Part 3

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 most popular play, _Bussy D'Ambois_.

He transformed the Count into an imaginary brother of his former hero. For though D'Ambois had two younger brothers, Hubert, seigneur de Moigneville, and Georges, baron de Bussy, it is highly improbable that Chapman had ever heard of them, and there was nothing in the career of either to suggest the figure of Clermont D'Ambois. The name given by Chapman to this unhistorical addition to the family was, I believe, due to a mere chance, if not a misunderstanding. In Grimeston's narrative of the plot against D'Auvergne he mentions that one of the King's agents, D'Eurre, "came to Clermont on Monday at night, and goes unto him [D'Auvergne] where he supped." Here the name Clermont denotes, of course, a place. But Chapman may have possibly misconceived it to refer to the Count, and, in any case, its occurrence in this context probably suggested its bestowal upon the hero of the second D'Ambois play.

A later passage in Grimeston's history gives an interesting glimpse of D'Auvergne's character. We are told that after he had been arrested, and was being conducted to Paris, "all the way he seemed no more afflicted, then when he was at libertie. He tould youthfull and idle tales of his love, and the deceiving of ladies. Hee shott in a harquebuse at birds, wherein hee was so perfect and excellent, as hee did kill larkes as they were flying."

From this hint of a personality serenely proof against the shocks of adversity Chapman elaborated the figure of the "Senecall man," Clermont D'Ambois. In developing his conception he drew, however, not primarily, as this phrase suggests, from the writings of the Roman senator and sage, but from those of the lowlier, though not less authoritative exponent of Stoic doctrine, the enfranchised slave, Epictetus. As is shown, for the first time, in the Notes to this edition, the _Discourses_ of "the grave Greek moralist," known probably through a Latin version (cf. II, i, 157), must have been almost as close to Chapman's hand while he was writing _The Revenge_ as Grimeston's compilation. Five long passages in the play (I, i, 336-42, II, i, 157-60, II, i, 211-32, III, iv, 58-75, and III, iv, 127-41) are translated or adapted from specific _dicta_ in the _Discourses_, while Epictetus's work in its whole ethical teaching furnished material for the delineation of the ideal Stoic (IV, iv, 14-46) who

"May with heavens immortall powers compare, To whom the day and fortune equall are; Come faire or foule, what ever chance can fall, Fixt in himselfe, hee still is one to all."

But in the character of Clermont there mingle other elements than those derived from either the historical figure of D'Auvergne, or the ideal man of Stoic speculation. Had Hamlet never faltered in the task of executing justice upon the murderer of his father, it is doubtful if a brother of Bussy would ever have trod the Jacobean stage. Not indeed that the idea of vengeance being sought for D'Ambois's fate by one of his nearest kith and kin was without basis in fact. But it was a sister, not a brother, who had devoted her own and her husband's energies to the task, though finally the matter had been compromised. De Thou, at the close of his account of Bussy's murder, relates (vol. III, lib. LXVII, p. 330):

"_Inde odia capitalia inter Bussianos et Monsorellum exorta: quorum exercendorum onus in se suscepit Joannes Monlucius Balagnius, . . . ducta in matrimonium occisi Bussii sorore, magni animi foemina quae faces irae maritali subjiciebat: vixque post novennium certis conditionibus jussu regis inter eum et Monsorellum transactum fuit._"[xxxvii-1]

In a later passage (vol. V, lib. CXVIII, p. 558) he is even more explicit. After referring to Bussy's treacherous assassination, he continues:

"_Quam injuriam Renata ejus soror, generosa foemina et supra sexum ambitiosa, a fratre proximisque neglectam, cum inultam manere impatientissime ferret, Balagnio se ultorem profitente, spretis suorum monitis in matrimonium cum ipso consensit._"[xxxvii-2]

As these passages first appeared in De Thou's History in the edition of 1620, they cannot have been known to Chapman, when he was writing _The Revenge_. But the circumstances must have been familiar to him from some other source, probably that which supplied the material for the earlier play. He accordingly introduces Renée D'Ambois (whom he rechristens Charlotte) with her husband into his drama, but with great skill he makes her fiery passion for revenge at all costs a foil to the scrupulous and deliberate procedure of the high-souled Clermont. Like Hamlet, the latter has been commissioned by the ghost of his murdered kinsman to the execution of a task alien to his nature.

