SOURCE: Rees, Ennis. “The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois.” In The Tragedies of George Chapman: Renaissance Ethics in Action, pp. 93-125. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954.

In the essay below, Rees contends that Chapman imbued the character of Clermont in The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois with his own Christian humanist values, concluding that the playwright's ultimate objective was the moral instruction of his audience.

In the chapters on Bussy and Byron we saw how Chapman employed cautionary examples to illustrate his doctrine of virtue. In the three tragedies that remain for our consideration—The Revenge, Caesar and Pompey, and Chabot—the poet used a more direct, and to some readers a less dramatic, mode of presentation. These are the plays in which Chapman undertook a more positive statement of his ethical philosophy by embodying as much of it as he could in dramatic characters of exemplary moral stature.

Since...