nk of the topping
tragedies of that time."

Charles Hart, who was thus one of the long succession of actors to make
a striking reputation in the title part, died in 1683, and, according to
D'Urfey, "for a long time after" the play "lay buried in [his] grave."
But "not willing to have it quite lost, I presumed to revise it and
write the plot new." D'Urfey's main alteration was to represent Bussy
and Tamyra as having been betrothed before the play opens, and the
latter forced against her will into a marriage with the wealthy Count
Montsurry. This, he maintained, palliated the heroine's surrender to
passion and made her "distress in the last Act . . . much more liable to
pity." Whether morality is really a gainer by this well-meant variation
from the more primitive code of the original play is open to question,
but we welcome the substitution of Teresia the "governess" and
confidante of Tamyra for Friar Comolet as the envoy between the lovers.
Another notable change is the omission of the narrative of the
_Nuntius_, which is replaced by a short duelling scene upon the stage.
D'Urfey rejects, too, the supernatural machinery in Act IV, and the
details of the torture of the erring Countess, whom, at the close of the
play, he represents not as wandering from her husband's home, but as
stabbing herself in despair.

If Chapman's plot needed to be "writ new" at all, D'Urfey deserves
credit for having done his work with considerable skill and taste,
though he hints in his dedication that there were detractors who did not
view his version as favourably as Lord Carlisle. He had some difficulty,
he tells us, in finding an actor to undertake the part, but at last
prevailed upon Mountfort to do so, though he was diffident of appearing
in a _role_ in which Hart had made so great a reputation. Mrs.
Bracegirdle, as we learn from the list of _Dramatis Personae_ prefixed to
the published edition, played Tamyra, and the revival seems to have been
a success. But Mountfort was assassinated in the Strand towards the
close of the following year, and apparently the career of _Bussy_ upon
the boards ended with his life.

In the same year as D'Urfey revised the play, Langbaine published his
_Account of the English Dramatick Poets_, wherein (p. 59) he mentions
that Bussy "has the preference" among all Chapman's writings and
vindicates it against Dryden's attack:

"I know not how Mr. Dryden came to be so possest with
indignation a