The Gentleman Usher
Encyclopedia
The Gentleman Usher is an early 17th-century stage play, a comedy
written by George Chapman
that was first published in 1606
. It is noted as the only play in which Chapman takes a positive view of women.
on 26 November 1605
, under the alternative title Vincentio and Margaret (the names of its hero and heroine). The first edition appeared the next year, in a quarto
printed by Valentine Simmes
for the publisher Thomas Thorpe
. The title page identifies Chapman as the author, but does not mention the playing company
that staged the work. The style of the play, with its two masque
s and its use of music, suggests that one of the two children's companies, the Children of Paul's
or the Children of the Queen's Revels
, acted the play. Since other Chapman comedies of the early 17th century, All Fools
, Monsieur D'Olive
, Sir Giles Goosecap
, May Day
, and The Widow's Tears
, were performed by the Queen's Revels Children, it is not unlikely that The Gentleman Usher was as well. The play refers to Goosecap, and so must post-date it; 1602–4 is a probable dating range for the origin and stage premier of The Gentleman Usher.
, in the Introduction to his edition of the play, makes an interesting argument about the source question: he notes that Chapman is an effective adapter of other writers' works, but not particularly good at creating new stories of his own. In The Gentleman Usher, the first two Acts are unfocused and rambling, and the story does not truly get going until the third — a defect that suggests the story is a Chapman original.
Parrott does note links between The Gentleman Usher and other contemporaneous plays. The plot element of a ruler and his son falling in love with the same woman in found in The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll
(printed 1600
); John Marston
employs the same idea in his Parasitaster
(1604). And the conclusion of Chapman's play, with a woman's beauty marred but then repaired, seems to have been lifted from The Trial of Chivalry (c. 1600; printed 1605); similar material can be found in Jack Drum's Entertainment
(c. 1600).
Chapman took the medical material included in his play from a book written by the 15th-century Florentine physician Antonio Benivieni
, though he reworks that material "with striking images and with fine poetry that have no counterpart in Benivieni."
toward women is most blatant in The Widow's Tears, though it can be traced through his dramatic canon as a whole. The Gentleman Usher is the one great exception to this orientation. The positive attitude toward women is perhaps one aspect of a more general idealism; Harry M. Weidner maintained that the play reveals "both a rich and complete artistic triumph and the hopeful, self-aware triumph of moral man."
Vincentio's plan to marry Margaret himself is seconded by his close friend Lord Strozza, and Strozza's wife Cynanche. The two have a foolish nephew called Pogio who is the play's main clown.
Alphonso, Medice, and the court party travel to Earl Lasso's country house; Lasso stages a welcoming masque for the guests, under the guidance of Bassiolo, the usher who supervises Lasso's household. The courtiers stage their own masque in return, with the purpose of courting Margaret and preparing her for her marriage and elevation to duchess. Vincentio and Strozza view the goings-on critically, and interfere when they can, principally by trying to embarrass Medice.
Searching for a go-between to advance his suit with Margaret, Vincentio tries to earn the good graces of Bassiolo the usher — who reveals himself to be a silly and pompous fellow. The prince succeeds so well that soon Bassiolo is calling him "Vince" and pledging his loyalty. Bassiolo carries a love letter to Margaret, and cajoles her into accepting it and replying; Margaret meanwhile displays her disdain for the usher's verbosity and pretensions. Eventually the two young people meet, and pledge their love and faith in a spiritual marriage.
While the Duke and his party are out hunting, Vincentio's friend Strozza is "accidentally" struck in the chest by an arrow; he is brought back to Lasso's house wounded. As he suffers from his wound, Strozza enters into a mental state of "inspired rapture" in which he foretells coming events; he warns Vincentio of his coming troubles and trials, though he also indicates that Vincentio can win out through patience and fortitude. The hostile and suspicious Medice recognizes Vincentio's love for Margaret, and provokes Margaret's aunt Corteza to search for evidence of a clandestine romance. Vincentio's love letter to Margaret is discovered; spying on the two young people, Alphonso and his party discover the young couple's mutual affection. Bassiolo is comically caught up in his divided loyalties and his incriminating statements. Vincentio flees; Alphonso orders a pursuit, though he specifies that his son be apprehended but not harmed.
