LONDON:
Printed by T. S. and are to be solde by Iohn Helme,
at his Shop in S. Dunstones Church-Yard,
in Fleetstreet. 1613.
SOURCES
The story of a plot by Bussy D'Ambois's kinsfolk to avenge his murder is, in the main, of Chapman's own invention. But he had evidently read an account similar to that given later by De Thou of the design entertained for a time by Bussy's sister Renée (whom Chapman calls Charlotte) and her husband, Baligny, to take vengeance on Montsurry. Clermont D'Ambois is himself a fictitious character, but the episodes in which he appears in Acts II-IV are drawn from the account of the treacherous proceedings against the Count d'Auvergne in Edward Grimeston's translation of Jean de Serres's Inventaire Général de l'Histoire de France. This narrative, however, is not by De Serres, but by Pierre Matthieu, whose Histoire de France was one of the sources used by Grimeston for events later than 1598.
The portraiture of Clermont throughout the play as the high-souled philosopher is inspired by Epictetus's delineation in his Discourses of the ideal Stoic. But in his reluctance to carry out his duty of revenge he is evidently modelled upon Hamlet. In Act v, Scene i, the influence of Shakespeare's tragedy is specially manifest.
The Scenes in Act v relating to the assassination of Guise are based upon Grimeston's translation of De Serres's Inventaire Général.
The passages in Grimeston's volume which recount the Duke's murder, and those which tell the story of the Count d'Auvergne, are reprinted as an Appendix.
The frontispiece to this volume, the Château of La Coutancière, at which Bussy D'Ambois was killed, is reproduced from an illustration in A. Joubert's Louis de Clermont.