Category — Gentleman Usher

In Medice’s life story told at the end of The Gentleman Usher, Medice confesses that his fraud has continued to the present.

                                         “and my last wrong
I did to noblesse was in this high Court.”
(V, iv, 266-7)

That implies the Duke has been wronged by Medice.  What is the Duke’s attitude toward the wrong committed against him?

 “Benevemus. Never was such an accident disclos’d.

Alphonso. Let us forget it, honourable friends,”
(V, iv, 283-4)

Is the Duke’s nonchalance here not the perfect example of the courtly ideal of sprezzatura?

from wiki – “Sprezzatura has also been described “as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance”

When people consider the Authorship Question in terms of how the author felt having another’s name in his works, we seem to impose our own value system on the expected emotions and reactions of a different era.  We’ve already seen how it was a taboo to talk about the true author at the time, as revealed in Chapman’s play. Now we can add to that the example of proper nonchalance and feigned indifference to the slight as is common in the customs of the period, and particular for noble courtiers.