Though he sends a challenge to Montsurry, and is not lacking in "the D'Ambois spirit," the atmosphere in which he lingers with whole-hearted zest is that of the philosophical schools. He is eager to draw every chance comer into debate on the first principles of action. Absorbed in speculation, he is indifferent to external circumstances. As Hamlet at the crisis of his fate lets himself be shipped off to England, so Clermont makes no demur when the King, who suspects him of complicity with Guise's traitorous designs, sends him to Cambray, of which his brother-in-law, Baligny, has been appointed Lieutenant. When on his arrival, his sister, the Lieutenant's wife, upbraids him with "lingering" their "dear brother's wreak," he makes the confession (III, ii, 112-15):

"I repent that ever (By any instigation in th'appearance My brothers spirit made, as I imagin'd) That e'er I yeelded to revenge his murther."

Like Hamlet, too, Clermont, "generous and free from all contriving," is slow to suspect evil in others, and though warned by an anonymous letter--here Chapman draws the incidents from the story of Count D'Auvergne--he lets himself be entrapped at a "muster" or review of troops by the King's emissaries. But the intervention of Guise soon procures his release. In the dialogue that follows between him and his patron the influence of Shakespeare's tragedy is unmistakably patent. The latter is confiding to Clermont his apprehensions for the future, when the ghost of Bussy appears, and chides his brother for his delay in righting his wrongs. That the _Umbra_ of the elder D'Ambois is here merely emulating the attitude of the elder Hamlet's spirit would be sufficiently obvious, even if it were not put beyond doubt by the excited dialogue between Guise, to whom the Ghost is invisible, and Clermont, which is almost a verbal echo of the parallel dialogue between the Danish Prince and the Queen. This second visitation from the unseen world at last stirs up Clermont to execute the long-delayed vengeance upon Montsurry, though he is all but forestalled by Charlotte, who has donned masculine disguise for the purpose. But hard upon the deed comes the news of Guise's assassination, and impatient of the earthly barriers that now sever him from his "lord," Clermont takes his own life in the approved Stoic fashion. So passes from the scene one of the most original and engaging figures in our dramatic literature, and the more thorough our analysis of the curiously diverse elements out of which he has been fashioned, the higher will be our estimate of Chapman's creative power.

Was it primarily with the motive of providing Clermont with a plausible excuse for suicide that Chapman so startlingly transformed the personality of Henry of Guise? The Duke as he appears in _The Revenge_ has scarcely a feature in common either with the Guise of history or of the earlier play. Instead of the turbulent and intriguing noble we see a "true tenth worthy," who realizes that without accompanying virtues "greatness is a shade, a bubble," and who drinks in from the lips of Clermont doctrines "of stability and freedom." To such an extent does Chapman turn apologist for Guise that in a well-known passage (II, i, 205 ff.) he goes out of his way to declare that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was "hainous" only "to a brutish sense, But not a manly reason," and to argue that the blame lay not with "religious Guise," but with those who had played false to "faith and true religion." So astonishing is the dramatist's change of front that, but for the complete lack of substantiating evidence, one would infer that, like Dryden in the interval between _Religio Laici_ and _The Hind and Panther_, he had joined the Church of Rome. In any case the change is not due to the influence of Grimeston's volume, whence Chapman draws his material for the account of Guise's last days. For Jean de Serres (whom the Englishman is here translating) sums up the Duke's character in an "appreciation," where virtues and faults are impartially balanced and the latter are in no wise extenuated. It is another tribute to Chapman's skill, which only close study of the play in relation to its source brings out, that while he borrows, even to the most minute particulars, from the annalist, he throws round the closing episodes of Guise's career a halo of political martyrdom which there is nothing in the original to suggest. This metamorphosis of Guise is all the more remarkable, because Monsieur, his former co-partner in villany, reappears, in the one scene where he figures, in the same ribald, blustering vein as before, and his death is reported, at the close of Act IV, as a fulfilment of Bussy's dying curse.

