Duke Alphonso is in love with Margaret, daughter of Count Lasso. But there’s a snag: Alphonso’s son is secretly courting Margaret. Little does the Duke know what is going on as he takes up residence in the Count’s house — his son is bribing Lasso’s main servant, the Gentleman Usher Bassiolo, so his tryst can continue.

Shakespeare? In fact The Gentleman Usher was written by George Chapman in 1605 as a piece of chorister drama. Designed for performance by children, it was a rare and appropriate choice for this year’s Magdalen College School Arts Festival — with pupils aged from seven to 18, MCS has a cast readily available, and there is also a direct connection: “There was a whole Magdalen school of drama centred around Lyly’s chorister players,” headmaster Tim Hands told me in an Oxford Times interview, adding that Shakespeare’s characters learnt Latin from Lyly’s Grammar, a Magdalen book.

Like Shakespeare, Chapman wrote in an England ruled by a rigid hierarchy of authority. In Magdalen’s production of Usher, director Tom Attenborough (grandson of Richard) pointed up that hierarchy as small servants scuttled on and off, and provided the Duke’s band (pictured). The principal characters were played by older boys — Ollie Burrows presented the Duke as an upstanding gentleman while Josh Wade portrayed his son as a thoughtful, solid sort of guy — not at all a playboy. Authentically, the girls were played by boys with unbroken voices: all had plainly studied female body language, with Bryce Jones outstanding as a sturdy and determined Margaret. But the peachiest role of all fell to Conor Diamond, who relished many a nudge and wink moment as the wheeler-dealer Bassiolo.

The production was rehearsed on an incredibly tight schedule, and that sometimes showed. But all praise to MCS for bringing The Gentleman Usher back to vigorous life.