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Bussy D'Ambois: On Stage for the First Time in Nearly Four Centuries
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14652 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1988 |
2,001 Words |
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
The Old Vic is the only major classical theater in Britain that receives no subsidy at all from the Arts Council. It is run as a sort of cultural vanity operation by two Canadian brothers, Ed and David Mirvish, who have stated a wish to play some part in preserving the heritage of great British drama. Their artistic director is Dr. Jonathan Miller, who returned to theatrical work after leaving it (briefly) for medicine, and now oversees production at the Old Vic. Miller is known for his adventurous and sometimes rather intellectual approach to theater. This autumn he combined both traits by mounting Bussy D' Ambois, a work by the Jacobean dramatist George Chapman that is better known to scholars than to audiences. In fact, this was the first professional staging of the work since the seventeenth century.
Chapman is remembered today, when he is remembered at all, as the translator of Homer praised in a famous sonnet by John Keats. He was born some six years before William Shakespeare and outlived him by about a decade and a half. An Oxford dropout, he soldiered for a while in France and the Netherlands, where he heard about the stormy career of a notorious French soldier of fortune and hothead called Bussy D' Ambois. (Born in the mid-sixteenth century, D' Ambois combined a military and administrative career with dueling and a habit of seducing noblemen's wives--until the 18th of August 1579. On that day a jealous husband, the Count de Montsoreau, had him murdered.) The story of Bussy also served Alexandre Dumas as the basis of his long novel Diane de Montsoreau, in the nineteenth century.
Material for Tragedy
Chapman left his military occupation for a London career of playwrighting, composing poetry, and translating, managing to have some minor work published while seeking patrons at court. In 1605, his satirical comedy Eastward Hoe, written with Ben Jonson and John Marston, landed him in prison for mocking the followers of James I. Two years later he used his memories of Bussy D' Ambois' checkered career as material for a tragedy. It was such a success that he was such a success that he was able to follow it with The Revenge of Bussy D' Ambois.
Much of Chapman's writing is infused with Neoplatonism, a taste for Hermetic thought and the heresies of Giordano Bruno, and above all with his exploration of the conflict between the contemplative life and the corrupting world of public action. This is fascinating stuff for anyone with a scholarly turn of mind and the time to check out footnotes. But the leisurely environment of the
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