SOURCE: Bergson, Allen. “The Worldly Stoicism of George Chapman's The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois and The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France.” Philological Quarterly 55, No. 1 (Winter 1976): 43-64.

In the following essay, Bergson discusses the dramatic irony inherent in the “rendezvous of the spiritual man and the political world” in Chapman's Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois and The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France.

I

In two of his tragedies, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois and The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France,¹ George Chapman seems to depict a Stoic hero who can endure the blandishments as well as the assaults of the political world.² One way in which Chapman accomplishes this is through the creation of a distinct dramatic language, an apparently authentic Stoic voice, for his protagonists. Unlike the political discourse of Bussy and Byron, Chapman's worldly protagonists, the putative Stoic hero's language seems to bespeak his indifference...