Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois Part 2

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 n.o.bler elements, and merely repeats the more melodramatic and garish effects which refuse to blend with the cla.s.sic 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 fict.i.tious creations, and of historical personages and incidents, treated in the most arbitrary fas.h.i.+on. 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 a.s.suredly 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 pa.s.sionate impulse--in itself so curiously "romantic"--to revitalise cla.s.sical 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 n.o.bles 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 aether," 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 pa.s.sion; 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:

[xii-1] Through the kindness of Professor Baker I have seen an unpublished paper of Mr. P. C. Hoyt, Instructor in Harvard University, which first calls attention to the combined suggestiveness of three entries in _Henslowe's Diary_ (Collier's ed.) for any discussion of the date of _Bussy D'Ambois_. In Henslowe's "Enventorey of all the aparell of the Lord Admirals men, taken the 13th of Marcher 1598," is an item, "Perowes sewt, which Wm Sley were." (_Henslowe's Diary_, ed. Collier, p.

275.) In no extant play save _Bussy D'Ambois_ is a character called Pero introduced. Moreover, Henslowe (pp. 113 and 110) has the following entries: "Lent unto Wm Borne, the 19 of novembr 1598 . . . the some of xijs, wch he sayd yt was to Imbrader his hatte for the Gwisse. Lent Wm Birde, ales Borne, the 27 of novembr, to bye a payer of sylke stockens, to playe the Gwisse in xxs." Taken by themselves these two allusions to the "Gwisse" might refer, as Collier supposed, to Marlowe's _The Ma.s.sacre at Paris_. But when combined with the mention of Pero earlier in the year, they may equally well refer to the Guise in _Bussy D'Ambois_. Can _Bussy D'Ambois_ have been the unnamed "tragedie" by Chapman, for the first three Acts of which Henslowe lent him iijli on Jan. 4, 1598, followed by a similar sum on Jan. 8th, "in fulle payment for his tragedie?" The words which Dekker quotes in _Satiromastix_, Sc 7 (1602), "For trusty D'Amboys now the deed is done," seem to be a line from a play introducing D'Ambois. If, however, the play was written circa 1598, it must have been considerably revised after the accession of James I to the throne, for the allusions to Elizabeth as an "old Queene" (1, 2, 12), and to Bussy as being mistaken for "a knight of the new edition," must have been written after the accession of James I (_Chronicle of the English Drama_, 1, 59). But Mr Fleay's further statement that the words, "Tis leape yeere" (1, 2, 85), "must apply to the date of production," and "fix the time of representation to 1604,"

is only an ingenious conjecture. If the words "Ile be your ghost to haunt you," etc (1, 2, 243-244), refer to _Macbeth_, as I have suggested in the note on the pa.s.sage, they point to a revision of the play not earlier than the latter part of 1606.

[x.x.xvii-1] "Hence a deadly feud arose between the kin of Bussy and Montsurry. The task of carrying this into action was undertaken by Jean Montluc Baligny, who had married the murdered man's sister, a high-spirited woman who fanned the flame of her husband's wrath. With difficulty, after a period of nine years, was an arrangement come to between him and Montsurry on specified terms by the order of the King."

[x.x.xvii-2] "Renee, his sister, a high-souled woman, and of aspirations loftier than those of her s.e.x, brooked it very ill that this injury, of which his brother and nearest kin took no heed, should remain unavenged.

When, therefore, Baligny profferred himself as an avenger, she agreed to marry him, in defiance of the admonitions of her family."

THE TEXT

_Bussy D'Ambois_ was first printed in quarto in 1607 by W. Aspley, and was reissued in 1608. In 1641, seven years after Chapman's death, Robert Lunne published another edition in quarto of the play, which, according to the t.i.tle-page, was "much corrected and amended by the Author before his death." This quarto differs essentially from its predecessors. It omits and adds numerous pa.s.sages, and makes constant minor changes in the text. The revised version is not appreciably superior to the original draft, but, on the evidence of the t.i.tle-page, it must be accepted as authoritative. It was reissued by Lunne, with a different imprint, in 1646, and by J. Kirton, with a new t.i.tle-page, in 1657.

Copies of the 1641 quarto differ in unimportant details such as _articular_, _articulat_, for evidently some errors were corrected as the edition pa.s.sed through the press. Some copies of the 1646 quarto duplicate the uncorrected copies of the 1641 quarto.

In a reprint of Chapman's Tragedies and Comedies, published by J.

