The Complete Poetical Works of George Chapman

by George Chapman

  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 () 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, , 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 foun
d 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, ):

  “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, ) 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’appearanceMy 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 h
imself 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.