As with the two Byron plays, Chapman's primary source for The Revenge was Edward Grimeston's A General Inventory of the History of France (1607).
It was published the next year, in a quarto printed by Thomas Snodham for the bookseller John Helme.
Clermont is a follower of the Duc de Guise, a powerful nobleman—though this relationship breeds suspicion in the King, who is urged on by the political manipulator Baligny.
A subplot involves the relationship between Clermont and Tamyra, Bussy's former lover; Tamyra (Françoise de Maridor) urges Clermont to take vengeance on her husband Montsurry (Charles of Chambes count of Montsoreau), the agent of Bussy's destruction.
In The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, even more so than in other Chapman plays, events are reported rather than enacted, and little actually happens on stage.