Shakespeare's contemporary George Chapman's (1559–1634) translation of The Odyssey celebrates its (likely) 400th anniversary this year (1614–15). He writes in rhyming iambic pentameter lines, known as heroic couplets.
Chapman takes lovely liberties with Homer, elaborating upon images, even adding his own indirect commentary on occasion. Listen to his version of Athena's complaint on behalf of Odysseus, left on "an island suffering strong pains" (Lattimore 13):
Thralld in an Iland, shipwrackt in his teares (Chapman 23)
Shipwrecked in his tears! The island that holds him in thrall sounds like it is almost an island of his own making, isolated by the flood of his own sorrow – or, as Chapman later puts it, "drowned in discontent" (201).
The generalist critic George Steiner characterizes this translation as "spendthrift, inebriate with waste motion, at times precious and as yet uncertain of its coruscating force."
There is much to marvel at here – the complicated dialogue between Odysseus and Calypso, where he must flatter her ageless beauty while reaffirming his desire to return to Penelope; the careful construction of the raft; Poseidon's storm; Odysseus' near-drowning; the pity Ino feels for Odysseus; another wave that finally impels Odysseus to leave the wreckage of his ship to go "wrestling with the sable seas" (505); his ultimate collapse upon the "unhop't for shore" (538). Throughout, Chapman emulates and amplifies Homer's mimesis of the action.