The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron

see in his revolt how honour's flood Ebbs into air, when men are great, not good Charles de Gontaut, Duke of Byron, is no reincarnation of Bussy D'Ambois. The super- ficial similarities he bears to Chapman's earlier hero only serve to outline more clearly the distance between them. The Prologue awards him the status of an autumnal star (1. 12) and a fanfare of loud music (I. ii) announces his entranceso unlike the posthumous stellification and quiet choric self-introduction of Bussy. Byron approaches the discontented La Fin, "alone, and heavy countenanc'd" (II. i. 54), in a way reminiscent of Monsieur's approach to Bussy, just as La Fin's description of the chaotic influence of the moon (III. i. 6-16) recalls the lunar control of Monsieur's imagistic delineation of Bussy's "great heart" (Bussy D'Ambois, I. ii. [138][139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146]. But in The Conspiracy the roles of victimizer and prey are reversed, and the mention of the moon is not part of an ominous encomium but of an admitted lure. It is Byron who is played upon when he commiserates with La Fin as surely as it is he who falls the victim of this Machiavel's "feigned passion" (III. i. 1). H s heroic vaunts about leaving his statue eternally rooted on a mountain (III

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