Chapman, George
Chapman, George (c.1559–1634),poet and dramatist, now famous as the first translator of Homer into English, but in his time a highly successful playwright and a passionate advocate in verse of the dignity of the poet's profession. His first poems, published as The Shadow of Night (1594), recommend the cultivation of obscurity in poetry (making it comprehensible only to select readers), and the establishment of an intellectual meritocracy capable of competing with the Elizabethan social order. For some scholars, this book identifies him as a member of an exclusive group of intellectuals who surrounded Sir Walter Ralegh. In 1592 the group was dubbed the ‘school of atheism’ by a querulous pamphleteer. One theory, now discredited, holds that Love's Labour's Lost (c.1594) is an attack on the Ralegh circle, and that Shakespeare alludes to this ‘school of atheism’ as the ‘school of night’ (4.3.251), with...
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