Act IV, as a fulfilment of Bussy's dying curse._Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois

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Transcriber's Note: Words italicized in the original are surrounded by

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BUSSY D'AMBOIS

AND

THE REVENGE OF

BUSSY D'AMBOIS

BY GEORGE CHAPMAN

EDITED BY

FREDERICK S. BOAS, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN

QUEEN'S COLLEGE, BELFAST

BOSTON, U.S.A., AND LONDON

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS

1905

D. C. HEATH & CO.

Prefatory Note

In this volume an attempt is made for the first time to edit _Bussy

D'Ambois_ and _The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_ in a manner suitable to

the requirements of modern scholarship. Of the relations of this edition

to its predecessors some details are given in the Notes on the Text of

the two plays. But in these few prefatory words I should like to call

attention to one or two points, and make some acknowledgments.

The immediate source of _Bussy D'Ambois_ still remains undiscovered. But

the episodes in the career of Chapman's hero, vouched for by

contemporaries like Brantôme and Marguerite of Valois, and related in

some detail in my _Introduction_, are typical of the material which the

dramatist worked upon. And an important clue to the spirit in which he

handled it is the identification, here first made, of part of Bussy's

dying speech with lines put by Seneca into the mouth of Hercules in his

last agony on Mount Oeta. The exploits of D'Ambois were in Chapman's

imaginative vision those of a semi-mythical hero rather than of a

Frenchman whose life overlapped with his own.

On the _provenance_ of _The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_ I have been

fortunately able, with valuable assistance from others, to cast much new

light. In an article in _The Athenæum_, Jan. 10, 1903, I showed that the

immediate source of many of the episodes in the play was Edward

Grimeston's translation (1607) of Jean de Serres's _Inventaire Général

de l'Histoire de France_. Since that date I owe to Mr. H. Richards,

Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, the important discovery that a number

of speeches in the play are borrowed from the _Discourses_ of Epictetus,

from whom Chapman drew his conception of the character of Clermont

D'Ambois. My brother-in-law, Mr. S. G. Owen, Student of Christ Church,

has given me valuable help in explaining some obscure classical

allusions. Dr. J. A. H. Murray, the editor of the _New English

Dictionary_, has kindly furnished me with the interpretation of a

difficult passage in _Bussy D'Ambois_; and Mr. W. J. Craig, editor of

the _Arden_ Shakespeare, and Mr. Le Gay Brereton, of the University of

Sidney, have been good enough to proffer helpful suggestions. Finally I

am indebted to Professor George P. Baker, the General Editor of this

Series, for valuable advice and help on a large number of points, while

the proofs of this volume were passing through the press.

F. S. B.

Biography

George Chapman was probably born in the year after Elizabeth's

accession. Anthony Wood gives 1557 as the date, but the inscription on

his portrait, prefixed to the edition of _The Whole Works of Homer_ in

1616, points to 1559. He was a native of Hitchin in Hertfordshire, as we

learn from an allusion in his poem _Euthymiæ Raptus_ or _The Teares of

Peace_, and from W. Browne's reference to him in _Britannia's Pastorals_

as "the learned shepheard of faire Hitching Hill." According to Wood "in

1574 or thereabouts, he being well grounded in school learning was sent

to the University." Wood is uncertain whether he went first to Oxford or

to Cambridge, but he is sure, though he gives no authority for the

statement, that Chapman spent some time at the former "where he was

observed to be most excellent in the Latin & Greek tongues, but not in

logic or philosophy, and therefore I presume that that was the reason

why he took no degree there."

His life for almost a couple of decades afterwards is a blank, though it

has been conjectured on evidences drawn from _The Shadow of Night_ and

_Alphonsus Emperor of Germany_, respectively, that he served in one of

Sir F. Vere's campaigns in the Netherlands, and that he travelled in

Germany. _The Shadow of Night_, consisting of two "poeticall hymnes"

appeared in 1594, and is his first extant work. It was followed in 1595

by _Ovid's Banquet of Sence_, _The Amorous Zodiac_, and other poems.

These early compositions, while containing fine passages, are obscure

and crabbed in style.[v-1] In 1598 appeared Marlowe's fragmentary _Hero

and Leander_ with Chapman's continuation. By this year he had

established his position as a playwright, for Meres in his _Palladis

Tamia_ praises him both as a writer of tragedy and of comedy. We know

from Henslowe's _Diary_ that his earliest extant comedy _The Blinde

Begger of Alexandria_ was produced on February 12, 1596, and that for

the next two or three years he was working busily for this enterprising

manager. _An Humerous dayes Myrth_ (pr. 1599), and _All Fooles_ (pr.

1605) under the earlier title of _The World Runs on Wheels_,[vi-1] were

composed during this period.

Meanwhile he had begun the work with which his name is most closely

linked, his translation of Homer. The first instalment, entitled _Seaven

Bookes of the Iliades of Homere, Prince of Poets_, was published in

1598, and was dedicated to the Earl of Essex. After the Earl's execution

Chapman found a yet more powerful patron, for, as we learn from the

letters printed recently in _The Athenæum_ (cf. _Bibliography_, sec.

III), he was appointed about 1604 "sewer (i. e. cupbearer) in ordinary,"

to Prince Henry, eldest son of James I. The Prince encouraged him to

proceed with his translation, and about 1609 appeared the first twelve

books of the _Iliad_ (including the seven formerly published) with a

fine "Epistle Dedicatory," to "the high-born Prince of men, Henry." In

1611 the version of the _Iliad_ was completed, and that of the _Odyssey_

was, at Prince Henry's desire, now taken in hand. But the untimely death

of the Prince, on November 6th, 1612, dashed all Chapman's hopes of

receiving the anticipated reward of his labours. According to a petition

which he addressed to the Privy Council, the Prince had promised him on

the conclusion of his translation £300, and "uppon his deathbed a good

pension during my life." Not only were both of these withheld, but he

was deprived of his post of "sewer" by Prince Charles. Nevertheless he

completed the version of the _Odyssey_ in 1614, and in 1616 he published

a folio volume entitled _The Whole Works of Homer_. The translation, in

spite of its inaccuracies and its "conceits," is, by virtue of its

sustained dignity and vigour, one of the noblest monuments of

Elizabethan genius.

