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learning was sent to the University) and 1594, when he published his first poem, we have no trace or hint to guide us, in conjecturing how his life was spent between the ages of fifteen and thirtyfive. This latter age is the least he can have attained, by any computation, at the time when he put forth his Shadow of Night,' full of loud and angry complaints of neglect and slight, endured at the hands of an unthankful and besotted generation." Thus, in the year 1594, Chapman first comes into our ken, a rancorous and disgruntled man, and though, in the ensuing years, he accomplished great work in his Homeric translations, and also attained some meed of fame both as a dramatist and a poet, we find him to the last a very Timon in misanthropy. Not only in his prose and verse dedications does he rail against his rivals and curse his fate, but even in the poems for which the dedications are written he strays again and again from his subject to indulge in like abuse and railing. The history of English verse does not reveal in any other poet the self-consciousness manifested by Chapman in his poems; nor do we find in the work of any other poet or dramatist the absolute effacement of self exhibited by Chapman's great rival: were it not for the Sonnets, and the light which they throw upon some of his plays, his personality would be quite hidden.

Though we see that Chapman dedicates his earlier poems of 1594 and 1595 to men of learning and fellow-writers, and not to men of place and wealth, both the tone of these dedications, and internal evi

dence in these poems, prove that this was more from necessity than virtue. In "Ovid's Banquet of Sense," dedicated to his friend Matthew Royden, he breaks clean away from his subject to mourn his state, thus:

"In these dog-days how this contagion smothers The purest blood with virtues diet fined, Nothing their own, unless they be some other's Spite of themselves, are in themselves confined, And live so poor they are of all despised, Their gifts held down with scorn should be divined,

And they like mummers mask, unknown, unprized: A thousand marvels mourn in some such breast, Would make a kind and worthy patron blest."

Even in his earliest published poem,-" The Shadow of Night" (1594),-which is also dedicated to Royden, he in many passages sounds the same doleful note. "A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy" is nothing but lament for his friendless condition, and splenetic abuse of a more fortunate poet. There is scarcely an original poem by Chapman in which this mournful and abusive tone cannot be found. Even in his "Hymn to Christ upon the Cross" it reveals itself, and it is strange that he can abstain from it in his translations.

No contemporary poet so persistently supplicated patronage, yet none are so bitter and envious towards others who sought it and were successful. In later years we find him not too particular in his

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choice of patrons, so that they were men of position or wealth. He dedicated Andromeda Liberata " most fulsomely to the notorious Carr, Earl of Somerset, and his still more notorious wife; in fact, it was written expressly for their nuptials and made Chapman the laughing-stock of the day. In the light of all this, I am inclined to take his strictures. upon other poets who sought the patronage of the great with a grain of salt, and to impute his choler to plain envy of their success.

His early attacks upon Shakespeare, which I shall demonstrate later on, in all probability arose from this source, and possibly initiated the feud between them; his later attacks clearly reveal jealousy, not only of Shakespeare's literary reputation, but also of his increase in estate and wealth, and were no doubt intensified in virulence by the retaliatory measures adopted by our poet.

In Shakespeare's early rejoinders I notice rather an amused disdain than bitterness; in only one instance in his early retorts do I find bitterness, and this touch seems to refer to some smallness or treachery on the part of Chapman, which antedates the period at which our history of the enmity begins, or else it was introduced at a later date by Shakespeare, upon his revision of the play in which I find it. In "Love's Labor's Lost," in the gulling by Biron and his friends of the actors in the "Nine Worthies," the wit expended upon all the characters, except that which Holofernes personates, is of rather a playful and harmless nature; in the gibes directed at Holofernes, however, a most distinctly

bitter and personal tone is discernible, and references are made that are entirely without point unless they refer to something not revealed in the play. That Chapman is pilloried in the character of Holofernes and that his ideas and theories are attacked and expressly mentioned in the play, I believe I can prove.

Chapman's "Amorous Zodiac," which Shakespeare attacks in the 21st Sonnet, was published in 1595 along with "Ovid's Banquet of Sense" and "A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy." I shall in the next chapter prove that Shakespeare indicates and attacks these three poems, and shall also show that he attacks the theories evolved by Chapman in a poem published in the previous year, called "The Shadow of Night." In a still later chapter I shall show the reasons for Shakespeare's attacks, in the covert aspersions which Chapman casts at him in these poems and their dedications. I will show a renewal of this hostility a year or two later, when Chapman again seeks the favor of Southampton, to father the publication of his first Homeric translations, giving both Shakespeare's attacks and Chapman's rejoinders, and finally shall reveal a new outburst of this latent hostility on both sides, in the year 1609, and in this way not only cast a new light upon many of the Sonnets, "Love's Labor's Lost," and "Troilus and Cressida," but shall set a definite date for their production and forever place beyond cavil the value of the personal theory of the Sonnets.

CHAPTER V.

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THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT, AND LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST."

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IT has been usual, with Shakespearean critics, to assign a much earlier date for the production of 'Love's Labor's Lost" than that for which I shall now contend. Many writers place it in 1591, and others have given it even an earlier date.

The earliest known publication of this play is the quarto of 1598. The earliest known references to it are also in this year. Meres mentions it with several other plays in his "Palladis Tamia," and an obscure contemporary poet,-Robert Tofte,-alludes to it in one of his verses. Tofte's reference, however, is of such a nature as to lead us to infer that it was not a new publication at the time he wrote:

"Love's Labor's Lost I once did see, a Play
Y-cleped so, so called to my pain.

Which I to hear to my small joy did stay,
Giving attendance on my froward Dame:
My misgiving mind presaging to me ill,
Yet was I drawn to see it 'gainst my will.

"Each actor played in cunning wise his part,
But chiefly those entrapped in Cupid's snare ;
Yet all was feigned, 'twas not from the heart,
They seemed to grieve, but yet they felt no care:

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