Chapman's
name. Their authorship, however, is doubtful. There is nothing in the
style or diction of _Alphonsus_ which resembles Chapman's undisputed
work, and it is hard to believe that he had a hand in it. _The Revenge
for Honour_ is on an Oriental theme, entirely different from those
handled by Chapman in his other tragedies, and the versification is
marked by a greater frequency of feminine endings than is usual with
him; but phrases and thoughts occur which may be paralleled from his
plays, and the work may be from his hand.

On May 12, 1634, he died, and was buried in the churchyard of St.
Giles's in the Field, where his friend Inigo Jones erected a monument to
his memory. According to Wood, he was a person of "most reverend aspect,
religious and temperate, qualities rarely meeting in a poet." Though his
material success seems to have been small, he gained the friendship of
many of the most illustrious spirits of his time--Essex, Prince Henry,
Bacon, Jonson, Webster, among the number--and it has been his good
fortune to draw in after years splendid tributes from such successors in
the poetic art as Keats and A. C. Swinburne.

The group of Chapman's plays based upon recent French history, to which
_Bussy D'Ambois_ and its sequel belong, forms one of the most unique
memorials of the Elizabethan drama. The playwrights of the period were
profoundly interested in the annals of their own country, and exploited
them for the stage with a magnificent indifference to historical
accuracy. Gorboduc and Locrine were as real to them as any Lancastrian
or Tudor prince, and their reigns were made to furnish salutary lessons
to sixteenth century "magistrates." Scarcely less interesting were the
heroes of republican Greece and Rome: Cæsar, Pompey, and Antony, decked
out in Elizabethan garb, were as familiar to the playgoers of the time
as their own national heroes, real or legendary. But the contemporary
history of continental states had comparatively little attraction for
the dramatists of the period, and when they handled it, they usually had
some political or religious end in view. Under a thin veil of allegory,
Lyly in _Midas_ gratified his audience with a scathing denunciation of
the ambition and gold-hunger of Philip II of Spain; and half a century
later Middleton in a still bolder and more transparent allegory, _The
Game of Chess_, dared to ridicule on the stage Philip's successor, and
his envoy, Gondomar. But both plays were suggested by the elements of

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