By 1605, if not earlier, Chapman had resumed his work for the stage. In

that year he wrote conjointly with Marston and Jonson the comedy of

_Eastward Hoe_. On account of some passages reflecting on the Scotch,

the authors were imprisoned. The details of the affair are obscure.

According to Jonson, in his conversation later with Drummond, Chapman

and Marston were responsible for the obnoxious passages, and he

voluntarily imprisoned himself with them. But in one of the recently

printed letters, which apparently refers to this episode, Chapman

declares that he and Jonson lie under the Kings displeasure for "two

clawses and both of them not our owne," i. e., apparently, written by

Marston.[vii-1] However this may be, the offenders were soon released,

and Chapman continued energetically his dramatic work. In 1606 appeared

two of his most elaborate comedies, _The Gentleman Usher_ and _Monsieur

D'Olive_, and in the next year was published his first and most

successful tragedy, _Bussy D'Ambois_. In 1608 were produced two

connected plays, _The Conspiracie and Tragedie of Charles, Duke of

Byron_, dealing with recent events in France, and based upon materials

in E. Grimeston's translation (1607) of Jean de Serres' History. Again

Chapman found himself in trouble with the authorities, for the French

ambassador, offended by a scene in which Henry IV's Queen was introduced

in unseemly fashion, had the performance of the plays stopped for a

time. Chapman had to go into hiding to avoid arrest, and when he came

out, he had great difficulty in getting the plays licensed for

publication, even with the omission of the offending episodes. His

fourth tragedy based on French history, _The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_,

appeared in 1613. It had been preceded by two comedies, _May-Day_

(1611), and _The Widdowes' Teares_ (1612). Possibly, as Mr Dobell

suggests (_Athenæum_, 23 March, 1901), the coarse satire of the latter

play may have been due to its author's annoyance at the apparent refusal

of his suit by a widow to whom some of the recently printed letters are

addressed. In 1613 he produced his _Maske of the Middle Temple and

Lyncolns Inne_, which was one of the series performed in honour of the

marriage of the Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine. Another

hymeneal work, produced on a much less auspicious occasion, was an

allegorical poem, _Andromeda Liberata_, celebrating the marriage of the

Earl of Somerset with the divorced Lady Essex in December, 1613.

The year 1614, when the _Odyssey_ was completed, marks the culminating

point of Chapman's literary activity. Henceforward, partly perhaps owing

to the disappointment of his hopes through Prince Henry's death, his

production was more intermittent. Translations of the _Homeric Hymns_,

of the _Georgicks_ of Hesiod, and other classical writings, mainly

occupy the period till 1631. In that year he printed another tragedy,

_Cæsar and Pompey_, which, however, as we learn from the dedication, had

been written "long since." The remaining plays with which his name has

been connected did not appear during his lifetime. A comedy, _The Ball_,

licensed in 1632, but not published till 1639, has the names of Chapman

and Shirley on the title-page, but the latter was certainly its main

author. Another play, however, issued in the same year, and ascribed to

the same hands, _The Tragedie of Chabot, Admiral of France_ makes the

impression, from its subject-matter and its style, of being chiefly due

to Chapman. In 1654 two tragedies, _Alphonsus Emperour of Germany_ and

_The Revenge for Honour_, were separately published under Chapman's

name. Their authorship, however, is doubtful. There is nothing in the

style or diction of _Alphonsus_ which resembles Chapman's undisputed

work, and it is hard to believe that he had a hand in it. _The Revenge

for Honour_ is on an Oriental theme, entirely different from those

handled by Chapman in his other tragedies, and the versification is

marked by a greater frequency of feminine endings than is usual with

him; but phrases and thoughts occur which may be paralleled from his

plays, and the work may be from his hand.

On May 12, 1634, he died, and was buried in the churchyard of St.

Giles's in the Field, where his friend Inigo Jones erected a monument to

his memory. According to Wood, he was a person of "most reverend aspect,

religious and temperate, qualities rarely meeting in a poet." Though his

material success seems to have been small, he gained the friendship of

many of the most illustrious spirits of his time--Essex, Prince Henry,

Bacon, Jonson, Webster, among the number--and it has been his good

fortune to draw in after years splendid tributes from such successors in

the poetic art as Keats and A. C. Swinburne.

FOOTNOTES:

[v-1] This Biography was written before the appearance of Mr. Acheson's

volume, _Shakespeare and the Rival Poet_. Without endorsing all his

arguments or conclusions, I hold that Mr. Acheson has proved that

Shakespeare in a number of his Sonnets refers to these earlier poems of

Chapman's. He has thus brought almost conclusive evidence in support of

Minto's identification of Shakespeare's rival with Chapman--a conjecture

with which I, in 1896, expressed strong sympathy in my _Shakspere and

his Predecessors_.

[vi-1] This identification seems established by the entry in Henslowe's

_Diary_, under date 2 July 1599. "Lent unto thomas Dowton to paye Mr

Chapman, in full paymente for his boocke called the world rones a

whelles, and now all foolles, but the foolle, some of ______ xxxs."

[vii-1] See pp. 158-64, Jonson's _Eastward Hoe and Alchemist_, F. E.

Schelling (Belles Lettres Series, 1904).