Medice, however, ignores the Duke's instructions, and wounds the prince severely once he's captured. Vincentio is brought back to Lasso's estate in a litter. Margaret is so desperate to avoid a forced marriage that she contemplates suicide, but lacks the will to go through with the deed; but she disfigures herself with a depilatory cream that leaves her face blistered. The Duke is now stricken with remorse and turns against Medice; he hands his erstwhile favorite over to Strozza for execution. Strozza wants, or says he wants, to kill Medice instantly without a chance for absolution — which provokes Medice into a confession of his faults. He admits that Strozza was shot and injured not by accident, but deliberately, because he is Vincentio's friend. He also admits that his true name is not Medice (like "the Medici
"), but Mendice (as in "mendicant"); and that, far from being an aristocrat, he started out as a beggar and worked his way up to be king of the Gypsies.
Benivemus, the doctor who treated Strozza, is able to heal both Vincentio's wounds and Margaret's damaged complexion. The two are happily united at the end of the play. Bassiolo the usher is promoted to the Duke's household; Medice/Mendice is beaten and driven out by Pogio and the earl's pages.
In the play's final scene, Strozza delivers a speech that bears upon Chapman's attitude toward personal virtue and political authority:
Chapman's preoccupation with this concept, of the virtuous man who is his own moral authority, connects with his deep commitment to Homer
, whose works he translated over many years; and it helps to explain why Chapman would soon abandon comedy, to devote himself to the tragedies in which he explored his concepts of "Homeric Idealism" more deeply.
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
written by George Chapman
George Chapman
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...
that was first published in 1606
1606 in literature
The year 1606 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*May 27 - The English Parliament passes An Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, which tightens the censorship controls on public theatre performances, most notably on the question of profane oaths.*December 26 - Shakespeare's King...
. It is noted as the only play in which Chapman takes a positive view of women.
Date and publication
The Gentleman Usher was entered into the Stationers' RegisterStationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...
on 26 November 1605
1605 in literature
The year 1605 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - The Queen's Revels Children perform George Chapman's All Fools at Court....
, under the alternative title Vincentio and Margaret (the names of its hero and heroine). The first edition appeared the next year, in a quarto
Book size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...
printed by Valentine Simmes
Valentine Simmes
Valentine Simmes was an Elizabethan era and Jacobean era printer; he did business in London, "on Adling Hill near Bainard's Castle at the sign of the White Swan." Simmes has a reputation as one of the better printers of his generation, and was responsible for several quartos of Shakespeare's plays...
for the publisher Thomas Thorpe
Thomas Thorpe
Thomas Thorpe was an English publisher, most famous for publishing Shakespeare's sonnets and several works by Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. His publication of the sonnets has long been controversial...
. The title page identifies Chapman as the author, but does not mention the playing company
Playing company
In Renaissance London, playing company was the usual term for a company of actors. These companies were organized around a group of ten or so shareholders , who performed in the plays but were also responsible for management. The sharers employed "hired men" — that is, the minor actors and...
that staged the work. The style of the play, with its two masque
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
s and its use of music, suggests that one of the two children's companies, the Children of Paul's
Children of Paul's
The Children of Paul's was the name of a troupe of boy actors in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Along with the Children of the Chapel, the Children of Paul's were the most important of the companies of boy players that constituted a distinctive feature of English Renaissance theatre.St...
or the Children of the Queen's Revels
Children of the Chapel
The Children of the Chapel were the boys with unbroken voices, choristers, who formed part of the Chapel Royal, the body of singers and priests serving the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they were called upon to do so....
, acted the play. Since other Chapman comedies of the early 17th century, All Fools
All Fools
All Fools is an early Jacobean era stage play, a comedy by George Chapman that was first published in 1605. The play has often been considered Chapman's highest achievement in comedy: "not only Chapman's most flawless, perfectly balanced play," but "also his most human and large-minded." "Chapman...
