Chase's two brothers became actors; he considered such a career, but ultimately studied English literature, classics, and philosophy.

Michael Chase attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology School of Drama, and was a member of the cast of the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia.

[12] He obtained his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 1956, and studied classics and philosophy for five years at a Jesuit seminary.

[3] He additionally served as an administrative committee member at the early stages of the project to revise Jack Ogilvy's Books Known to the English and create a reference work mapping the sources that influenced the literary culture of Anglo-Saxon England.

"[26] Given the paucity of material with which to trace the evolution of historical perspectives, Chase turned to the better-known lives of the saints from the period.

[27] Seeing early lives which appeared "to avoid and even suppress significant exploitation" of heroic culture and values, and later lives that moved "towards a celebration of heroic values in a way that has been fully integrated with Anglo-Saxon culture", Chase suggested that "Beowulf is likely to have been written neither early, in the eighth century, nor late, in the tenth, but in the rapidly changing and chaotic ninth".

[27] Other chapters, meanwhile, by scholars such as Peter Clemoes and Kevin Kiernan, suggested a date for the poem as early as the eighth century, and as late as the eleventh.

[1][2] An anonymous reviewer of the book termed it "one of the most important inconclusions in the study of Old English", and declared that "henceforth every discussion of the poem and its period will begin with reference to this volume.

[3] The scholar Paul E. Szarmach wrote that Chase "taught us much by his scholarship and by his personal example, and we are in great measure diminished".

[32] Chase had a wife, Joyce (née Breitbach), and five children: Deirdre, Robert, Tim, Mary, and Patrick.