SOURCE: Monsarrat, Gilles D. “George Chapman: Necessity and Suicide.” In Light from the Porch: Stoicism and English Renaissance Literature Collection Études Anglaises, Vol. 86, pp. 189-221. Paris: Didier-Érudition, 1984.

In the essay below, Monsarrat maintains that while Chapman created a “full-fledged Stoic” in Clermont in The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, there is little evidence to suggest that the playwright utilized Stoic philosophy in any other of his dramatic works.

George Chapman's early poems and plays do not reveal any interest in Stoic philosophy. The Shadow of Night (1594) was born of the cult of melancholy, a most unstoic attitude. Sacred Night is a “house of mourning” into which the poet invites his readers to “weepe, weepe [their] soules, into felicitie” with him.¹ Though Chapman claims in “Hymnus in Noctem” that “Sweete Peaces richest crowne is made of starres” (l. 374), he does not seem to have found true peace in nocturnal...