著者

石橋 敬太郎

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.6, pp.53-60, 2014

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In his play Bussy dAmbois (c. 1604), George Chapman created a hero who takes an unyielding stand against courtiers at Henry III's court and governs himself by the law of his own reason. More important in the play is that Guise and Monsieur appear as ministers of fate and providence. The French courtiers are controlled by stoic moral doctrine, the belief in the rationality of Nature. According to the stoics, God imparted a rational design to the degrees of Fate which govern Nature. In Chapman's play, the French courtiers believe that human nature is created within the divinely ordered scheme. For Bussy D'Ambois, however, human nature is constructed from the law of his own reason, not from the supernatural existences of fate and providence. Bussy challenges the providential view of human nature conceived by Guise and Monsieur. What is the nature of the element that made Chapman embody the hero's idea of human nature in a sharp contrast with that of the French courtiers? To examine this problem, I would like to focus on interrogation of the stoic view of human nature by intellectuals in the early Jacobean period. In the time when Bussy d'Ambois was composed, it was believed among the stoics that natural law emerges from the universe as "encoded" in creation with order, value and purpose. In virtue of his rational capacity, man synchronizes with this teleological design and discovers within it the main principles of his own moral law. The most famous exponent of such view was Richard Hooker, a divine of the Church of England in Elizabethan period. He combined with it a version of Christian providentialism. In the play, Bussy claims that rational man is a law unto himself, preserving a higher degree of virtue than law can legislate. He governs himself by the law of his own reason. There is a remarkable parallel between the portrait of Bussy and Sir Francis Bacon's portrait of human nature. In Bacon's view, the ontological basis of human beings was nature as the intrinsic principle-intellectual reason-within himself, not derived from God. Considering human nature as intellectual reason, he attempted to free people from the stoic traditional authorities, such as church and sacred kingship. In this sense, the hero's view of nature in the play serves as the precise inversion of Hooker's positive dependence of man upon God-man within nature created by God. To illustrate the conflict between the two human natures, it is important that Bussy's love for Tamyra is gained by obedience to reason. With his refusal of stoicism, the play's supernatural dimension works against fate and providence. In particular, Behemoth and his spirits are shown to be incompetent. But Guise sees the hero's interrogation of providentialism creating an arbitrary order that jeopardizes all "law", especially the idea of kingship itself. By the actions of Guise and Monsieur, finally, Bussy dies in a scene which begins with repudiations of teleology, providence and natural law to be found anywhere in stoicism of the early Jacobean period. An idea of fate and providence in human nature is still preserved at Henry III's court. However, the effect is too detached to praise Guise and Monsieur's providentialism. Actually, Bussy is transmogrified into a new star in the "firmament," an abiding reminder of his repudiations of stoic view, at the end of the play. Strongly aware of Bacon's human nature, therefore, Chapman illustrated the conflict between the two human natures seen in early Jacobean period. In doing so, the dramatist explored the significance of the hero striving to insulate himself from the stoic view of human nature by his self-fashioning in order to become a law unto himself.