In the latter part of 1534, he had become headmaster of Eton,
where he remained till 1541, when he lost his office through mis-
conduct which involved a short term of imprisonment.
where he remained till 1541, when he lost his office through mis-
conduct which involved a short term of imprisonment.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v05
After some preliminary skirmishing,
in which the pardoner vaunts the virtues of his remarkable assort-
ment of relics, and the 'potycary those of his equally wonderful
collection of medicines, the pedler proposes that each shall tell a
tale as a test of his powers of falsification. Though these tales
are not organically related to the preceding dialogue, they give
Heywood an opportunity for the display of his remarkable narra-
tive faculty at its best. The’potycary's tale is coarse; but, regarded
from the point of view of a Munchausen romance, it is a capital
6
## p. 96 (#120) #############################################
96
Early English Comedy
piece of writing. It is far outdone, however, by the pardoner's
story of his visit to hell to rescue the soul of his friend, Margery
Coorson, who had died during his absence. No such masterpiece
of humorous narrative had appeared in England since Chaucer
ceased to write, though the grimly grotesque vein of the recital
is entirely Heywood's own. The description of the anniversary
festival of Lucifer's fall, when all the devils appeared in gala
dress :
Theyr hornes well-gylt, theyr clowes full clene,
Theyr taylles wellkempt, and, as I wene,
With sothery butter theyr bodyes anoynted;
the account of Lucifer's audience to the pardoner, with the inter-
change of courtesies, and the formal compact that Margery may
go free if the pardoner will undertake that 'there come no mo'
women to hell-all these are combined in a chiaroscuro treatment
unequalled of its kind till, in Byron's Vision of Judgment, it was
applied to a similar theme, with added touches of sublimity and
saeva indignatio. The pardoner's tale gives the palmer his chance.
He cannot understand
That women in hell such shrewes can be,
And here so gentyll, as farre as I se.
He has known five hundred thousand women;
Yet in all places where I have ben
Of all the women that I have sene,
I never sawe nor knewe in my consyens
Any one woman out of paciens.
Such an unheard-of statement startles rivals and judge alike into
involuntary exclamations:
'Por. By the masse, there is a great lye.
Pard. I never harde a greater, by our lady.
PED. A greater! nay, knowe ye any so great ?
The palmer, manifestly, is the victor, and the situation should have
been rounded off in a few lines. But the pedler spins it out by
the prolix manner of his adjudication, and by his final homily on
matters of conduct and faith.
Were Heywood's place in dramatic history to be determined
purely by his indisputable works, it would be matter of doubt
whether he had not chosen the wrong channel for his great gifts.
His narrative powers might have made him the last and most
brilliant of Chaucer's successors, while his services to the stage,
great as they were, would be limited by his inability to portray action.
But, if The pardoner and the frere and Johan Johan are placed
to his credit, the range of his achievement is materially widened.
## p. 97 (#121) #############################################
The Pardoner and the Frere
97
It must be allowed that both plays differ largely from Heywood's
acknowledged pieces in one respect. The latter all end, as has
been seen, upon an edifying note; but in the pardoner and
the frere and Johan Johan, scoundrels and sinners go off
triumphant. This, however, may be due to the influence of
French farce; while, in general conception of character, in handling
of metre and in peculiarities of vocabulary and nomenclaturel
there is close affinity between the two plays and Heywood's
dialogues and interludes, especially the foure P. P. The balance
of evidence is in favour of his authorship of the anonymous pieces.
The opening of The pardoner and the frere, the curate and
neybour Pratte, where the two worthies set forth their claims and
credentials, is strikingly parallel to that of the foure P. P. But
here, the pardoner, in opposition to the evangelical pretensions of
the frere, emphasises his papal commission to the utmost. And
the dialogue method reaches its culminating point of humorous
effectiveness in an amusing scene where, after each line of the
frere's charity sermon, his rival interjects an appeal to the congre-
gation to contribute to the restoration of the chapel of 'swete
saynte Leonarde,' and to earn the remission of sins promised by
the papal bull. This indirect process of recrimination is varied by
bouts of direct personal abuse, till the quarrel reaches its height
in a vigorous use of fists, not to speak of nails and teeth. At this
point, the parson of the parish enters with an imprecation on the
wranglers who are polluting his church, and who have only been
restrained from bloodshed by the lack of staves or edged tools.