Introduction

The group of Chapman's plays based upon recent French history, to which

_Bussy D'Ambois_ and its sequel belong, forms one of the most unique

memorials of the Elizabethan drama. The playwrights of the period were

profoundly interested in the annals of their own country, and exploited

them for the stage with a magnificent indifference to historical

accuracy. Gorboduc and Locrine were as real to them as any Lancastrian

or Tudor prince, and their reigns were made to furnish salutary lessons

to sixteenth century "magistrates." Scarcely less interesting were the

heroes of republican Greece and Rome: Cæsar, Pompey, and Antony, decked

out in Elizabethan garb, were as familiar to the playgoers of the time

as their own national heroes, real or legendary. But the contemporary

history of continental states had comparatively little attraction for

the dramatists of the period, and when they handled it, they usually had

some political or religious end in view. Under a thin veil of allegory,

Lyly in _Midas_ gratified his audience with a scathing denunciation of

the ambition and gold-hunger of Philip II of Spain; and half a century

later Middleton in a still bolder and more transparent allegory, _The

Game of Chess_, dared to ridicule on the stage Philip's successor, and

his envoy, Gondomar. But both plays were suggested by the elements of

friction in the relations of England and Spain.

French history also supplied material to some of the London

playwrights, but almost exclusively as it bore upon the great conflict

between the forces of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The _Masaker

of France_, which Henslowe mentions as having been played on January 3,

1592-3, may or may not be identical with Marlowe's _The Massacre at

Paris_, printed towards the close of the sixteenth century, but in all

probability it expressed similarly the burning indignation of Protestant

England at the appalling events of the Eve of St. Bartholomew. Whatever

Marlowe's religious or irreligious views may have been, he acted on this

occasion as the mouthpiece of the vast majority of his countrymen, and

he founded on recent French history a play which, with all its defects,

is of special interest to our present inquiry. For Chapman, who finished

Marlowe's incompleted poem, _Hero and Leander_, must have been familiar

with this drama, which introduced personages and events that were partly

to reappear in the two _Bussy_ plays. A brief examination of _The

Massacre at Paris_ will, therefore, help to throw into relief the

special characteristics of Chapman's dramas.

It opens with the marriage, in 1572, of Henry of Navarre and Margaret,

sister of King Charles IX, which was intended to assuage the religious

strife. But the Duke of Guise, the protagonist of the play, is

determined to counterwork this policy, and with the aid of Catherine de

Medicis, the Queen-Mother, and the Duke of Anjou (afterwards Henry III),

he arranges the massacre of the Huguenots. Of the events of the fatal

night we get a number of glimpses, including the murder of a

Protestant, Scroune, by Mountsorrell (Chapman's Montsurry), who is

represented as one of the Guise's most fanatical adherents. Charles soon

afterwards dies, and is succeeded by his brother Henry, but "his mind

runs on his minions," and Catherine and the Guise wield all real power.

But there is one sphere which Guise cannot control--his wife's heart,

which is given to Mugeroun, one of the "minions" of the King. Another of

the minions, Joyeux, is sent against Henry of Navarre, and is defeated

and slain; but Henry, learning that Guise has raised an army against his

sovereign "to plant the Pope and Popelings in the realm," joins forces

with the King against the rebel, who is treacherously murdered and dies

crying, "_Vive la messe!_ perish Huguenots!" His brother, the Cardinal,

meets a similar fate, but the house of Lorraine is speedily revenged by

a friar, who stabs King Henry. He dies, vowing vengeance upon Rome, and

sending messages to Queen Elizabeth, "whom God hath bless'd for hating

papistry."

It is easy to see how a play on these lines would have appealed to an

Elizabethan audience, while Marlowe, whether his religious sympathies

were engaged or not, realized the dramatic possibilities of the figure

of the Guise, one of the lawlessly aspiring brotherhood that had so

irresistible a fascination for his genius. But it is much more difficult

to understand why, soon after the accession of James I, Chapman should

have gone back to the same period of French history, and reintroduced a

number of the same prominent figures, Henry III, Guise, his Duchess, and

Mountsorrell, not in their relation to great political and religious

outbreaks, but grouped round a figure who can scarcely have been very

familiar to the English theatre-going public--Louis de Clermont, Bussy

d'Amboise.[xii-1]

This personage was born in 1549, and was the eldest son of Jacques de

Clermont d'Amboise, seigneur de Bussy et de Saxe-Fontaine, by his first

wife, Catherine de Beauvais. He followed the career of arms, and in 1568

we hear of him as a commandant of a company. He was in Paris during the

massacre of St. Bartholomew, and took advantage of it to settle a

private feud. He had had a prolonged lawsuit with his cousin Antoine de

Clermont, a prominent Huguenot, and follower of the King of Navarre.

While his rival was fleeing for safety he had the misfortune to fall

into the hands of Bussy, who dispatched him then and there. He

afterwards distinguished himself in various operations against the

Huguenots, and by his bravery and accomplishments won the favour of the

Duke of Anjou, who, after the accession of Henry III in 1575, was heir

to the throne. The Duke in this year appointed him his _couronell_, and

henceforward he passed into his service. In 1576, as a reward for

negotiating "_la paix de Monsieur_" with the Huguenots, the Duke

received the territories of Anjou, Touraine, and Berry, and at once

appointed Bussy governor of Anjou. In November the new governor arrived

at Angers, the capital of the Duchy, and was welcomed by the citizens;

but the disorders and exactions of his troops soon aroused the anger of

the populace, and the King had to interfere in their behalf, though for

a time Bussy set his injunctions at defiance. At last he retired from

the city, and rejoined the Duke, in close intercourse with whom he

remained during the following years, accompanying him finally on his

unsuccessful expedition to the Low Countries in the summer of 1578. On

Anjou's return to court in January, 1579, Bussy, who seems to have

alienated his patron by his presumptuous behaviour, did not go with him,

but took up his residence again in the territory of Anjou. He was less

occupied, however, with his official duties than with his criminal

passion for Françoise de Maridort, wife of the Comte de Monsoreau, who

had been appointed _grand-veneur_ to the Duke. The favorite mansion of

the Comte was at La Coutancière, and it was here that Bussy ardently

pursued his intrigue with the Countess. But a jocular letter on the

subject, which he sent to the Duke of Anjou, was shown, according to the

historian, De Thou, by the Duke to the King, who, in his turn, passed it

on to Montsoreau. The latter thereupon forced his wife to make a

treacherous assignation with Bussy at the château on the night of the

18th of August, and on his appearance, with his companion in pleasure,

Claude Colasseau, they were both assassinated by the retainers of the

infuriated husband.

