1631.... Caesar and Pompey: A Roman Tragedy, declaring their Warres.... By George Chapman. Thomas Harper [&c.]. [Another issue.]
1653.... As it was Acted at the Black Fryers.... [Another issue.]
Chapman says that the play was written ‘long since’ and ‘never touched at the stage’. Various dates have been conjectured; the last, Parrott’s 1612–13, ‘based upon somewhat intangible evidence of style and rhythm’ will do as well as another. Parrott is puzzled by the 1653 title-page and thinks that, in spite of the Epistle, the play was acted. Might it not have been acted by the King’s after the original publication in 1631? Plays on Caesar were so common that it is not worth pursuing the suggestion of Fleay, i. 65, that fragments of the Admiral’s anonymous Caesar and Pompey of 1594–5 may survive here.
Doubtful and Lost Plays
Chapman’s lost plays for the Admiral’s men of 1598–9 have already been noted. Two plays, ‘The Fatall Love, a French Tragedy’, and ‘A Tragedy of a Yorkshire Gentlewoman and her sonne’, were entered as his in the S. R. by Humphrey Moseley on 29 June 1660 (Eyre, ii. 271). They appear, without Chapman’s name, in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (W. W. Greg in 3 Library, ii. 231). The improbable ascriptions to Chapman of The Ball (1639) and Revenge for Honour (1654) on their t.ps. and of Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools (1619) by Kirkman in 1661 do not inspire confidence in this late entry, and even if they were Chapman’s, the plays were not necessarily of our period. But it has been suggested that Fatal Love may be the anonymous Charlemagne (q.v.). J. M. Robertson assigns to Chapman A Lover’s Complaint, accepts the conjecture of Minto and Acheson that he was the ‘rival poet’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, believes him to be criticized in the Holophernes of L. L. L. and regards him as the second hand of Timon of Athens, and with varying degrees of assurance as Shakespeare’s predecessor, collaborator or reviser, in Per., T. C., Tp., Ham., Cymb., J. C., T. of S., Hen. VI, Hen. V, C. of E., 2 Gent., All’s Well, M. W., K. J., Hen. VIII. These are issues which cannot be discussed here. The records do not suggest any association between Chapman and the Chamberlain’s or King’s men, except possibly in Caroline days.
For other ascriptions to Chapman, see in ch. xxiv, Alphonsus, Fedele and Fortunio, Sir Giles Goosecap, Histriomastix, and Second Maiden’s Tragedy.
MASK
Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn Mask. 15 Feb. 1613
S. R. 1613, 27 Feb. (Nidd). ‘A booke called the [description] of the maske performed before the kinge by the gent. of the Myddle temple and Lincolns Inne with the maske of Grayes Inne and the Inner Temple.’ George Norton (Arber, iii. 516).
N.D. The Memorable Maske of the two Honorable Houses or Inns of Court; the Middle Temple, and Lyncolnes Inne. As it was performed before the King, at White-Hall on Shroue Munday at night; being the 15. of February 1613. At the princely Celebration of the most Royall Nuptialls of the Palsgraue, and his thrice gratious Princesse Elizabeth, &c. With a description of their whole show; in the manner of their march on horse-backe to the Court from the Maister of the Rolls his house: with all their right Noble consorts, and most showfull attendants. Inuented, and fashioned, with the ground, and speciall structure of the whole worke, By our Kingdomes most Artfull and Ingenious Architect Innigo Iones. Supplied, Aplied, Digested, and Written, By Geo. Chapman. G. Eld for George Norton. [Epistle by Chapman to Sir Edward Philips, Master of the Rolls, naming him and Sir Henry Hobart, the Attorney-General, as furtherers of the mask; after text, A Hymne to Hymen. R. B. McKerrow, Bibl. Evidence (Bibl. Soc. Trans. xii. 267), shows the priority of this edition. Parts of the description are separated from the speeches to which they belong, with an explanation that Chapman was ‘prevented by the unexpected haste of the printer, which he never let me know, and never sending me a proofe till he had past their speeches, I had no reason to imagine hee could have been so forward’.]