While he deals with the frere, he calls in the help of the lay
arm, in the shape of 'neybour Prat,' to manage the pardoner, who
is also a layman. Prat promises his man a taste of the stocks,
while the parson seeks to hale the frere off to prison. It looks as
1 Some of these points have not been sufficiently noted. Thus, Heywood is fond
of alluding to unfamiliar saints and shrines. The locus classicus is in the palmer's
opening speech in The foure P. P. Among the shrines mentioned is the obscure one
of our Lady at Crome,' by whom Johan is found swearing in his opening speech.
Afterwards, Johan appeals to swete Saynt Dyryk,' and the priest mentions the shrine
of . Saynt Modwin,' which seems to have been at Burton-on-Trent. Two of the sham
relics exhibited by the pardoner in The foure P. P. , 'the great toe of the Trinite' and
of all Hallows the bless'd jaw bone' reappear (as Swoboda has noted) among the
stock-in-trade of his colleague in The pardoner and the frere. But, possibly, more
indicative of a single hand is the parallelism in the respective lists of the buttocke
bone of Pentecoste' and the 'arm of sweet Saint Sunday,' and of the eye-tooth of the
Great Turk, which prevents blindness, and the brayn pan' of 'Saynt Myghell,' a
preservative against headache. It is worth noting, too, that the rare word nyfuls,'
dzed in Wether, reappears in Johan Johan, and that the phrase “VII yeare,' for an
indefinite period of time, occurs in Wether, Johan Johan, and The pardoner and the frere.
E. L. v. CH, V.
7
## p. 98 (#122) #############################################
98
Early English Comedy
if the two knaves were going to get their deserts, when, by an
unexpected rally, they get the better of their captors, and go off
with all the honours of war, and an ominous hint of a return visit!
Chaucer had supplied some of the materials for the characters
of the pardoner and the frere, and there are also resemblances
between the play and the Farce nouvelle d'un Pardonneur, d'un
triacleur et d'une tavernière. In Johan Johan, the resemblances
to episodes in the Farce de Pernet qui va au vin are so
detailed that borrowing on the one side or the other is self-
evident? Apart from a number of verbal coincidences, the
singular situation of a husband being set to chafe wax while his
wife and her lover are making merry together can hardly have oc-
curred independently to two playwrights. The only extant edition
of Pernet qui va au vin dates from 1548, but it was then nouvelle-
ment imprimé, and it is probable that an earlier issue was
available for Heywood's use. If not, the French play must have
been indebted to the English, which is unlikely at this period.
The duped husband, Johan Johan, the central figure of the
piece, is admirably sketched. During his wife's absence, he boasts
loudly about the beating that he will give her; but, on her return,
he protests that he has been merely talking of beating 'stokfysshe
in Temmes Street' for a Lenten dish. He suspects, with only
too good reason, that Tyb's frequent visits to Sir Jhan, the priest,
have other than spiritual motives, but he unburdens himself only
in 'asides,' and he dare not refuse to carry an invitation to Sir
Jhan to come and share a 'pye. ' As he starts on his ungrateful
errand, he is repeatedly called back by his domineering partner
to do various domestic offices. And, when he returns with the
wily priest, who has accepted the invitation after well feigned
reluctance, Tyb has further orders for him. He has to fetch a
pail of water, but the pail has a 'clyfte, both large and wyde,'
which is not likely to have come by mere accident. So, while the
wife and the guest enjoy themselves, the master of the house has
to sit at the fire and melt wax to mend the hole.
