n 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: Caesar, 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 Spai