This clever, though somewhat tedious, comedy was published anonymously in 1606. There is no known dramatic writer of that date to whom it could be assigned with any great degree of probability. The comic portion shows clearly the influence of Ben Jonson, and there is much to remind one of Lyly's court-comedies. In the serious scenes the philosophising and moralising, at one time expressed in language of inarticulate obscurity and at another attaining clear and dignified utterance, suggest a study of Chapman. The unknown writer might have taken as his motto a passage in the dedication of Ovid's _Banquet of Sense_:-- "Obscurity in affection of words and indigested conceits is pedantical and childish; but where it shroudeth itself in the heart of his subject, uttered with fitness of figure and expressive epithets, with that darkness will I still labour to be shrouded." Chapman's _Gentleman Usher_ was published in the same year as _Sir Gyles Goosecappe_; and I venture to think that in a passage of Act III., Scene II., our author had in his mind the exquisite scene between the wounded Strozza and his wife Cynanche. In Strozza's discourse on the joys of marriage occur these lines:-- "If he lament she melts herselfe in teares; If he be glad she triumphs; if he stirre She moon's his way: in all things his _sweete Ape_." The charming fitness of the expression "sweet ape" would impress any capable reader. I cannot think that by mere accident the anonymous writer lighted on the same words:-- "Doe women bring no helpe of soule to men? Why, friend, they either are mens soules themselves Or the most witty imitatrixes of them, Or prettiest _sweet apes_ of humane soules." From a reference to Queen Elizabeth in Act I., Scene I., it is clear that _Sir Gyles Goosecappe_ was written not later than 1603. The lines I have quoted may have been added later; or our author may have seen the _Gentleman Usher_ in manuscript. Chapman's influence is again (_me judice_) apparent in the eloquent but somewhat strained language of such a passage as the following:-- "Alas, my noble Lord, he is not rich, Nor titles hath, nor in his tender cheekes The standing lake of _Impudence_ corrupts; Hath nought in all the world, nor nought wood have To grace him in the prostituted light. But if a man wood consort with a soule Where all mans sea of gall and bitternes Is quite evaporate with her holy flames, And in whose powers a Dove-like innocence Fosters her own deserts, and life and death Runnes hand in hand before them, all the skies Cleare and transparent to her piercing eyes. Then wood my friend be something, but till then A _cipher_, nothing, or the worst of men."