Pearson in 1873, the anonymous editor purported to "follow mainly" the text of 1641, but collation with the originals shows that he transcribed that of 1607, subst.i.tuting the later version where the two quartos differed, but retaining elsewhere the spelling of the earlier one. Nor is his list of variants complete. There have been also three editions of the play in modernized spelling by C. W. Dilke in 1814, R. H. Shepherd in 1874, and W. L. Phelps in 1895, particulars of which are given in the Bibliography. The present edition is therefore the first to reproduce the authoritative text unimpaired. The original spelling has been retained, though capitalization has been modernized, and the use of italics for personal names has not been preserved. But the chaotic punctuation has been throughout revised, though, except to remove ambiguity, I have not interfered with one distinctive feature, an exceptionally frequent use of brackets. In a few cases of doubtful interpretation, the old punctuation has been given in the footnotes.

Dilke, though the earliest of the annotators, contributed most to the elucidation of allusions and obsolete phrases. While seeking to supplement his and his successors' labours in this direction, I have also attempted a more perilous task--the interpretation of pa.s.sages where the difficulty arises from the peculiar texture of Chapman's thought and style. Such a critical venture seems a necessary preliminary if we are ever to sift truth from falsehood in Dryden's indictment--indolently accepted by many critics as conclusive--of _Bussy D'Ambois_.

The group of quartos of 1641, 1646, and 1657, containing Chapman's revised text, is denoted by the symbol "B"; those of 1607 and 1608 by "A." In the footnotes all the variants contained in A are given except in a few cases where the reading of A has been adopted in the text and that of B recorded as a variant. I have preferred the reading of A to B, when it gives an obviously better sense, or is metrically superior. I have also included in the Text fifty lines at the beginning of Act II, Scene 2, which are found only in A. Some slight conjectural emendations have been attempted which are distinguished by "emend. ed." in the footnotes. In these cases the reading of the quartos, if unanimous, is denoted by "Qq."

In the quartos the play is simply divided into five Acts. These I have subdivided into Scenes, within which the lines have been numbered to facilitate reference. The stage directions in B are numerous and precise, and I have made only a few additions, which are enclosed in brackets. The quartos vary between _Bussy_ and _D'Ambois_, and between _Behemoth_ and _Spiritus_, as a prefix to speeches. I have kept to the former throughout in either case.

F. S. B.

Bussy D'Ambois:

A TRAGEDIE:

As it hath been often Acted with great Applause.

_Being much corrected and amended by the Author before his death._

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_LONDON:_ Printed by _A. N._ for _Robert Lunne_.

1641.

SOURCES

The immediate source of the play has not been identified, but in the _Introduction_ attention has been drawn to pa.s.sages in the writings of Bussy's contemporaries, especially Brantome and Marguerite de Valois, which narrate episodes similar to those in the earlier Acts. Extracts from De Thou's _Historiae sui temporis_ and Rosset's _Histoires Tragiques_, which tell the tale of Bussy's amorous intrigue and his a.s.sa.s.sination, have also been reprinted as an Appendix. But both these narratives are later than the play. Seneca's representation in the _Hercules Oetaeus_ of the Greek hero's destruction by treachery gave Chapman suggestions for his treatment of the final episode in Bussy's career (cf. V, 4, 100-108, and note).

PROLOGUE

_Not out of confidence that none but wee Are able to present this tragedie, Nor out of envie at the grace of late It did receive, nor yet to derogate From their deserts, who give out boldly that 5 They move with equall feet on the same flat; Neither for all, nor any of such ends, We offer it, gracious and n.o.ble friends, To your review; wee, farre from emulation, And (charitably judge) from imitation, 10 With this work entertaine you, a peece knowne, And still beleev'd, in Court to be our owne.

To quit our claime, doubting our right or merit, Would argue in us poverty of spirit Which we must not subscribe to: Field is gone, 15 Whose action first did give it name, and one Who came the neerest to him, is denide By his gray beard to shew the height and pride Of D'Ambois youth and braverie; yet to hold Our t.i.tle still a foot, and not grow cold 20 By giving it o're, a third man with his best Of care and paines defends our interest; As Richard he was lik'd, nor doe wee feare, In personating D'Ambois, hee'le appeare To faint, or goe lesse, so your free consent, 25 As heretofore, give him encouragement._

LINENOTES:

_Prologue._ The Prologue does not appear in A.

10 (_charitably judge_). So punctuated by ed. B has:--

_To your review, we farre from emulation (And charitably judge from imitation) With this work entertaine you, a peece knowne And still beleev'd in Court to be our owne, To quit our claime, doubting our right or merit, Would argue in us poverty of spirit Which we must not subscribe to._

13 _doubting_. In some copies of B this is misprinted _oubting_.

[DRAMATIS PERSONae.[4:1]

HENRY III, King of France.

MONSIEUR, his brother.

THE DUKE OF GUISE.

MONTSURRY, a Count.

BUSSY D'AMBOIS.

BARRISOR, } L'ANOU, } Courtiers: enemies of D'AMBOIS.

PYRHOT, } BRISAC, } MELYNELL, } Courtiers: friends of D'AMBOIS.

COMOLET, a Friar.

MAFFE, steward to MONSIEUR.

NUNCIUS.