The tragic close of Bussy's life has given his career an interest

disproportionate to his historical importance. But the drama of La

Coutancière was only the final episode in a career crowded with romantic

incidents. The annalists and memoir-writers of the period prove that

Bussy's exploits as a duellist and a gallant had impressed vividly the

imagination of his contemporaries. Margaret of Valois, the wife of Henry

IV, Brantôme, who was a relative and friend of D'Ambois, and L'Estoile,

the chronicler and journalist, are amongst those who have left us their

impressions of this _beau sabreur_. Chapman must have had access to

memorials akin to theirs as a foundation for his drama, and though, for

chronological reasons, they cannot have been utilized by him, they

illustrate the materials which he employed.

The first two Acts of the play are chiefly occupied with Bussy's

arrival at court, his entry into the service of Monsieur, his quarrel

with Guise, and the duel between himself and Barrisor, with two

supporters on either side. Brantôme, in his _Discours sur les Duels_,

relates from personal knowledge an incident between Guise and Bussy,

which took place shortly after the accession of Henry III. The Duke took

occasion of a royal hunting party to draw Bussy alone into the forest,

and to demand certain explanations of him. D'Ambois gave these in a

satisfactory manner; but had he not done so, the Duke declared, in spite

of their difference of rank, he would have engaged in single combat with

him. The explanations demanded may well have concerned the honour of the

Duchess, and we get at any rate a hint for the episode in Chapman's play

(I, ii, 57-185).

For the duelling narrative (II, i, 35-137) we get considerably more than

a hint. Our chief authority is again Brantôme, in another work, the

_Discours sur les Couronnels de l'infanterie de France_. He tells us

that he was with Bussy at a play, when a dispute arose between him and

the Marquis of Saint-Phal as to whether the jet embroidery on a certain

muff represented XX or YY. The quarrel was appeased for the time being,

but on the following day Bussy, meeting Saint-Phal at the house of a

lady with whom he had had relations, and who was now the mistress of the

Marquis, renewed the dispute. An encounter took place between Bussy,

supported by five or six gentlemen, and Saint-Phal, assisted by an equal

number of Scotchmen of the Royal Guard, one of whom wounded Bussy's

hand. Thereupon Saint-Phal withdrew, but his fire-eating rival was

anxious at all hazards for another encounter. It was only with the

greatest difficulty, as Brantôme relates in entertaining fashion, that

the King was able to bring about a reconciliation between them. Such an

episode, reported with exaggeration of details, might well have

suggested the narrative in Act II of the triple encounter.

Brantôme further relates a midnight attack upon Bussy, about a month

later, by a number of his jealous rivals, when he had a narrow escape

from death. Of this incident another account has been given by Margaret

of Valois in her _Mémoires_. Margaret and her brother, the Duke of

Anjou, were devoted to one another, and Bussy was for a time a paramour

of the Queen of Navarre. Though she denies the liaison, she says of him

that there was not "_en ce siècle-là de son sexe et de sa qualité rien

de semblable en valeur, reputation, grace, et esprit_." Margaret,

L'Estoile, and Brantôme all relate similar incidents during Bussy's

sojourn at court in the year 1578, and the last-named adds:

"_Si je voulois raconter toutes les querelles qu'il a eues,

j'aurois beaucoup affaire; hélas! il en a trop eu, et toutes

les a desmeslées à son très-grand honneur et heur. Il en

vouloit souvant par trop à plusieurs, sans aucun respect; je

luy ay dict cent fois; mais il se fioit tant en sa valeur qu'il

mesprisoit tous les conseils de ses amis . . . Dieu ayt son âme!

Mais il mourut (quand il trespassa) un preux trés vaillant et

généreux._"

It is plain, therefore, that Chapman in his picture of Bussy's quarrels

and encounters-at-arms was deviating little, except in details of names

and dates, from the actual facts of history. Bussy's career was so

romantic that it was impossible for even the most inventive dramatist to

embellish it. This was especially true of its closing episode, which

occupies the later acts of Chapman's drama--the intrigue with the

Countess of Montsoreau and the tragic fate which it involved. It is

somewhat singular that the earliest narratives of the event which have

come down to us were published subsequently to the play. The statement,

accepted for a long time, that De Thou's _Historiæ sui Temporis_ was the

basis of Chapman's tragedy, has been completely disproved. The passage

in which he narrates the story of Bussy's death does not occur in the

earlier editions of his work, and first found its way into the issue

published at Geneva in 1620. A similar narrative appeared in the

following year in L'Estoile's _Journal_, which first saw the light in

1621, ten years after its author's death. But under a thin disguise

there had already appeared a detailed history of Bussy's last _amour_

and his fall, though this, too, was later than Chapman's drama. A

novelist, François de Rosset, had published a volume of tales entitled

_Les Histoires Tragiques de Nostre Temps_. The earliest known edition is

one of 1615, though it was preceded, probably not long, by an earlier

edition full of "_fautes insupportables_," for which Rosset apologizes.

He is careful to state in his preface that he is relating "_des

histoires autant veritables que tristes et funestes. Les noms de la

pluspart des personnages sont seulement desguisez en ce Theatre, à fin

de n'affliger pas tant les familles de ceux qui en ont donné le sujet._"

The fate of Bussy forms the subject of the seventeenth history,

entitled "_De la mort pitoyable du valeureux Lysis_." Lysis was the name

under which Margaret of Valois celebrated the memory of her former lover

in a poem entitled "_L'esprit de Lysis disant adieu à sa Flore_." But

apart from this proof of identification, the details given by Rosset are

so full that there can be no uncertainty in the matter. Indeed, in some

of his statements, as in his account of the first meeting between the

lovers, Rosset probably supplies facts unrecorded by the historians of

the period.