, Monsieur D'Olive
Monsieur D'Olive
Monsier D'Olive is an early Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by George Chapman.The play was first published in 1606, in a quarto printed by Thomas Creede for the bookseller William Holmes. This was the drama's sole edition before the 19th century...
, Sir Giles Goosecap
Sir Giles Goosecap
Sir Giles Goosecap is an early 17th-century stage play, a comedy first published, anonymously, in 1606. Consensus scholarship attributes the play's authorship to George Chapman.-Date, performance, publication:...
, May Day
May Day (play)
May Day is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a comedy written by George Chapman that was first published in 1611.May Day enters the historical record when it was printed in a quarto edition by the stationer John Browne. This was the sole edition of the play prior to the nineteenth century...
, and The Widow's Tears
The Widow's Tears
The Widow's Tears is an early Jacobean era play, a comedy written by George Chapman. It is often considered the last of Chapman's comedies, and sometimes his most problematic, "the most provocative and the most paradoxical of any of his dramatic works."...
, were performed by the Queen's Revels Children, it is not unlikely that The Gentleman Usher was as well. The play refers to Goosecap, and so must post-date it; 1602–4 is a probable dating range for the origin and stage premier of The Gentleman Usher.
The source question
No specific source for the story in The Gentleman Usher has ever been identified by scholars and critics. Chapman scholar T. M. ParrottThomas Marc Parrott
Thomas Marc Parrott was a prominent twentieth-century American literary scholar, long a member of the faculty of Princeton University in New Jersey....
, in the Introduction to his edition of the play, makes an interesting argument about the source question: he notes that Chapman is an effective adapter of other writers' works, but not particularly good at creating new stories of his own. In The Gentleman Usher, the first two Acts are unfocused and rambling, and the story does not truly get going until the third — a defect that suggests the story is a Chapman original.
Parrott does note links between The Gentleman Usher and other contemporaneous plays. The plot element of a ruler and his son falling in love with the same woman in found in The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll
The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll
The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll is a later Elizabethan stage play, an anonymous comedy first published in 1600. It is illustrative of the type of drama staged by the companies of child actors when they returned to public performance in that era....
(printed 1600
1600 in literature
The year 1600 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - The Admiral's Men perform Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday at Court....
); John Marston
John Marston
John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...
employs the same idea in his Parasitaster
Parasitaster, or The Fawn
Parasitaster, or The Fawn is an early Jacobean play, written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston in 1604, and performed by the Children of the Queen's Revels in the Blackfriars Theatre....
(1604). And the conclusion of Chapman's play, with a woman's beauty marred but then repaired, seems to have been lifted from The Trial of Chivalry (c. 1600; printed 1605); similar material can be found in Jack Drum's Entertainment
Jack Drum's Entertainment
Jack Drum's Entertainment is a late Elizabethan play written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston c. 1599–1600. It was first performed by the Children of Paul's, one of the troupes of boy actors popular in that era....
(c. 1600).
Chapman took the medical material included in his play from a book written by the 15th-century Florentine physician Antonio Benivieni
Antonio Benivieni
Antonio Benivieni was a Florentine physician who pioneered the use of the autopsy, a postmortum dissection of a deceased patient's body used to understand the cause of death. Benivieni published a treatise entitled De Abditis Morborum Causis which is now considered one of the first works in the...
, though he reworks that material "with striking images and with fine poetry that have no counterpart in Benivieni."
Chapman's women
Critics have observed that The Gentleman Usher differs from its author's other comedies in that it presents unusually positive and affirmative portrayals of its female characters. Chapman's apparent cynicismCynicism
Cynicism , in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics . Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and...
toward women is most blatant in The Widow's Tears, though it can be traced through his dramatic canon as a whole. The Gentleman Usher is the one great exception to this orientation. The positive attitude toward women is perhaps one aspect of a more general idealism; Harry M. Weidner maintained that the play reveals "both a rich and complete artistic triumph and the hopeful, self-aware triumph of moral man."