As he rue-
fully mutters :
I chafe the wax-
And I chafe it so hard that my fyngers krakks;
And eke the smoke puttyth out my eyes two:
I burne my face, and ray my clothys also,
And yet I dare not say one word,
And they syt laughyng yender at the bord.
1 See Young, K. , 'Influence of French Farce,' etc. , pp. 102–9, and Pollard, A. W. ,
in Gayley, C. M. , R. E. C. p. 15.
## p. 99 (#123) #############################################
Calisto and Melebea
99
But, when the meal has been ended, and the two feasters, after
the 'recreacion' of some spicy stories by Sir Jhan, turn to making
mock of the wretched Johan, it is too much even for him. In a
sudden outburst of valour, born of despair, he rounds upon his
tormentors, gives them a drubbing and turns them out of doors-
though he hurries after them for fear of further misdoing in Sir
Jhan's chamber.
Assuming that Johan Johan and Witty and Witless are by the
same author, we have thus seen Heywood's advance from the
composition of abstract and prolix dialogue to that of tersely
written and realistic farce. In any case, with Johan Johan
English drama had come close to the confines of true comedy.
A still nearer approach, in more than one aspect, was made
by A new comodye in englysh in maner of an enterlude, generally
known, from its hero and heroine, as Calisto and Melebea. This
work was published by John Rastell, probably about 1530. It
was an adaptation of the earlier part of the Spanish dramatic
novel Celestina, issued, probably, first at Burgos in 1499, of which
Fernando de Rojas was the chief, if not the sole, author. Celestina
originally contained sixteen acts; but these were increased in 1502
to twenty-one. A work of these proportions, and containing long
narrative and descriptive passages, was evidently not intended
for the stage, though written in dialogue form. But, in spite of
its hybrid character, it took Spain and Europe by storm, through.
its union of a romantic love-story with realistic and intensely
vivid pictures of the lowest social types? The first four acts,
which alone are adapted in the English version, tell of Calisto's
passion for Melebea, who will not listen to his suit; his appeal,
at the suggestion of his servant, Sempronio, to the noted bawd,
Celestina, to use her arts to soften the heroine's heart; the mis-
givings of Parmeno, fellow-servant of Sempronio, as to Celestina's
aims; and her success, when she has been sufficiently bribed,
in wiling out of Melebea her, girdle, to be carried as a token
of goodwill to Calisto, whose fictitious toothache it is to cure.
The author of Calisto and Melebea shows masterly skill in his
transformation of the earlier part of the Spanish work into an
interlude. With unerring instinct, he selects from the prolix
original the salient points of character and action, and condenses
into narrative form, as in Celestina's opening tale of Elicea and
her two lovers, episodes of minor significance. He manages the
1 For an account of Celestina, see Ticknor, G. , History of Spanish Literature
(ed. 1863), per. I, ch. XII, pp. 235 ff.
7-2
## p. 100 (#124) ############################################
Іоо
Early English Comedy
rime royal, which is used throughout, with such dexterity that,
even in broken passages of dialogue, it is sufficiently supple and
flexible for his purposes. His power of turning the prose of
Rojas into verse, with the minimum of verbal change, as in
Calisto's rhapsody on his mistress's charms, anticipates, in humbler
fashion, Shakespeare's marvellous transmutation of the prose of
Holinshed and North in the English and Roman history plays.
Had he but carried out his work to its natural close, he would
have enriched English drama with its first romantic love-tragedy.
The later pages of his original offered him splendid material in
the clandestine meetings of the enamoured couple, the acci-
dental death of Calisto after one of these meetings, the suicide
of Melebea and the murder of Celestina by her accomplices.
Here, a truly tragic nemesis overtakes passion and crime; but the
English playwright could not be satisfied without a more ob-
viously edifying ending. So he substituted a glaringly incon-
gruous and abrupt finale to the interlude. After Celestina's
interview with Melebea, the father of the heroine appears with an
account of a dream, in which he has seen her lured by a 'foule
roughe bych’ to the brink of a foul pit. Thereupon, Melebea
interprets the dream, and repents aloud of her sins, while her
father points the moral in a long discourse upon the efficacy of
prayer, the importance of youthful training and the remedial
function of wise laws. There is no Tudor play in which the
romantic and the didactic tendencies meet in such violent collision
as in Calisto and Melebea. At the very moment when the inter-
lude seems developing into a full-grown comedy or tragicomedy,
it is strangled by a hostile reactionary force.