From a comparison of these more or less contemporary records it is

evident that, whatever actual source Chapman may have used, he has given

in many respects a faithful portrait of the historical Bussy D'Ambois.

It happened that at the time of Bussy's death the Duke of Anjou, his

patron, was in London, laying ineffective siege to the hand of

Elizabeth. This coincidence may have given wider currency in England to

Bussy's tragic story than would otherwise have been the case. But a

quarter of a century later this adventitious interest would have

evaporated, and the success of Chapman's play would be due less to its

theme than to its qualities of style and construction. To these we must

therefore now turn.

With Chapman's enthusiasm for classical literature, it was natural that

he should be influenced by classical models, even when handling a

thoroughly modern subject. His Bussy is, in certain aspects, the _miles

gloriosus_ of Latin drama, while in the tragic crisis of his fate he

demonstrably borrows, as is shown in this edition for the first time,

the accents of the Senecan Hercules on Mount Oeta (cf. notes on v, iv,

100 and 109). Hence the technique of the work is largely of the

semi-Senecan type with which Kyd and his school had familiarized the

English stage. Thus Bussy's opening monologue serves in some sort as a

Prologue; the narrative by the _Nuntius_ in Act II, i, 35-137, is in the

most approved classical manner; an _Umbra_ or Ghost makes its regulation

entrance in the last Act, and though the accumulated horrors of the

closing scenes violate every canon of classical art, they had become

traditional in the semi-Senecan type of play, and were doubtless highly

acceptable to the audiences of the period. But while the Senecan and

semi-Senecan methods had their dangers, their effect on English

dramatists was in so far salutary that they necessitated care in

plot-construction. And it is doubtful whether Chapman has hitherto

received due credit for the ingenuity and skill with which he has woven

into the texture of his drama a number of varied threads. Bussy's life

was, as has been shown, crowded with incidents, and the final

catastrophe at La Coutancière had no direct relation with the duels and

intrigues of his younger days at Court. Chapman, however, has connected

the earlier and the later episodes with much ingenuity. Departing from

historical truth, he represents Bussy as a poor adventurer at Court,

whose fortunes are entirely made by the patronage of Monsieur. His

sudden elevation turns his head, and he insults the Duke of Guise by

courting his wife before his face, thus earning his enmity, and exciting

at the same time the ridicule of the other courtiers. Hence springs the

encounter with Barrisor and his companions, and this is made to serve as

an introduction to the _amour_ between Bussy and Tamyra, as Chapman

chooses to call the Countess of Montsurry. For Barrisor, we are told

(II, ii, 202 ff.), had long wooed the Countess, and the report was

spread that the "main quarrel" between him and Bussy "grew about her

love," Barrisor thinking that D'Ambois's courtship of the Duchess of

Guise was really directed towards "his elected mistress." On the advice

of a Friar named Comolet, to whom Chapman strangely enough assigns the

repulsive _rôle_ of go-between, Bussy wins his way at night into

Tamyra's chamber on the plea that he has come to reassure her that she

is in no way guilty of Barrisor's blood. Thus the main theme of the play

is linked with the opening incidents, and the action from first to last

is laid in Paris, whither the closing scenes of Bussy's career are

shifted. By another ingenious departure from historical truth the Duke

of Anjou, to whom Bussy owes his rise, is represented as the main agent

in his fall. He is angered at the favour shown by the King to the

follower whom he had raised to serve his own ends, and he conspires with

Guise for his overthrow. He is the more eagerly bent upon this when he

discovers through Tamyra's waiting-woman that the Countess, whose

favours he has vainly sought to win, has granted them to Bussy. It is he

who, by means of a paper, convinces Montsurry of his wife's guilt, and

it is he, together with Guise, who suggests to the Count the stratagem

by which Tamyra is forced to decoy her paramour to his doom. All this

is deftly contrived and does credit to Chapman's dramatic craftsmanship.

It is true that the last two Acts are spun out with supernatural

episodes of a singularly unconvincing type. The Friar's invocation of

Behemoth, who proves a most unserviceable spirit, and the vain attempts

of this scoundrelly ecclesiastic's ghost to shield D'Ambois from his

fate, strike us as wofully crude and mechanical excursions into the

occult. But they doubtless served their turn with audiences who had an

insatiable craving for such manifestations, and were not particular as

to the precise form they took.

In point of character-drawing the play presents a more complex problem.

Bussy is a typically Renaissance hero and appealed to the sympathies of

an age which set store above all things on exuberant vitality and

prowess, and was readier than our own to allow them full rein. The King

seems to be giving voice to Chapman's conception of Bussy's character,

when he describes him in III, ii, 90 ff. as

"A man so good that only would uphold

Man in his native noblesse, from whose fall

All our dissentions arise," &c.

And in certain aspects Bussy does not come far short of the ideal thus

pictured. His bravery, versatility, frankness, and readiness of speech

are all vividly portrayed, while his mettlesome temper and his arrogance

are alike essential to his _rôle_, and are true to the record of the

historical D'Ambois. But there is a coarseness of fibre in Chapman's

creation, an occasional foul-mouthed ribaldry of utterance which robs

him of sympathetic charm. He has in him more of the swashbuckler and the

bully than of the courtier and the cavalier. Beaumont and Fletcher, one

cannot help feeling, would have invested him with more refinement and

grace, and would have given a tenderer note to the love-scenes between

him and Tamyra. Bussy takes the Countess's affections so completely by

storm, and he ignores so entirely the rights of her husband, that it is

difficult to accord him the measure of sympathy in his fall, which the

fate of a tragic hero should evoke.

Tamyra appeals more to us, because we see in her more of the conflict

between passion and moral obligation, which is the essence of drama. Her

scornful rejection of the advances of Monsieur (II, ii), though her

husband palliates his conduct as that of "a bachelor and a courtier, I,

and a prince," proves that she is no light o' love, and that her

surrender to Bussy is the result of a sudden and overmastering passion.

