Among Chapman's plays on contemporary French history, the two on Bussy d'Amboise vary much from "Byron's' (Biron's) Conspiracy," and "The Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron". "Bussy d'Ambois" has all the faults of fustian, obscurity, bloodshed, torture exercised on the stage, and great palpable ghosts. A friar is the go-between of _le brave Bussy_ and Madame de Monsoreau, Chapman's "Tamyra, Countess of Mountsurry". He appears and disappears through a trap door, and when he dies "_Umbra_ Friar" (the ghost of the holy man), "keeps on the business still". Mountsurry (Monsoreau) too, disguised as the friar, is very busy. A magician summons Behemoth, a monstrous fiend with whom Joan of Arc was accused of being too familiar. Tamyra is stabbed frequently on the stage, to make her write a letter inviting Bussy to a fatal tryst; and next, being tortured, she complies and writes in her own blood. Bussy is overpowered by numbers and slain. Charles Lamb admired a long description of a duel between six minions of Henry III, three on each side. The Nuntius (the messenger), a looker-on, tells how Bussy charged his foe exactly as, in his youth, the Nuntius had seen a unicorn charge an Armenian jeweller, and Nailed him with his rich antler to a tree. In "The Revenge of Bussy" his ghost enters and dances with the ghosts of the Duc de Guise, the Cardinal, and Châtillon. The lookers-on are surprised, believing the Guises to be alive and well, when Aumale enters with the news that both have just teen assassinated! The "Revenge" contains some very noble passages of reflection, in which Chapman always shines, and some reminiscences of Homer. The ghosts, though "affable familiar sprites," might be excused by the example of Seneca's tragedies. Dryden found in "Bussy d'Ambois" "a hideous mingle of false poetry and true nonsense," but not all of the poetry is false. There are, indeed, in Chapman's blank verse, passages of exquisite beauty and charm: praise which cannot be denied to passages in the works of all his contemporaries in dramatic writing. John Marston. John Marston was of an old Shropshire family: he is supposed to have been born in 1575 and educated at Coventry school. He was a member of Brasenose College, Oxford. His father intended him to be a barrister, but observes in his will that "man proposeth but God disposeth". He wrote satires first, and then plays, later took orders, in 1616 received the living of Christchurch in Hampshire, and died in London in 1634. His plays had been collected and published in 1633. Marston's earliest publications, under the assumed name of Kinsayder, 1598, were "The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image, with Certain Satires," and, in the same year, "The Scourge of Villainy". As to "Pygmalion," My wanton Muse lasciviously doth sing,