The Gentleman Usher

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.

The Gentleman Usher was entered into the Stationers' Register 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 masques 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.

No specific source for the story in The Gentleman Usher has ever been identified by scholars and critics. Chapman scholar T. M. Parrott, 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.

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