Even in the moment of keenest expectation she is torn between

conflicting emotions (II, ii, 169-182), and after their first interview,

Bussy takes her to task because her

"Conscience is too nice,

And bites too hotly of the Puritane spice."

But she masters her scruples sufficiently to play the thorough-going

dissembler when she meets her husband, and she keeps up the pretence

when she declares to Bussy before the Court (III, ii, 138), "Y'are one I

know not," and speaks of him vaguely in a later scene as "the man." So,

too, when Montsurry first tells her of the suspicions which Monsieur

has excited in him, she protests with artfully calculated indignation

against the charge of wrong-doing with this "serpent." But the brutal

and deliberate violence of her husband when he knows the truth, and the

perfidious meanness with which he makes her the reluctant instrument of

her lover's ruin, win back for her much of our alienated sympathy. Yet

at the close her position is curiously equivocal. It is at her prayer

that Bussy has spared Montsurry when "he hath him down" in the final

struggle; but when her lover is mortally wounded by a pistol shot, she

implores his pardon for her share in bringing him to his doom. And when

the Friar's ghost seeks to reconcile husband and wife, the former is

justified in crying ironically (V, iv, 163-64):

"See how she merits this, still kneeling by,

And mourning his fall, more than her own fault!"

Montsurry's portraiture, indeed, suffers from the same lack of

consistency as his wife's. In his earlier relations with her he strikes

a tenderer note than is heard elsewhere in the play, and his first

outburst of fury, when his suspicions are aroused, springs, like

Othello's, from the depth of his love and trust (IV, i, 169-70):

"My whole heart is wounded,

When any least thought in you is but touch'd."

But there is nothing of Othello's noble agony of soul, nor of his sense

that he is carrying out a solemn judicial act on the woman he still

loves, in Montsurry's long-drawn torture of his wife. Indeed a

comparison of the episodes brings into relief the restraint and purity

of Shakespeare's art when handling the most terrible of tragic themes.

Yet the Moor himself might have uttered Montsurry's cry (V, i, 183-85),

"Here, here was she

That was a whole world without spot to me,

Though now a world of spot."

And there is something of pathetic dignity in his final forgiveness of

his wife, coupled with the declaration that his honour demands that she

must fly his house for ever.

Monsieur and the Guise are simpler types. The former is the ambitious

villain of quality, chafing at the thought that there is but a thread

betwixt him and a crown, and prepared to compass his ends by any means

that fall short of the actual killing of the King. It is as a useful

adherent of his faction that he elevates Bussy, and when he finds him

favoured by Henry he ruthlessly strikes him down, all the more readily

that he is his successful rival for Tamyra's love. He is the typical

Renaissance politician, whose characteristics are expounded with

characteristically vituperative energy by Bussy in III, ii, 439-94.

Beside this arch-villain, the Guise, aspiring and factious though he be,

falls into a secondary place. Probably Chapman did not care to elaborate

a figure of whom Marlowe had given so powerful a sketch in the _Massacre

at Paris_. The influence of the early play may also be seen in the

handling of the King, who is portrayed with an indulgent pen, and who

reappears in the _rôle_ of an enthusiastic admirer of the English Queen

and Court. The other personages in the drama are colourless, though

Chapman succeeds in creating the general atmosphere of a frivolous and

dissolute society.

But the plot and portraiture in _Bussy D'Ambois_ are both less

distinctive than the "full and heightened" style, to which was largely

due its popularity with readers and theatre-goers of its period, but

which was afterwards to bring upon it such severe censure, when taste

had changed. Dryden's onslaught in his _Dedication to the Spanish Friar_

(1681) marks the full turn of the tide. The passage is familiar, but it

must be reproduced here:

"I have sometimes wondered, in the reading, what has become of

those glaring colours which annoyed me in _Bussy D'Ambois_

upon the theatre; but when I had taken up what I supposed a

fallen star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly; nothing

but a cold dull mass, which glittered no longer than it was

shooting; a dwarfish thought, dressed up in gigantic words,

repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross

hyperboles; the sense of one line expanded prodigiously into

ten; and, to sum up all, uncorrect English, and a hideous

mingle of false poetry and true nonsense; or, at best, a

scantling of wit, which lay gasping for life, and groaning

beneath a heap of rubbish. A famous modern poet used to

sacrifice every year a Statius to Virgil's _manes_; and I have

indignation enough to burn a _D'Ambois_ annually to the memory

of Jonson."

Dryden's critical verdicts are never lightly to be set aside. He is

singularly shrewd and unprejudiced in his judgements, and has a

remarkable faculty of hitting the right nail on the head. But Chapman,

in whom the barbarian and the pedant were so strongly commingled, was a

type that fell outside the wide range of Dryden's appreciation. The

Restoration writer fails, in the first place, to recognize that _Bussy

D'Ambois_ is pitched advisedly from first to last in a high key.

Throughout the drama men and women are playing for great stakes. No one

is ever at rest. Action and passion are both at fever heat. We move in

an atmosphere of duels and state intrigues by day, of assignations and

murders by night. Even the subordinate personages in the drama, the

stewards and waiting-women, partake of the restless spirit of their

superiors. They are constantly arguing, quarrelling, gossiping--their

tongues and wits are always on the move. Thus Chapman aimed throughout

at energy of expression at all costs. To this he sacrificed beauty of

phrase and rhythm, even lucidity. He pushed it often to exaggerated

extremes of coarseness and riotous fancy. He laid on "glaring colours"

