The play is based on the life of the real Louis de Bussy d'Amboise, who was murdered in 1579.

Alan W. Reid

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