Whether there was the same collision of tendencies in The
Play of Lucrece, issued, probably, like Calisto and Melebea, from
he press of John Rastell, it is not possible to say. Only a
fragment, apparently, survives? ; but, from this, it is evident that
the interlude includes a romantic love-story between a Publius
Cornelius and a lady Lucrece otherwise unknown to history or
to the stage. The portions of two scenes which have been pre-
served are written in lively manner, in short lines with, as a rule,
three stresses.
Both Calisto and Melebea and Lricrece, though designed in
interlude form, show the influences of the classical revival. It
was from this revival and the neo-Latin drama which followed in its
1 MSS Harl. 5919, fol. 20, No. 98. Facsimiled in Bang's Materialien, vol. XII, and
printed in The Malone Society's Publications, part II, pp. 139–142.
## p. 101 (#125) ############################################
The Continental Humanist Drama
IOI
>
wake that English comedy, in the full sense, finally sprang. The
influence of the Roman stage never became entirely extinct
throughout the medieval period, as Hrotsvitha's religious adapta-
tions of Terence in the tenth century help to testify. Among
his services to dawning humanism, Petrarch, about 1331, wrote a
Terentian comedy, Philologia, and later products of a kindred
type in Italy were Aretino's Poliscene (c. 1390) and Ugolino's
Philogena, before 1437. The recovery of the twelve lost plays
of Plautus in 1427 was a powerful stimulus to the study of
Roman dramatists in Italy and to the representation of their
works and of neo-Latin imitations of them. This movement soon
spread beyond the Alps. A representation of Terence's Andria
in the original took place at Metz in 1502, though the first
attempt to perform it had to be abandoned owing to the
riotous conduct of the spectators who did not understand Latin.
Ravisius Textor, professor of rhetoric in the college of Navarre,
at Paris, and, afterwards, rector of the university of Paris, wrote
a number of Latin Dialogi for performance by his pupils.
They were published, after his death, in 1530, and, though more
akin to the interlude than to Roman comedy, they exercised, as
will be seen, considerable influence. In Teutonic countries, neo-
Latin drama had a still more vigorous growth. The German
humanist, Reuchlin, in his Henno (1498) put the rogueries of
Patelin into Terentian dress. Holland, early in the sixteenth
century, produced a school of dramatists who, touched by the
moral fervour of the reformation movement, gave the setting of
Roman comedy to Biblical themes. A notable group of these
plays, written for performance by young scholars, were variations
on the story of the Prodigal Son. The most brilliant and popular
plays of this type were the Asotus and the Rebelles of George
Macropedius, the Acolastus of William Gnaphaeus, and the
Studentes of Christopher Stymmelius. Another group of Biblical
comedies, including those by Xystus Betuleius of Basel, centred
round such figures as Ruth, Susanna and Judith. Scriptural per-
sonages of a different type, such as Haman, furnished protestant
controversialists with materials for polemical plays directed against
the Roman pontiff. This anti-papal drama culminated in the
Pammachius (1538) of Thomas Kirchmayer (Naogeorgos) in which
the Roman anti-Christ was overwhelmed in an unparalleled pro-
digality of saturnine humour.
