[vi-1] This identification seems established by the entry in Henslowe's _Diary_, under date 2 July 1599. "Lent unto thomas Dowton to paye Mr Chapman, in full paymente for his boocke called the world rones a whelles, and now all foolles, but the foolle, some of ______ xxxs." [vii-1] See pp. 158-64, Jonson's _Eastward Hoe and Alchemist_, F. E. Schelling (Belles Lettres Series, 1904). Introduction 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 friction in the relations of England and Spain. French history also supplied material to some of the London playwrights, but almost exclusively as it bore upon the great conflict between the forces of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The _Masaker of France_, which Henslowe mentions as having been played on January 3, 1592-3, may or may not be identical with Marlowe's _The Massacre at Paris_, printed towards the close of the sixteenth century, but in all probability it expressed similarly the burning indignation of Protestant England at the appalling events of the Eve of St. Bartholomew. Whatever Marlowe's religious or irreligious views may have been, he acted on this occasion as the mouthpiece of the vast majority of his countrymen, and he founded on recent French history a play which, with all its defects, is of special interest to our present inquiry. For Chapman, who finished Marlowe's incompleted poem, _Hero and Leander_, must have been familiar with this drama, which introduced personages and events that were partly to reappear in the two _Bussy_ plays. A brief examination of _The Massacre at Paris_ will, therefore, help to throw into relief the special characteristics of Chapman's dramas.