im from some
other source, probably that which supplied the material for the earlier
play. He accordingly introduces Renee D'Ambois (whom he rechristens
Charlotte) with her husband into his drama, but with great skill he
makes her fiery passion for revenge at all costs a foil to the
scrupulous and deliberate procedure of the high-souled Clermont. Like
Hamlet, the latter has been commissioned by the ghost of his murdered
kinsman to the execution of a task alien to his nature.

Though he sends a challenge to Montsurry, and is not lacking in "the
D'Ambois spirit," the atmosphere in which he lingers with whole-hearted
zest is that of the philosophical schools. He is eager to draw every
chance comer into debate on the first principles of action. Absorbed in
speculation, he is indifferent to external circumstances. As Hamlet at
the crisis of his fate lets himself be shipped off to England, so
Clermont makes no demur when the King, who suspects him of complicity
with Guise's traitorous designs, sends him to Cambray, of which his
brother-in-law, Baligny, has been appointed Lieutenant. When on his
arrival, his sister, the Lieutenant's wife, upbraids him with
"lingering" their "dear brother's wreak," he makes the confession (III,
ii, 112-15):

"I repent that ever
(By any instigation in th'appearance
My brothers spirit made, as I imagin'd)
That e'er I yeelded to revenge his murther."

Like Hamlet, too, Clermont, "generous and free from all contriving," is
slow to suspect evil in others, and though warned by an anonymous
letter--here Chapman draws the incidents from the story of Count
D'Auvergne--he lets himself be entrapped at a "muster" or review of
troops by the King's emissaries. But the intervention of Guise soon
procures his release. In the dialogue that follows between him and his
patron the influence of Shakespeare's tragedy is unmistakably patent.
The latter is confiding to Clermont his apprehensions for the future,
when the ghost of Bussy appears, and chides his brother for his delay in
righting his wrongs. That the _Umbra_ of the elder D'Ambois is here
merely emulating the attitude of the elder Hamlet's spirit would be
sufficiently obvious, even if it were not put beyond doubt by the
excited dialogue between Guise, to whom the Ghost is invisible, and
Clermont, which is almost a verbal echo of the parallel dialogue between
the Danish Prince and the Queen. This second visitation