till eye and brain are fatigued. To this opening phrase of Dryden no

exception can be taken. But can his further charges stand? Is it true to

say of _Bussy D'Ambois_ that it is characterised by "dwarfish thought

dressed up in gigantic words," that it is "a hideous mingle of false

poetry and true nonsense"? The accusation of "nonsense" recoils upon its

maker. Involved, obscure, inflated as Chapman's phrasing not

infrequently is, it is not mere rhodomontade, sound, and fury,

signifying nothing. There are some passages (as the Notes testify) where

the thread of his meaning seems to disappear amidst his fertile imagery,

but even here one feels not that sense is lacking, but that one has

failed to find the clue to the zigzag movements of Chapman's brain. Nor

is it fair to speak of Chapman as dressing up dwarfish thoughts in

stilted phrases. There is not the slightest tendency in the play to spin

out words to hide a poverty of ideas; in fact many of the difficulties

spring from excessive condensation. Where Chapman is really assailable

is in a singular incontinence of imagery. Every idea that occurs to him

brings with it a plethora of illustrations, in the way of simile,

metaphor, or other figure of speech; he seems impotent to check the

exuberant riot of his fancy till it has exhausted its whole store. The

underlying thought in many passages, though not deserving Dryden's

contemptuous epithet, is sufficiently obvious. Chapman was not dowered

with the penetrating imagination that reveals as by a lightning flash

unsuspected depths of human character or of moral law. But he has the

gnomic faculty that can convey truths of general experience in

aphoristic form, and he can wind into a debatable moral issue with

adroit casuistry. Take for instance the discussion (II, i, 149-79) on

the legitimacy of private vengeance, or (III, i, 10-30) on the nature

and effect of sin, or (V, ii) on Nature's "blindness" in her workings.

In lighter vein, but winged with the shafts of a caustic humour are

Bussy's invectives against courtly practices (I, i, 84-104) and

hypocrisy in high places (III, ii, 25-59), while the "flyting" between

him and Monsieur is perhaps the choicest specimen of Elizabethan

"Billingsgate" that has come down to us. It was a versatile pen that

could turn from passages like these to the epic narrative of the duel,

or Tamyra's lyric invocation of the "peaceful regents of the night" (II,

ii, 158), or Bussy's stately elegy upon himself, as he dies standing,

propped on his true sword.

It can only have been the ingrained prejudice of the Restoration period

against "metaphysical" verse that deadened Dryden's ear to the charm of

such passages as these. Another less notable poet and playwright of the

time showed more discrimination. This was Thomas D'Urfey, who in 1691

brought out a revised version of the play at the Theatre Royal. In a

dedication to Lord Carlisle which he prefixed to this version, on its

publication in the same year, he testifies to the great popularity of

the play after the reopening of the theatres.

"About sixteen years since, when first my good or ill stars

ordained me a Knight Errant in this fairy land of poetry, I

saw the _Bussy d'Ambois_ of Mr. Chapman acted by Mr. Hart,

which in spight of the obsolete phrases and intolerable

fustian with which a great part of it was cramm'd, and which I

have altered in these new sheets, had some extraordinary

beauties, which sensibly charmed me; which being improved by

the graceful action of that eternally renowned and best of

actors, so attracted not only me, but the town in general,

that they were obliged to pass by and excuse the gross errors

in the writing, and allow it amongst the rank of the topping

tragedies of that time."

Charles Hart, who was thus one of the long succession of actors to make

a striking reputation in the title part, died in 1683, and, according to

D'Urfey, "for a long time after" the play "lay buried in [his] grave."

But "not willing to have it quite lost, I presumed to revise it and

write the plot new." D'Urfey's main alteration was to represent Bussy

and Tamyra as having been betrothed before the play opens, and the

latter forced against her will into a marriage with the wealthy Count

Montsurry. This, he maintained, palliated the heroine's surrender to

passion and made her "distress in the last Act . . . much more liable to

pity." Whether morality is really a gainer by this well-meant variation

from the more primitive code of the original play is open to question,

but we welcome the substitution of Teresia the "governess" and

confidante of Tamyra for Friar Comolet as the envoy between the lovers.

Another notable change is the omission of the narrative of the

_Nuntius_, which is replaced by a short duelling scene upon the stage.

D'Urfey rejects, too, the supernatural machinery in Act IV, and the

details of the torture of the erring Countess, whom, at the close of the

play, he represents not as wandering from her husband's home, but as

stabbing herself in despair.

If Chapman's plot needed to be "writ new" at all, D'Urfey deserves

credit for having done his work with considerable skill and taste,

though he hints in his dedication that there were detractors who did not

view his version as favourably as Lord Carlisle. He had some difficulty,

he tells us, in finding an actor to undertake the part, but at last

prevailed upon Mountfort to do so, though he was diffident of appearing

in a _rôle_ in which Hart had made so great a reputation. Mrs.

Bracegirdle, as we learn from the list of _Dramatis Personæ_ prefixed to

the published edition, played Tamyra, and the revival seems to have been

a success. But Mountfort was assassinated in the Strand towards the

close of the following year, and apparently the career of _Bussy_ upon

the boards ended with his life.

In the same year as D'Urfey revised the play, Langbaine published his

_Account of the English Dramatick Poets_, wherein (p. 59) he mentions

that Bussy "has the preference" among all Chapman's writings and

vindicates it against Dryden's attack:

"I know not how Mr. Dryden came to be so possest with

indignation against this play, as to resolve to burn one

annually to the memory of Ben Jonson: but I know very well

that there are some who allow it a just commendation; and

others that since have taken the liberty to promise a solemn

annual sacrifice of _The Hind and Panther_ to the memory of

Mr. Quarles and John Bunyan."