The classical revival on the continent, and the consequent de-
velopment of the new humanist drama, began to influence the
## p. 102 (#126) ############################################
102 Early English Comedy
English stage early in the sixteenth century. In 1520, Henry VIII
provided a goodly comedy of Plautus' for the entertainment of
some French hostages. The boys of St Paul's school, under their
master, John Ritwise, performed Menaechmi before Wolsey in
1527 and Phormio in 1528. Ritwise, also, at some date between
1522 and 1531, made the Tragedy of Dido out of Virgil,' and acted
the same with the scholars of his school 'before the Cardinal';
and he was also responsible for an anti-Lutheran play acted in
1527 before Henry VIII. Thus, within a few years, the St Paul's
boys, under his direction, performed classical comedy, neo-Latin
tragedy and a controversial interlude. Plays at Eton can be traced
back to the same decade, as there is a record of the expendi-
ture of 10 shillings 'circa ornamenta ad duos lusus' at Christmas,
1525. Eton boys acted in 1538, under Udall, before Thomas
Cromwell, and, from Malim's Consuetudinary, it is evident that, by
1560, the custom of performing both Latin and English plays was
well established in the school. On Twelfth Night 1573, Eton
scholars, under William Elderton, their headmaster, acted before
Elizabeth at Hampton court. The boys of the Gramarskolle of
Westminster,' where the custom of performing Latin comedies was
to take permanent root, appeared before Elizabeth in Heautonti-
moroumenos and Miles Gloriosus in January 1567; in one of the
five English plays performed during the court Christmas festivities
of 1567—87; and in Truth, faythfulnesse, & Mercye, apparently a
belated morality, on New Year's day, 1574. On Shrove Tuesday,
of the previous year, the Merchant Taylors' boys, under Richard
Mulcaster, had made their first appearance in a play at court; in
1574, they acted Timoclia at the sege of Thebes by Alexander at
Candlemas, and, on Shrove Tuesday, Percius and Anthomiris
(i. e. , probably, Perseus and Andromeda). So late as Shrove
Tuesday 1583, they performed Ariodante and Genevora, based
on an episode in Orlando Furioso.
Nor was it only schools in or near London, and within the
reach of court patronage, that produced plays. At King's school,
Canterbury, under the headmastership of Anthony Rushe, there
was keen dramatic activity, encouraged by the cathedral chapter.
In the treasurer's accounts 1562—3, there is an entry of £14. 68. 8d.
'to Mr Ruesshe for rewards geven him at settynge out of his plays
at Christmas, per capitulum. ' In Acta Capituli, vol. I, f. 20,
relating to the period between 1560 and 1563, a payment of
1 See Chambers, E. K. , ‘Court Performances before Queen Elizabeth,' The Modern
Languages Revicu, vol. n, no. 1.
a
## p. 103 (#127) ############################################
Ralph Radcliff. Nicholas Udall
Udall 103
568. 8d. is recorded to the scholemaster and scholars towards
such expensys as they shall be at in settynge furthe of Tragedies,
Comedyes, and interludes this next Christmas. ' This practice of
acting plays at the Canterbury school, which has only recently
been made known', is, of course, specially interesting inasmuch
as Marlowe was a pupil there.
At the opposite corner of the kingdom, in Shrewsbury, the
boys of the town school gave performances under their master,
Thomas Ashton, in the quarry outside the walls. In the north-
east, there are records of school performances at Beverley. At
Hitchin, a private schoolmaster, Ralph Radcliff, who was a friend
of bishop Bale, wrote plays-jocunda & honesta spectacula-
which were acted by his pupils. They included Scriptural
subjects such as Lazarus, Judith and Job, as well as themes-
Griseldis, Melibaeus, Titus and Gisippus-taken directly or in-
directly from Chaucer and Boccaccio. Though produced, accord-
ing to Bale, before the plebs, some of them, if not all, were
written in Latin. Like most sixteenth century school plays,
they have disappeared. But it was at Oxford and Cambridge,
not at the grammar schools, that the English humanist drama
attained its chief development. The products of the universities
were so important and varied that they receive separate treat-
ment? . But, as evidence of the importance attached by academic
authorities to the acting of plays, at first mainly in Latin,
reference may be made here to regulations in the statutes of two
Cambridge colleges. At Queens' college, it was ordained (1546)
that any student refusing to act in a comedy or tragedy, or
absenting himself from the performance, should be expelled. At
Trinity (1560), the nine domestici lectores were directed on pain
of fine to exhibit at Christmastide in pairs a comedy or tragedy,
while the chief lector had to produce one on his own account.
