Virtues Obscured: George Chapman's Social Strategy

Abstract

In our era, with its rich mythology of the nobility of art, the artistic value of suffering, and the irrepressibility of genius, there is a certain honor in being a poor poet. In England in the 1590s formation is not in place, and it becomes a serious though seldom asked question why a poor but socially ambitious man should set up as a poet. Some struggling writers, such as Thomas Watson, Robert Greene, Christo pher Marlowe, and Thomas Nash, sought commercial popularity. Other poor poets such as John Lyly succeeded economically by play ing to the court. Samuel Daniel and, later, Ben Jonson, found patrons early in their careers. Edmund Spenser supported a serious commit ment to poetry by other employment. Shakespeare did both. Econom ically George Chapman belongs with these poets, but he stands strikingly apart because, though he clearly understands how one suc ceeds in a patronage system and though he participates actively in the commercial theater, he belligerently advocates an obscurity that, given his social ambitions, seems self-defeating and illogical. Chapman's grandfather on his mother's side had been a gentleman and sergeant of the royal buckhounds, and he spent some of his youth in the household of Sir Ralph Sadler.1 He may have attended both universities, and he was widely read in classical and continental Latin literature. In his adult life, however, he seems to have been chronically poor. John Wolfall, a notorious swindler who spent de cades trying to squeeze money out of Chapman, tellingly complained in 1608 that Chapman whoe att the first being a man of verry good parts and expectacion, hath sethence [presumably since 1585] very unadvisedly spent the most part of his tyme and his estate in fruit less and vayne Poetry.2 Chapman always needed money and pa tronage, yet, as generations of exasperated readers have testified, he follows none of the conventional models of eloquence in what he called his fare fetcht and, as it were, beyond-sea manner of writ ing.3 He appears on our literary horizon in 1594 with poems dedi cated to obscurity. He introduces The Shadow of Night (1594) by denouncing the state of letters and learning, calling his own book this poore and strange trifle, and declaring his satisfaction if but a

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