But neither D'Urfey nor Langbaine could secure for _Bussy D'Ambois_ a

renewal of its earlier popularity. During the eighteenth century it fell

into complete oblivion, and though (as the Bibliography testifies)

nineteenth-century critics and commentators have sought to atone for the

neglect of their predecessors, the faults of the play, obvious at a

glance, have hitherto impaired the full recognition of its distinctive

merits of design and thought. To bring these into clearer relief, and

trace the relation of its plot to the recorded episodes of Bussy's

career, has been the aim of the preceding pages. It must always count to

Chapman's credit that he, an Englishman, realized to the full the

fascination of the brilliant Renaissance figure, who had to wait till

the nineteenth century to be rediscovered for literary purposes by the

greatest romance-writer among his own countrymen. In Bussy, the man of

action, there was a Titanic strain that appealed to Chapman's

intractable and rough-hewn genius. To the dramatist he was the classical

Hercules born anew, accomplishing similar feats, and lured to a similar

treacherous doom. Thus the cardinal virtue of the play is a Herculean

energy of movement and of speech which borrows something of epic quality

from the Homeric translations on which Chapman was simultaneously

engaged, and thereby links _Bussy D'Ambois_ to his most triumphant

literary achievement.

Six years after the publication of the first Quarto of _Bussy D'Ambois_

Chapman issued a sequel, _The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_, which, as we

learn from the title-page, had been "often presented at the private

Playhouse in the White-Fryers." But in the interval he had written two

other plays based on recent French history, _Byrons Conspiracie_ and

_The Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron_, and in certain aspects _The

Revenge_ is more closely related to these immediate forerunners than to

the piece of which it is the titular successor. The discovery which I

recently was fortunate enough to make of a common immediate source of

the two Byron plays and of _The Revenge_ accentuates the connection

between them, and at the same time throws fresh light on the problem of

the _provenance_ of the second D'Ambois drama.

In his scholarly monograph _Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George

Chapmans, Massingers, und Fords_ (1897), E. Koeppel showed that the

three connected plays were based upon materials taken from Jean de

Serres's _Inventaire Général de l'Histoire de France_ (1603), Pierre

Matthieu's _Histoire de France durant Sept Années de Paix du Regne de

Henri IV_ (1605), and P. V. Cayet's _Chronologie Septénaire de

l'Histoire de la Paix entre les Roys de France et d'Espagne_ (1605).

The picture suggested by Koeppel's treatise was of Chapman collating a

number of contemporary French historical works, and choosing from each

of them such portions as suited his dramatic purposes. But this

conception, as I have shown in the _Athenæum_ for Jan. 10, 1903, p. 51,

must now be abandoned. Chapman did not go to the French originals at

all, but to a more easily accessible source, wherein the task of

selection and rearrangement had already been in large measure performed.

In 1607 the printer, George Eld, published a handsome folio, of which

the British Museum possesses a fine copy (c. 66, b. 14), originally the

property of Prince Henry, eldest son of James I. Its title is: "_A

General Inventorie of the Historie of France, from the beginning of that

Monarchie, unto the Treatie of Vervins, in the Yeare 1598. Written by

Jhon de Serres. And continued unto these Times, out of the best Authors

which have written of that Subiect. Translated out of French into

English by Edward Grimeston, Gentleman._" This work, the popularity of

which is attested by the publication of a second, enlarged, edition in

1611, was the direct source of the "Byron" plays, and of _The Revenge_.

In a dedication addressed to the Earls of Suffolk and Salisbury,

Grimeston states that having retired to "private and domesticke cares"

after "some years expence in France, for the publike service of the

State," he has translated "this generall Historie of France written by

John de Serres." In a preface "to the Reader" he makes the further

important statement:

"The History of John de Serres ends with the Treatie at

Vervins betwixt France and Spaine in the yeare 1598. I have

been importuned to make the History perfect, and to continue

it unto these times, whereunto I have added (for your better

satisfaction) what I could extract out of Peter Mathew and

other late writers touching this subject. Some perchance will

challenge me of indiscretion, that I have not translated Peter

Mathew onely, being reputed so eloquent and learned a Writer.

To them I answere first, that I found many things written by

him that were not fit to be inserted, and some things

belonging unto the Historie, related by others, whereof he

makes no mention. Secondly his style is so full and his

discourse so copious, as the worke would have held no

proportion, for that this last addition of seven years must

have exceeded halfe Serres Historie. Which considerations have

made me to draw forth what I thought most materiall for the

subject, and to leave the rest as unnecessarie."

From this we learn that Grimeston followed Jean de Serres till 1598, and

that from then till 1604 (his time-limit in his first edition) his

principal source was P. Matthieu's _Histoire de France_, rigorously

condensed, and, at the same time, supplemented from other authorities. A

collation of Grimeston's text with that of the "Byron" plays and _The

Revenge_ proves that every passage in which the dramatist draws upon

historical materials is to be found within the four corners of the folio

of 1607. The most striking illustrations of this are to be found in the

"Byron" plays, and I have shown elsewhere (_Athenæum_, _loc. cit._) that

though Chapman in handling the career of the ill-fated Marshal of France

is apparently exploiting Pierre Matthieu, Jean de Serres, and Cayet in

turn, he is really taking advantage of the labours of Grimeston, who had

rifled their stores for his skilful historical mosaic. Grimeston must

thus henceforward be recognized as holding something of the same

relation to Chapman as Sir T. North does to Shakespeare, with the

distinction that he not only provides the raw material of historical

tragedy, but goes some way in the refining process.

_The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_ follows historical lines less closely

than the "Byron" plays, but here, too, Grimeston's volume was Chapman's

inspiring source, and the perusal of its closing pages gives a clue to

the origin of this most singular of the dramatist's serious plays. The

final episode included in the folio of 1607 was the plot by which the

Count d'Auvergne, who had been one of Byron's fellow conspirators, and

who had fallen under suspicion for a second time in 1604, was

treacherously arrested by agents of the King while attending a review of

troops. The position of this narrative (translated from P. Matthieu) at

the close of the folio must have helped to draw Chapman's special

attention to it, and having expended his genius so liberally on the

career of the arch-conspirator of the period, he was apparently moved to

handle also that of his interesting confederate. But D'Auvergne's

fortunes scarcely furnished the stuff for a complete drama, on Chapman's

customary broad scale, and he seems therefore to have conceived the

ingenious idea of utilising them as the groundwork of a sequel to his