SOURCE: Venet, Gisèle. “Baroque Space and Time in Chapman's Tragedy: The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron.” In French Essays on Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: “What Would France with Us?,” edited by Jean-Marie Maguin and Michèle Willems, pp. 304-13. London: Associated University Presses, 1995.

In the essay below, Venet considers Byron “the story of the great contradictions of the baroque era,” especially the opposition between medieval feudal values and Renaissance political values.

The Conspiracie and Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, Marshall of France. Acted in two playes at the Black-Friers is a bipartite play, as the title of the immediately published 1608 text indicates. Chapman's play is the tragedy of a double world as well as that of a divided universe.

First, it is a tragedy of the present, staging real events of contemporary history—from 1599 to 1602—in the France of King Henry IV, who was still alive...