SOURCE: Waddington, Raymond B. “Prometheus and Hercules: The Dialectic of Bussy D'Ambois.” ELH 34, no. 1 (March 1967): 21-48.

In the following essay, Waddington examines the mythic structure of Bussy D'Ambois, detailing how analogies to Prometheus and Hercules serve to underscore Bussy's tragic failure.

Bussy D'Ambois projects natural man into the fallen world to demonstrate that he cannot survive by nature alone. The given of man's existence is the world of evil that Chapman anatomized in The Shadow of Night nearly a decade earlier. This pair of hymns, particularly the first, provide a useful gloss upon the dramatic milieu of Bussy. The “Hymnvs in Noctem” laments the loss of the primal order and harmony that existed when night held sway over all things. Exploiting the paradox that the original chaos was order and the present order is chaotic, Chapman attributes the failure of man's vision to the presence of a “stepdame...