George Chapman: The life and works. The relations between the poems and the tragedies

Abstract

In George Chapmans work, from the early group of poems (1594-6) to the group of late tragedies (1610-13), three phases of development seem to be clearly indicated. The early poems belong to the school of Elizabethan humanist poetry, with certain individual differences in thought and mood, due largely, I believe, to the external events of his life. With the change of the national mood during the early years of the Jacobean period Chapman finds imperative the need for a re-adjustment of the humanism, developed in the early poems, to render it adequate to the pressure of contemporary scepticism, and the two tragedies, Bussy D'Ambois and Biron show the conflict in Chapman's mind between an acceptance of this sceptical thought and the optimism of the earlier period. From Biron. in which he temporarily but not wholly satisfactorily resolves this conflict, he passes in the Tears of Peace and the late tragedies to a more permanent integration between humanism and Christian thought. The thesis thus divides itself according to these phases of development, with a preliminary biographical chapter to indicate the external influences in his life and, since the validity of the theme depends upon the chronological order of the plays, an appendix to indicate as far as possible the dates of composition.