The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France is an early seventeenth-century play, generally judged to be a work of George Chapman, later revised by James Shirley.
As usual in Chapman's French histories, the characters and plot are based on actual historical personages and events – which in this case occurred in the early sixteenth century in the reign of Francis I of France, revolving around Philippe de Chabot.
The play entered the documentary record on 29 April 1635, when Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, listed it in his accounts as a work by Shirley.
The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 24 October 1638, again as a work by Shirley, and was first published in the following year, 1639, in a quarto printed by Thomas Cotes for the booksellers Andrew Crooke and William Cooke.
Yet the Admiral operates in a corrupt and ruthless royal court; when he refuses to implement an unjust law even after the King has signed it, he leaves himself open to malice and manipulation.