SOURCE: Orange, Linwood E. “Bussy D'Ambois: The Web of Pretense.” Southern Quarterly 8, no. 1 (October 1969): 37-56.

In the essay below, Orange maintains that Chapman intentionally created Bussy as a blunt soldier—a stock character in Elizabethan drama, but never before a protagonist—to establish a clear dichotomy between the forthright tragic hero and the corrupt, deceitful court.

What is to be thought of a tragic protagonist who speaks derogatorily of persons of high station one moment and the next allies himself with a powerful ambitious lord who promises advancement? Who feels himself so blemished by some casual banter that he brushes apology aside and needlessly brings death to five young men? Who boasts that as the king's “eagle” he will cleanse the court and prey upon such evils as worldly clergymen of “luxurious gut” (III ii 43) immediately after he has employed a priest as a pander in an illicit...