While Guise is transfigured, and Monsieur remains his truculent, vainglorious self, Montsurry has suffered a strange degeneration. It is sufficiently remarkable, to begin with, after his declaration at the end of _Bussy D'Ambois_,

"May both points of heavens strait axeltree Conjoyne in one, before thy selfe and me!"

to find him ready to receive back Tamyra as his wife, though her sole motive in rejoining him is to precipitate vengeance on his head. Nor had anything in the earlier play prepared us for the spectacle of him as a poltroon, who has "barricado'd" himself in his house to avoid a challenge, and who shrieks "murther!" at the entrance of an unexpected visitor. In the light of such conduct it is difficult to regard as merely assumed his pusillanimity in the final scene, where he at first grovels before Clermont on the plea that by his baseness he will "shame" the avenger's victory. And when he does finally nerve himself to the encounter, and dies with words of forgiveness for Clermont and Tamyra on his lips, the episode of reconciliation, though evidently intended to be edifying, is so huddled and inconsecutive as to be well-nigh ridiculous.

Equally ineffective and incongruous are the moralising discourses of which Bussy's ghost is made the spokesman. It does not seem to have occurred to Chapman that vindications of divine justice, suitable on the lips of the elder Hamlet, fell with singular infelicity from one who had met his doom in the course of a midnight intrigue. In fact, wherever the dramatist reintroduces the main figures of the earlier play, he falls to an inferior level. He seems unable to revivify its nobler elements, and merely repeats the more melodramatic and garish effects which refuse to blend with the classic grace and pathos of Clermont's story. The audiences before whom _The Revenge_ was produced evidently showed themselves ill-affected towards such a medley of purely fictitious creations, and of historical personages and incidents, treated in the most arbitrary fashion. For Chapman in his dedicatory letter to Sir Thomas Howard refers bitterly to the "maligners" with whom the play met "in the scenicall presentation," and asks who will expect "the autenticall truth of eyther person or action . . . in a poeme, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth?" He forgets that "things like truth" are not attained, when alien elements are forced into mechanical union, or when well-known historical characters and events are presented under radically false colours. But we who read the drama after an interval of three centuries can afford to be less perturbed than Jacobean playgoers at its audacious juggling with facts, provided that it appeals to us in other ways. We are not likely indeed to adopt Chapman's view that the elements that give it enduring value are "materiall instruction, elegant and sententious excitation to vertue, and deflection from her contrary." For these we shall assuredly look elsewhere; it is not to them that _The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_ owes its distinctive charm. The secret of that charm lies outside the spheres of "autenticall truth," moral as well as historical. It consists, as it seems to me, essentially in this--that the play is one of the most truly spontaneous products of English "humanism" in its later phase. The same passionate impulse--in itself so curiously "romantic"--to revitalise classical life and ideals, which prompted Chapman's translation of "Homer, Prince of Poets," is the shaping spirit of this singular tragedy. Its hero, as we have seen, has strayed into the France of the Catholic Reaction from some academe in Athens or in imperial Rome. He is, in truth, far more really a spirit risen from the dead than the materialised _Umbra_ of his brother. His pervasive influence works in all around him, so that nobles and courtiers forget for a time the strife of faction while they linger over some fragrant memory of the older world. Epictetus with his doctrines of how to live and how to die; the "grave Greeke tragedian" who drew "the princesse, sweet Antigone"; Homer with his "unmatched poem"; the orators Demetrius Phalerius and Demades--these and their like cast a spell over the scene, and transport us out of the troubled atmosphere of sixteenth-century vendetta into the "ampler æther," the "diviner air," of "the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome."

Thus the two _Bussy_ plays, when critically examined, are seen to be essentially unlike in spite of their external similarity. The plot of the one springs from that of the other; both are laid in the same period and _milieu_; in technique they are closely akin. The diction and imagery are, indeed, simpler, and the verse is of more liquid cadence in _The Revenge_ than in _Bussy D'Ambois_. But the true difference lies deeper,--in the innermost spirit of the two dramas. _Bussy D'Ambois_ is begotten of "the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind" of passion; it throbs with the stress of an over-tumultuous life. _The Revenge_ is the offspring of the meditative impulse, that averts its gaze from the outward pageant of existence, to peer into the secrets of Man's ultimate destiny, and his relation to the "Universal," of which he involuntarily finds himself a part.

FREDERICK S. BOAS.

FOOTNOTES: