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 questioned the integrity of the play's design, condemning the vengeance towards which the whole action builds as a crude expedient which brings the tragedy to an arbitrary close and assailing the protagonist as a character both undramatic and inconsistent.¹

In part, confusion about the meaning of Clermont's revenge derives from the tendency to read Chapman's seventeenth century play in twentieth century terms, to suppose that Stoicism meant to Chapman what it means to us and to take it for granted that Christianity in Chapman's day was essentially what it is in ours. In fact, neither of these assumptions is justified. Renaissance humanists found in the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius a viable and satisfying philosophy of which the modern word “stoicism,” with its connotations of fatalism, repression of emotion, and lifeless indifference to pleasure and pain, affords but a partial and misleading idea. Similarly, the Protestantism of Renaissance Englishmen was, in many ways, significantly different from—and less “christian” than—that of their twentieth century descendants. Contrary to what we might expect, vengeance, in its Renaissance sense of retribution, was not unconditionally rejected by either the Stoicism of the Empire or the Christianity of Jacobean England, although, to be sure, its place in each of these systems was hedged about with qualifications. It may thus be, then, that to many in the audience for which Chapman was writing, Clermont's revenge would have seemed neither unStoic nor unChristian.

Heir to a philosophical tradition born in Athens three hundred years before Christ, Roman Stoicism is far from the monolithic body of thought it is sometimes imagined to be. Roman Stoic pronouncements on vengeance, complex and often mutually contradictory, reflect in their variety three centuries of Stoic thinking on the subject.

In general, Roman Stoicism regards vice as a product of misplaced values and poor judgement rather than as a distinct quality present in the universe or identifiable in a vicious man.² Potential for virtuous action is rarely lacking in criminals, who may generally be reformed if they can be brought to see the error of their ways. Punishment is viewed as a means of effecting this reformation, of providing examples to deter potential malefactors, and, in extreme cases, of ensuring the security of society by removing a particularly dangerous reprobate from its midst.³ It is largely because punishment served these important functions that, as R. D. Hicks has noted, “the same Stoics who demanded patience under wrong refused to allow compassion and pardon, and stoutly opposed any interference with the course of justice by remission of penalty.”⁴ “No treatment seems harsh,” writes Seneca, “if its result is salutary.”⁵

For a Stoic, the appropriate response to wrong depends on both the nature of the wrong and the way in which the wrong is perceived. A personal injury—e. g., a blow or an insult—is to be endured with patience and equanimity. Such an injury is understood to result from an error in judgement on the part of the aggressor, who is therefore more deserving of pity than anger.⁶ The wise man will not even regard such aggression as an injury, much less offer to reply to it. As Marcus Aurelius, giving memorable form to a commonplace, remarks, “The best way of avenging thyself is not to do likewise.”⁷

On the other hand, felonies such as theft or murder, if perceived as threats to civil order or as acts of impiety, may, according to one line of argument, lay upon the public-spirited and pious citizen the duty to revenge them. Thus, in De Ira, which contains one of the most searching discussions of vengeance among extant Stoic writings, Seneca accepts the necessity of the Stoic's meting out punishment, so long as he is motivated by a sense of duty and a desire for justice: “My father … is slain—I will avenge him, not because I grieve, but because it is my duty.”⁸

Emotions, warns Seneca, ought not to enter into the execution of vengeance, since they hinder the operation of reason, and thus open the way to possible injustice. Anger is especially dangerous, since it demands immediate action, while reason requires time to consider and reconsider:

Reason grants a hearing to both sides, then seeks to postpone action, even its own, in order that it may gain time to sift out the truth; but anger is precipitate. Reason wishes the decision it gives to be just; anger wishes the decision which it has given to seem the just decision.⁹

Finally, punishment, if called for, must be inflicted in a manner consistent with reason and justice. Excessive cruelty is to be avoided, as is any sense of personal satisfaction in causing pain to an enemy.¹⁰ Speaking of such duties as vengeance, Seneca cautions that one should “do all that is worthy of a good man” and “nothing that is unworthy of a man.”¹¹

The views discussed above were to be found in works readily available to Renaissance Englishmen. Those who had not read extensively in Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius were nevertheless likely to encounter epigrammatic formulations of their ideas in the florilegia, the popular quotation books in which the Stoic thinkers were among the most frequently cited classical authors.¹²

An even wider range of views on vengeance than characterizes Stoic thought is to be found in the writings of Renaissance Englishmen, for whom revenge was a subject of lively controversy.¹³ The ambivalence and inconsistency which mark Renaissance English attitudes towards revenge is in large part attributable to the changes in religious, political, legal, and social institutions which accompanied England's emergence from the Middle Ages. The Tudor campaign against “private revenge” having proved only moderately successful, the first Stuart's efforts to suppress duelling, blood feuds, and other time-honored forms of extra-legal retaliation met with stout resistance on the part of many Englishmen (particularly those of Chapman's generation) for whom vengeance was not Mr. Prosecutor Bacon's “wild justice” but rather a sacred duty implied by the laws of nature, man, and God.

Contrary to the view often encountered among Elizabethan scholars today, Renaissance Protestantism did not repudiate the “eye for an eye” ethic of the Pentateuch. Murder was regarded as an offense against God, a violation of Divine Law, the penalty for which was clearly set forth in Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” This verse, by no means abrogated by Christ's admonition to “resist not evil,” had been cited by Luther as the authority upon which all civil government, past and present, rested.¹⁴

Orthodox Tudor-Stuart theory saw the implementation of Divine Law as God's prerogative, and hence, as Lily B. Campbell has observed, Renaissance Englishmen were likely to regard all vengeance as divine vengeance, visited by God either directly or through human agents.¹⁵ Ordinarily, these agents were the king and the magistrates, who claimed to be God's deputies on earth, “ordained,” as Paul had explained in Romans 13, for the enforcement of His laws.

Failure on the part of king and magistrates to punish malefactors was a serious matter, for unrevenged crime threatened not only civil order but, ultimately, the harmony of the entire universe. When, therefore, through either his own cleverness or the negligence of the authorities, a criminal managed to elude punishment, God was expected to intervene to ensure that justice was done. In such cases, He often selected a “private man” to be the instrument of His vengeance. Sometimes this man might himself be a criminal; sometimes in the process of taking revenge he might become one. On the question of when, if ever, a private individual might take vengeance without himself assuming guilt, opinion in Renaissance England was sharply divided.¹⁶ A good case could be made for the privilege of the “revenger of blood” (the next of kin of a murder victim), whose duty was defined by the Bible (Numbers 35:19), and who could therefore be considered as much “ordained” by God as any commissioned magistrate.¹⁷ The duellist might likewise claim to be a guilt-free agent of divine retribution, since duels were often regarded as “directed by the secret will of God,” their outcomes being “the executions of His hidden judgements.”¹⁸

It was understood that Providence, operating in ways often incomprehensible to mortals, employing portents, apparent coincidences, and various minor miracles, arranged the pattern of events which culminated in the criminal's downfall.¹⁹ Although rarely referred to explicitly save in works of an overtly didactic nature, the operation of Providence is generally assumed in Renaissance English treatments of crime and punishment; as recent scholarship has shown, the concept of retribution Providentially effected is central to the meaning of such revenge plays as The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet.²⁰

Chapman's portrayal of Clermont draws on both Stoic and Christian doctrine. In accordance with Stoic teaching, Clermont's revenge, notably free from vindictiveness and personal malice, has as its ends justice and the reformation of the criminal. When, realizing that retribution is at hand, Montsurry changes from a base coward to a worthy adversary, Clermont is prepared to be reconciled with him. When Montsurry shows himself magnanimous enough to forgive Clermont his death, Clermont acknowledges the completeness of Montsurry's regeneration, asserting that his noble end “makes full amends and more” for his earlier faults.

Insofar as possible, Clermont seeks to pursue vengeance guided by reason and unswayed by passion. He explicitly rejects the option of ignoble revenge as inconsistent with reason (“Shall we equal be / With villains? Is that your reason?” [III, ii, 98-9]²¹), and he chooses single combat as the most honorable way of discharging his obligation to his brother. He expresses regret for his single impulsive act, his vow to avenge Bussy, made in the heat of the moment, without sufficient time for deliberation (ll. 109-12), and he refuses to be moved to premature action by anger (“Nor can we call it virtue that proceeds / From vicious fury” [ll. 108-9]). Intent on pursuing the right course, Clermont considers arguments for and against Bussy's revenge: he turns over the possibility that he has only imagined the appearance of his brother's ghost (ll. 110-11), and he wonders whether Bussy's death may not be more a private than a public matter (ll. 115-6). Perhaps his chief reason for hesitating is his fear, never stated explicitly but implied by his paraphrases of Epictetus (III, iv, 66-75; IV, i, 137-57; IV, v, 4-13), that in attempting to avenge Bussy he may overreach himself, and so do more harm than good. The mischief of which a sincere but impulsive man is capable when, trusting to his own virtù, he exceeds the limits of his power is suggested by the Guise. The notorious Massacre affords a grim example of the sort of excesses to which zealots of the Guise's stamp can be prone. Dangerous to others, such men may prove equally so to themselves: it is, after all, the Guise's generous but ill-advised intercession on behalf of the unjustly accused Clermont that brings the pusillanimous Henry to see the Guise's death as the most expedient means of protecting his own crown. The Stoical Clermont is by principle opposed to such ill-considered conduct: his attitude is summed up in the advice offered to the Guise as the latter tries to chart his political future:

Make not your forward spirit in virtue's right
A property for vice, by thrusting on
Further than all your powers can fetch you off.
It is enough, your will is infinite
To all things virtuous and religious,
Which, within limits kept, may without danger
Let virtue some good from your graces gather.

(V, i, 70-6)

Essentially a practical code of behavior, concerned more with proper conduct than final causes, Clermont's Stoicism does not provide a moral framework of cosmic dimensions in terms of which Bussy's death may be defined. Such a moral framework is invoked by Bussy's ghost, who speaks for the Justice

                                                                      whose almighty word
Measures the bloody acts of impious men
With equal penance, who in th' act itself
Includes th' infliction, which like chained shot
Batter together still; though as the thunder
Seems, by men's duller hearing than their sight,
To break a great time after lightning forth,
Yet both at one time tear the labouring cloud,
So men think penance of their ills is slow,
Though th' ill and penance still together go.

(V, i, 5-14)

The justice described by Bussy and presented as the “proportion” upon which the world stands is not, as has been suggested,²² inconsistent with tenets accepted by Renaissance Protestantism. Working from the premise that every transgression of law must be answered with appropriate punishment, Bussy asserts the existence of a force which, acting in ways that sometimes seem slow to men, nevertheless ensures that no crime fails to be followed by retribution.

It is the negligence of France's King in upholding this justice that provides the context for the action of The Revenge. Mistakenly viewing the exercise of power as more worthwhile than virtuous living, Henry has become a tyrant and, “more fearful of the good than of the bad,” seeks to destroy the virtue which his weakness sees as a threat to his rule. Ambitious courtiers, forsaking Christian absolutes for pragmatic relativism, humor their king, pawning their integrity for what they cynically call the “public good.” Thus Maillard can argue that there is no sin in forswearing himself for the King (IV, i, 45-50), while Baligny, in a profane parody of the idea of providential necessity, can claim that, just as each man, being a part of God's universe, must uncomplainingly submit to whatever suffering God may impose on him for the good of the whole, so each subject, being a part of the commonweal, must accept without murmur any wrong the King may do him for the good of the royal estate (II, i, 34-56).²³ Symbolic of this readiness to pervert God's laws in the interests of court intrigue is Bussy's slaying, defined, at least for the purposes of this play, as “murther made parallel with law,” a political expedient hypocritically passed off as punishment for adultery.²⁴

Next of kin to Bussy, and one of the few spirits untouched by the corruption of the French court, Clermont seems a likely candidate to redeem the law betrayed by Henry. Bussy's ghost's foreknowledge of Clermont's part in his revenge (V, iii, 46-55) and Clermont's own awareness of being the “man in fate” (V, v, 106) suggest that Clermont has been selected to be the instrument of supernatural powers. However, before he can act, Clermont must be made to re-examine his Stoic dependence on reason and to contemplate the possibility of action in a world moved by powers whose ways are beyond the ken of human understanding. Bussy's ghost attempts to force such a re-examination, and arguing from the premise that observation of Christian law “stands upon faith, above the power of reason” (V, i, 23), he challenges his brother's Epictetan caution:

Your mind (you say) kept in your flesh's bounds,
Shows that man's will must rul'd be by his power:
When (by true doctrine) you are taught to live
Rather without the body than within,
And rather to your God still than yourself.

To live to God, maintains Bussy, is to imitate him in

                                                                      perfecting that justice
That makes the world last, which proportion is
Of punishment and wreak for every wrong.

Hence, Clermont is urged to

                                                                      use the means thou hast to right
The wrong I suffer'd. What corrupted law
Leaves unperform'd in kings, do thou supply,
And be above them all in dignity.

(ll. 82-99)²⁵

Colored by Bussy's fiery spirit and penchant for hyperbole, these speeches are not meant to be accepted uncritically. Rather, they provide a useful corrective for Clermont's Stoic reticence, and help to move him towards the revenge which brings with it a more complete understanding of the justice whose agent he is. Only after he has discharged his obligation to his slain brother is Clermont prepared to accept Montsurry's death as a “just revenge” (V, v, 126) and to consider the possibility that the events he has experienced may have been directed by supernatural forces similar to—and possibly identical with—Christian Providence (ll. 129-32).

The final scene, in which Clermont is called upon to respond to the deaths of Bussy and the Guise—both great-spirited men whose integrity sets them apart from their politic contemporaries, both victims of political intrigue, treacherously slain in ambushes—suggests the golden mean which reconciles Epictetus' warnings against over-reaching oneself with the Christian duty to defend God's laws. The wise and virtuous man is not called upon to reform the world, but merely to do his part in upholding the justice which sustains both society and the universe. By avenging Bussy, Clermont asserts his allegiance to this justice, and refuses to condone by inaction the casuistic relativism responsible for France's decay. Clermont is rightly repelled, however, at the prospect of avenging the Guise. Such a project, involving regicide, would constitute an impious challenge to the divinely established political order. He therefore chooses the Stoic alternative to existence in a world he cannot better, and ends his life with his own hand.

Chapman's Dedication to Sir Thomas Howard, his frequent moralizing, and the general tone of The Revenge have led some critics to discuss Clermont as the personification of Chapman's Stoic-Christian ideals. While this position requires qualification—as Clermont himself is aware, he is far from perfect in the practice of his philosophy (III, iv, 11 ff; V, i, 156 ff.)—Chapman certainly has taken pains to set his protagonist apart from other revengers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. Hieronimo and Hamlet reproach themselves for tardiness in acting; Clermont fears lest he may act too quickly. Titus and Antonio give vent to their feelings in epic outbursts; Clermont strives to maintain his composure regardless of the trials he faces. Hoffman and Vindici pursue revenge so unscrupulously that they sink to the level of the villains they punish; Clermont refuses to set aside his scruples, and ends by both chastising and reforming Montsurry. (Clermont's adherence to Stoic-Christian principles is emphasized by the presence of his impetuous, amorally vengeful sister, Charlotte, who professes contempt for all obstacles—moral or human—to her revenge.) Ironically, critical confusion has resulted from Clermont's failure to conform to expectations aroused by the very revengers with whom he was meant to contrast. Viewed within the context of Chapman's Christian Stoicism, however, Clermont's revenge is both philosophically consistent and dramatically effective.

Notes

1. On Stoic and Christian elements in Chapman's thought, see R. H. Perkinson, “Nature and the Tragic Hero in Chapman's Bussy Plays,” MLQ, III (1942), 263-85; J. Wieler, George Chapman (New York, 1949); and Ennis Rees, The Tragedies of George Chapman (Cambridge, Mass., 1954). Among critics who express reservations about Chapman's fusion of philosophy and drama in The Revenge are Janet Spens, “Chapman's Ethical Thought,” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, XI (1925), 150; Una Ellis-Fermor, The Jacobean Drama, 4th ed, (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 69-70; Robert Ornstein, The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy (Madison, Wisc., 1960), pp. 70, 74-5; and Irving Ribner, Jacobean Tragedy (New York, 1962), p. 22.

2. On Roman Stoic views concerning vice, see R. D. Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean (New York, 1910), pp. 145 ff. and V. A. Arnold, Roman Stoicism (Cambridge, 1911), pp. 330-56.

3. Seneca, De Clementia, XXII.1. All quotations from Seneca are from the Moral Essays, I, Loeb Classical Lib., tr. John Basore (London and New York, 1928).

4. Op. cit., p. 146.

5. De Ira, I. vi. 2.

6. Epictetus, Discourses, I. xviii; and Manual, 42. Citations are to the Loeb Classical Lib., ed. W. A. Oldfather (London and New York, 1928).

7. VI. 6, Loeb Classical Lib., ed. C. R. Haines (London and New York, 1916). Note also, however, Seneca, De Constantia Sapientis, xii. 3: “‘Why, if the wise man cannot receive either injury or insult, does he punish those who have offered them?’ For he is not avenging himself, but punishing them.”

8. I. xii. 2. The Latin exsequar gives the sense of pursuing with intent to punish.

9. Ibid., I. xviii. 1.

10. Ibid., I. vi; and De Clementia, passim.

11. De Ira, I. xii. 2.

12. On the availability of Stoic works in the Renaissance, see Wieler, pp. 172-5. On the relative popularity of Classical authors in florilegia, see Bertram Cohon, Seneca's Tragedies in Florilegia and Elizabethan Drama (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1960), 115-69.

13. On Renaissance attitudes towards revenge, see L. B. Campbell, “Theories of Revenge in Renaissance England,” MP, XXVIII (1931), 281-96; Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy (Princeton, 1940), pp. 3-40; Mary Mroz, Divine Vengeance (Washington, D. C., 1941), passim; and Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge (Stanford, 1967), pp. 3-73.

14. “Lectures on Genesis” in the American Edition of Luther's Works, ed. Pelikan and Poellot (St. Louis, Mo., 1960), pp. 139-42, and Part I of Temporal Authority, Works, XLV, ed. Schindel and Brandt (Philadelphia, 1962), passim, but especially p. 102. These statements and the tradition they represent are not mentioned by the scholars cited in note 13 above.

15. Op. cit., pp. 282 ff.

16. See, for example, Christopher Goodman, How Superior Powers Ought to be Obeyed ([Geneva?], 1558), p. 190: “It is not only praiseworthy in all, but required of all … [to see the judgements of God's laws] executed upon all manner of persons. … And if that be not done by the aid and consent of the Superiors, it is lawful for the people, yea, it is their duty to do it themselves … having the word of God for their warrant … and by the same charged to cast forth all evil from them.” On circumstances which might justify private men's taking revenge, see Bowers, p. 36; on Chapman's view that God may select extraordinary men to act as agents of divine vengeance, see Rees, p. 6, who cites Chapman's Hymnus in Noctem.

17. The privilege of the revenger of blood was strengthened by the provisions in Elizabethan law favoring initiation of prosecution by a murder victim's next of kin (see Francis Bacon, “The Use of the Law,” Works, ed. Spedding et al. [London, 1859], VII, 453), and by the belief, discussed by Bowers (p. 39), that the son of a murdered man could not succeed to his inheritance before he had avenged his father.

18. Vincentio Saviolo, Vincentio Saviolo His Practice (London, 1595), sig. C2^v.

19. On Providence and divine vengeance, see H. H. Adams, English Domestic or Homiletic Tragedy (New York, 1943), p. 18.

20. On The Spanish Tragedy, see Ernst de Chickera, “Divine Justice and Private Revenge in The Spanish Tragedy,” MLR, LVII (1962), 228-32; on Titus Andronicus, see my article, “Goth and Roman in Titus Andronicus,” Shakespeare Studies, VI (1970), 32; on Hamlet, see S. F. Johnson, “The Regeneration of Hamlet,” SQ, III (1952), 187-207; on The Atheist's Tragedy, see Irving Ribner's Introduction to the Revels Plays edition (Cambridge, 1964).

21. Quotations from The Revenge are from T. M. Parrott's edition of Chapman's Tragedies (London, 1910).

22. See, for example, Bowers, p. 146; and Millar MacLure, George Chapman (Toronto, 1966), p. 131.

23. For a perceptive analysis of Henry's court, see Ornstein, pp. 70 ff.

24. The objection, first raised by Boas in his Introduction to the Belles Lettres edition of Bussy and The Revenge (London, 1905), p. xli, that Bussy's affair with Tamyra justified his slaying in Bussy, seems to me not altogether relevant. Chapman reconceived both setting and characters for The Revenge—witness the changes in the Guise and Henry. For the later play, we are, I think, meant to accept Bussy's death as a political act, to decry Montsurry's preference for an ambush rather than a challenge, and to understand the punishment-for-adultery argument as only partially appropriate, an example of the sort of whitewashing the Guise foresees will follow his assassination.

25. This speech echoes in both thought and phrasing Chapman's Euthymiae Raptus, ll. 373 ff. (Bartlett's edition of Chapman's Poems).