The earliest completely extant memorial in the vernacular of
the revived study of Roman comedy is the translation of Andria,
entitled Terens in English, printed by John Rastell before 1530.
The further step of writing an English comedy on classical lines
was taken by Nicholas Udall. Born in Hampshire in 1505, Udall
was educated at Winchester and at Corpus Christi college, Oxford,
where he became an exponent of Lutheran views. In May 1533,
he combined with John Leland in composing some verses for a
pageant at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. From 1533 to 1537, he
i See History of the King's School, Canterbury, by Woodruff and Cape (1908), p. 80.
See post, vol. vi, chap. XII.
## p. 104 (#128) ############################################
104
Early English Comedy
a
was vicar of Braintree, and may have written the play Placidas or
St Eustace, performed there in 1534? In February 1534/5, he
issued from the Augustinian monastery in London his Floures for
Latine spekynge selected and gathered oute of Terence. The
'floures' picked by Udall from the Roman playwright's hortus
fragrantissimus are phrases from Andria, Eunuchus, and Heau-
tontimoroumenos, followed by their equivalents in the vernacular.
The compilation of such a handbook for his pupils, to whom it is
dedicated, was an admirable training for Udall's more important
labours in adapting Roman comedy to the English school stage.
In the latter part of 1534, he had become headmaster of Eton,
where he remained till 1541, when he lost his office through mis-
conduct which involved a short term of imprisonment. On his
release, he devoted himself to theological work, including a share
in the English translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase of the New
Testament. His protestant attitude secured him ecclesiastical pre-
ferment from Edward VI, and, even after the accession of Mary
he retained the royal favour through his gifts as a playwright. In
December 1554, a letter of the queen states that he has atásoondrie
seasons' shown 'dilligence’ in exhibiting 'Dialogues and Enter-
ludes' before her, and directs the revels office to provide him with
such 'apparel’ as he may need for the Christmas entertainments.
Before this date, he had resumed the scholastic career. In 1553
or 1554, he had been appointed to the headmastership of West-
minster, which he retained till his death in 1556.
Udall was evidently a man of very versatile gifts and energies,
and it is unfortunate that we have not the materials for a compre-
hensive survey of his work as a dramatist. The Braintree play (if
it was his) is lost; the play performed before Cromwell in 1538
cannot be identified; the revels accounts for 1554 do not enable
us to distinguish between 'certen plaies' provided by him and the
other Christmas shows: Bale's reference (1557) to comoediae plures
by him is tantalisingly vague, and the statement that he translated
tragoediam de papatu is puzzling, and, perhaps, erroneous, as a
version of Ochino's drama by Ponet, bishop of Winchester, was
issued in 15492; the Scriptural play Ezechias, produced post-
humously before Elizabeth at Cambridge in 1564, is known to us
only through the accounts of eye-witnesses:.
Thus, Ralph Roister Doister is the sole work which remains to
i See Chambers, E. K. , vol. II, pp. 342, 451.
? See Herford, C. H. , Literary Relations of England and Germany, p. 110 n.
3 Cf. post, vol. vi, chap. XII.
## p. 105 (#129) ############################################
Udall's Ralph Roister Doister 105
illustrate Udall's dramatic powers. The single extant copy of the
play is undated, but it probably belongs to the edition entered to
Thomas Hacket in the Stationers' register in 1566/7. The evidence
in favour of its having been written in 1553—4 is very strong!
