Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/53

 was twenty-six years old, Leicester brought over to Holland a company of actors in his train when he set sail as commander of the forces despatched from England to the support of the States-General, and that others followed suit on their own score in succeeding years, those who are unwilling to allow him a chance of service as a soldier may prefer to conjecture that he was drawn to the seat of war by the more probable force of some poetic or theatrical connection with either the general's first troop of players or that which followed in its track five years later. That these earlier adventurers were succeeded by fresh companies in 1604 and 1605, and again forty years later, at an unpropitious date for actors in England, eleven years after the death of Chapman, I further learn from an article in the Athenæum (Sept. 5th, 1874) on Herr von Hellwald's 'History of the Stage in Holland; and eight years later than the venture of the second company of players in 1590, we find Chapman classed by Meres 'among the best of our tragic writers for the stage,' and repeatedly entered on Henslowe's books as debtor to the manager for some small advance of