Picture the original staging of these two death scenes: In Bussy D'Ambois, the title character fights off a host of assassins, then turns to combat the man who has hired them. Upon conquering his enemy, Bussy grants mercy to him just as a pistol shot from an assassin standing offstage wounds him mortally. Amazed that his body is "but penetrable flesh," Bussy swears to die standing, like Emperor Vespasian, and then apostrophizes his sword: "Prop me, true sword, as thou hast ever done! / The equal thought I bear of life and death / Shall make me faint on no side; I am up / Here like a Roman statue! I will stand / Till death hath made me marble. O, my fame, / Live in despite of murder" (5.4.78,93-98). (1) In contrast, the heroine of Romeo and Juliet rises from her catafalque only to learn, as the Friar gestures toward Romeo's body, that "A greater power than we can contradict / Hath thwarted our intents" (5.3.153-54). (2) The Friar almost immediately leaves Juliet. Seeking a means of suicide, she finds Romeo's dagger: "Yea, noise? Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger, / This is thy sheath [stabs herself]; there rust, and let me die" (5.3.169-70).