Synopsis
The story is set in an otherwise-unnamed duchy in Italy, ruled by Duke Alphonso. As the story opens, the Duke and his son and heir Prince Vincentio are both in love with the beautiful Margaret, the daughter of Earl Lasso. Alphonso's plan to marry the girl (though he is much too old for her) is supported by his court favorite Medice, a figure roundly disliked by the other characters. Medice is considered a poseur and vulgarian; though he masquerades as a great lord, he admits that he is illiterate.Vincentio's plan to marry Margaret himself is seconded by his close friend Lord Strozza, and Strozza's wife Cynanche. The two have a foolish nephew called Pogio who is the play's main clown.
Alphonso, Medice, and the court party travel to Earl Lasso's country house; Lasso stages a welcoming masque for the guests, under the guidance of Bassiolo, the usher who supervises Lasso's household. The courtiers stage their own masque in return, with the purpose of courting Margaret and preparing her for her marriage and elevation to duchess. Vincentio and Strozza view the goings-on critically, and interfere when they can, principally by trying to embarrass Medice.
Searching for a go-between to advance his suit with Margaret, Vincentio tries to earn the good graces of Bassiolo the usher — who reveals himself to be a silly and pompous fellow. The prince succeeds so well that soon Bassiolo is calling him "Vince" and pledging his loyalty. Bassiolo carries a love letter to Margaret, and cajoles her into accepting it and replying; Margaret meanwhile displays her disdain for the usher's verbosity and pretensions. Eventually the two young people meet, and pledge their love and faith in a spiritual marriage.
While the Duke and his party are out hunting, Vincentio's friend Strozza is "accidentally" struck in the chest by an arrow; he is brought back to Lasso's house wounded. As he suffers from his wound, Strozza enters into a mental state of "inspired rapture" in which he foretells coming events; he warns Vincentio of his coming troubles and trials, though he also indicates that Vincentio can win out through patience and fortitude. The hostile and suspicious Medice recognizes Vincentio's love for Margaret, and provokes Margaret's aunt Corteza to search for evidence of a clandestine romance. Vincentio's love letter to Margaret is discovered; spying on the two young people, Alphonso and his party discover the young couple's mutual affection. Bassiolo is comically caught up in his divided loyalties and his incriminating statements. Vincentio flees; Alphonso orders a pursuit, though he specifies that his son be apprehended but not harmed.
Medice, however, ignores the Duke's instructions, and wounds the prince severely once he's captured. Vincentio is brought back to Lasso's estate in a litter. Margaret is so desperate to avoid a forced marriage that she contemplates suicide, but lacks the will to go through with the deed; but she disfigures herself with a depilatory cream that leaves her face blistered. The Duke is now stricken with remorse and turns against Medice; he hands his erstwhile favorite over to Strozza for execution. Strozza wants, or says he wants, to kill Medice instantly without a chance for absolution — which provokes Medice into a confession of his faults. He admits that Strozza was shot and injured not by accident, but deliberately, because he is Vincentio's friend. He also admits that his true name is not Medice (like "the Medici
Medici
The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...
"), but Mendice (as in "mendicant"); and that, far from being an aristocrat, he started out as a beggar and worked his way up to be king of the Gypsies.
Benivemus, the doctor who treated Strozza, is able to heal both Vincentio's wounds and Margaret's damaged complexion. The two are happily united at the end of the play. Bassiolo the usher is promoted to the Duke's household; Medice/Mendice is beaten and driven out by Pogio and the earl's pages.
In the play's final scene, Strozza delivers a speech that bears upon Chapman's attitude toward personal virtue and political authority:
Chapman's preoccupation with this concept, of the virtuous man who is his own moral authority, connects with his deep commitment to Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, whose works he translated over many years; and it helps to explain why Chapman would soon abandon comedy, to devote himself to the tragedies in which he explored his concepts of "Homeric Idealism" more deeply.