n.

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,