SOURCE: Kistler, Suzanne F. “‘Strange and Far-Removed Shores’: A Reconsideration of The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois.” Studies in Philology 77, no. 2 (spring 1980): 128-44.

In the following essay, Kistler takes exception to the prevailing critical perception of Clermont as a Stoic avenger in The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois. The critic maintains, instead, that the “revenger's deed represents not the triumph but the defeat of his ideals, just as his suicide betrays a mortally damaged spirit.”

Few critics claim that Shakespeare was the inspiration for the character of Hamlet, and fewer still find Kyd mirrored in Hieronimo, or Marston in Antonio. We dismiss such suggestions, which occasionally crop up in undergraduate classrooms, as patently naïve. Yet for some seventy years now, no one has challenged the critical cliché that George Chapman's Stoic revenger, Clermont D'Ambois, is a spokesman for the playwright himself. Aside from its simplism, obvious difficulties arise from...