SOURCE: Broude, Ronald. “George Chapman's Stoic-Christian Revenger.” Studies in Philology 70 (1973): 51-61.

In the following essay, Broude maintains that Chapman's characterization of Clermont as a “Stoic-Christian” in Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois enabled the dramatist to create a tragic hero entirely different from other revenge tragedy figures of the period.

Critics who have recognized in George Chapman's Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois the highly personal synthesis of Roman Stoicism and Renaissance Christianity which preoccupied Chapman for much of his career have nevertheless had difficulty in reconciling this philosophy with the revenge which, demanded by Bussy's “Christian” ghost and carried out by his “Senecal” brother, Clermont, is evidently so central a part of the play. Revenge, it has been assumed, is consonant with neither Stoic nor Christian teaching, and the idea of a Stoic-Christian revenger has therefore seemed nothing less than a contradiction in terms. Acting on this assumption, some critics have...