Thomas Wilson, who had been at Eton under Udall, published in
1550/1 The Rule of Reason; a second edition appeared in 1552, and
a third in 1553 or, possibly, 1554. In the third edition only,
Wilson uses as an illustration Roister Doister's mispunctuated
love-letter in act III, sc. 4. The inference is that the play had
been performed for the first time between 1552 and 1553/4,
probably by the Westminster boys. That it is in any case later
than 1546, and, therefore, cannot have been written when Udall
was headmaster of Eton, is suggested by his frequent use of phrases
which appear in John Heywood's Proverbs, published in the above
year. Apart from its evidential value, this is an interesting link
between the two dramatists. But, though Udall could borrow
proverbial phrases from his predecessor, he has scarcely a trace, as
far as Roister Doister shows, of Heywood's genius for incisive and
pregnant expression or of his mordant wit. Nor is any figure in
his play drawn with the vitalising art which, in a few scenes, makes
of Johan Johan a being of flesh and blood. But, far inferior to
Heywood in spontaneous literary gifts, Udall, partly through his
scholastic occupations, and partly through a happy instinct, was led
to direct English comedy into the path on which, in the main,
it was to advance to its later triumphs. In imitation of Plautus
and Terence, he substituted for the loosely knit structure of the
English morality or dialogue or of French farce, an organic plot
divided into acts and scenes. Within this framework, he adjusted
figures borrowed from Roman comedy but transformed to suit
English conditions, and mingled with others of purely native
origin? Miles Gloriosus, supplemented, especially in later scenes,
from Eunuchus, suggested the theme of a love-sick braggart's
wooing of a dame whose heart is given to another suitor. But
Udall condensed into a single plot episodes connected with
the two frail beauties in the Plautine play, and lifted the whole
action into a less pagan atmosphere. Roister Doister is as vain-
glorious and credulous as Pyrgopolinices, and he covets dame
Custance's 'thousande pounde' rather than herself. So confident
See Hales, J. W. , The Date of the First English Comedy,' Englische Studien,
vol. XVIII, pp. 408—421.
2 Cf. Maullby, D. L. , “The Relation between Udall's Roister Doister and the
Comedies of Plautus and Terence,' Englische Studien, vol. XXXVIII, pp. 251–277.
2
## p. 106 (#130) ############################################
106 Early English Comedy
is he that the lady will yield at once, that he woos her at first by
deputy, sending, in turn, her old nurse with his love-letter, his
servant with a ring and his companion, Mathewe Merygreeke, to
bring back her instant assent 'to be wedded on Sunday next. '
Her refusal so overcomes him that he declares he must die; but,
after a mock requiem has been said over him, he revives at Mery-
greeke's suggestion to try the effect of a personal interview with
Custance. It does not even need Merygreeke's perverse mis-
reading of the love-letter in Roister Doister's presence to make the
widow 'fume and frette and rage. ' The braggart is again over-
come by his second repulse, and begins to blubber,' till his
companion prompts him to seek revenge. After much mock-
heroic preparation, he makes a grand assault upon Custance's
house, only to be put to shameful rout by her Amazonian legion of
maids. Throughout the play, these maids, with their high spirits,
their gay loquacity and their love of song, form one of its most
attractive and original features. They are closer studies from
life than are the semi-Plautine leading figures.
Yet, in the
person of Merygreeke, Udall succeeded, to some degree, in
anglicising a classical type or combination of types. The first
suggestion for the character comes, of course, from Artotrogos, the
parasite in Miles Gloriosus. But the parasite appears only in the
opening scene, and takes no part in the action of the play. It
is Palaestrio, the captain's servant, who cajoles and tricks him,
as Merygreeke does Roister Doister. Yet, though Merygreeke
makes of Roister Doister his 'chiefe banker both for meate and
money,' he follows and serves him less for gain than for fun. He
is a light-hearted and whimsical mischiefmaker, after the fashion
of the Vice of the later moralities, who plays, in turn, upon every
weakness of his patron, but who, unlike the Plautine plotter, bears
his victim no real illwill. It is a touch of true dramatic irony that
the person whom his foolery brings, for the moment, into serious
trouble is not Roister Doister, but the virtuous Custance, whose
loyalty to her betrothed comes under unjust suspicion. When she
lifts a prayer to the same Lord, who helped 'Susanna'and 'Hester'
in their need, to vindicate her innocence, Udall, in the true spirit
of romantic drama, lets a graver strain mingle with the sprightly
tones of the comedy. But, on his return, Goodluck is soon con-
vinced that she is still 'the pearle of perfect honestie,' and, in bluff
seafaring fashion, brings about a general reconciliation between
the former combatants—a suitably edifying close to a play written
for schoolboys.
