ad
betwixt him and a crown, and prepared to compass his ends by any means
that fall short of the actual killing of the King. It is as a useful
adherent of his faction that he elevates Bussy, and when he finds him
favoured by Henry he ruthlessly strikes him down, all the more readily
that he is his successful rival for Tamyra's love. He is the typical
Renaissance politician, whose characteristics are expounded with
characteristically vituperative energy by Bussy in III, ii, 439-94.

Beside this arch-villain, the Guise, aspiring and factious though he be,
falls into a secondary place. Probably Chapman did not care to elaborate
a figure of whom Marlowe had given so powerful a sketch in the _Massacre
at Paris_. The influence of the early play may also be seen in the
handling of the King, who is portrayed with an indulgent pen, and who
reappears in the _role_ of an enthusiastic admirer of the English Queen
and Court. The other personages in the drama are colourless, though
Chapman succeeds in creating the general atmosphere of a frivolous and
dissolute society.

But the plot and portraiture in _Bussy D'Ambois_ are both less
distinctive than the "full and heightened" style, to which was largely
due its popularity with readers and theatre-goers of its period, but
which was afterwards to bring upon it such severe censure, when taste
had changed. Dryden's onslaught in his _Dedication to the Spanish Friar_
(1681) marks the full turn of the tide. The passage is familiar, but it
must be reproduced here:

"I have sometimes wondered, in the reading, what has become of
those glaring colours which annoyed me in _Bussy D'Ambois_
upon the theatre; but when I had taken up what I supposed a
fallen star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly; nothing
but a cold dull mass, which glittered no longer than it was
shooting; a dwarfish thought, dressed up in gigantic words,
repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross
hyperboles; the sense of one line expanded prodigiously into
ten; and, to sum up all, uncorrect English, and a hideous
mingle of false poetry and true nonsense; or, at best, a
scantling of wit, which lay gasping for life, and groaning
beneath a heap of rubbish. A famous modern poet used to
sacrifice every year a Statius to Virgil's _manes_; and I have
indignation enough to burn a _D'Ambois_ annually to the memory
of Jonson."

Dryden's c