## p. 107 (#131) ############################################
Jacke Jugeler
107
Another adaptation from Plautus for performance by boys
is Jacke Jugeler, entered for printing in 1562/3, but written,
very probably, during the reign of Mary. The author states
in the prologue that the plot is based upon Amphitruo, and it
is true that the chief characters in the Roman play have English
citizen equivalents. But the central theme of Jupiter's amour,
in her husband's shape, with Alcmena, disappears, and nothing
is retained but the successful trick of Jacke Jugeler-the Vice
who replaces Mercury-upon Jenkin Careaway, who corresponds
to Sosia, servant of Amphitryon. Disguising himself like Jenkin,
Jacke, by arguments and blows, forces the hapless lackey
to believe that he, and not himself, is the genuine Careaway.
When Jenkin tells the tale of his loss of identity to his mistress
dame Coy, and her husband Bongrace, he gets further drubbings
for his nonsensical story
That one man may have two bodies and two faces,
And that one man at on time may be in too placis.
Regarded purely as a play, Jacke Jugeler, in spite of its classical
origin, is little more than a briskly written farcical episode. But,
beneath its apparently jocular exterior, it veils an extraordinarily
dextrous attack upon the doctrine of transubstantiation and the
persecution by which it was enforced. This is hinted at in the
epilogue, where 'this trifling enterlude' is credited with some
further meaning, if it be well searched. '
Such is the fashyon of the world now a dayes,
That the symple innosaintes ar deluded . . .
And by strength, force, and violence oft tymes compelled
To belive and saye the moune is made of a grene chese
Or ells have great harme, and parcace their life lese.
It has been the fate of many dramatic forms and conventions to go
through a remarkable 'sea-change' in their transportation from
one country or epoch to another. But seldom has any device
of the comic muse been 'translated’ more nearly out of recog-
nition than the classical confusion of identity, when enlisted, as
here, in the service of protestant theology.
But it was less in the classical than in the neo-classical drama
that the earlier Tudor writers of comedy found their chief stimulus.
Probably, the first of continental humanist playwrights (as recent
research has shown') to influence the English stage was Ravisius
7
i See, especially, Holthausen, F. , Studien zum älteren englischen Drama,' in
Englische Studien, vol. XXXI, pp. 77–103.
## p. 108 (#132) ############################################
108 Early English Comedy
Textor. His dialogue Thersites, written in Latin hexameters, was
adapted into English in a version which must have been acted (as
a reference to the birth of prince Edward proves) in October 15371
Thersites is an even more burlesque type of miles gloriosus than is
Roister Doister. Arrayed by Vulcan in full armour, he boasts to
the god and afterwards to his own mother of the mighty deeds
that he will do. But at the sight of a snail2 he is terror stricken,
and calls upon his servants for help, though he plucks up courage
enough, at last, to use club and sword, and to make the snail
draw in his horns. While he is exulting over this feat, he is
challenged by a soldier; whereupon, he first takes shelter behind
his mother's back, and afterwards runs away dropping his club and
sword. The author of the English version shows remarkable
dramatic instinct in his handling of this grotesquely farcical plot.
The medley of metres that he uses is more appropriate to the
bizarre incidents of the story than are the stately hexameters of
Textor. He considerably expands the original text, vivifying the
dialogue by the addition of many details that would appeal to
an English audience. Thus, Mulciber tells Thersites not to fear
' Bevis of Hampton, Colburne and Guy,' and the braggart
challenges to combat 'King Arthur and the Knightes of the Rounde
Table, and afterwards 'Robin John and Little Hode'! These
and similarly deft touches give a curious plausibility to the piece in
its English guise. But there is loss rather than gain in the long
irrelevant episode added towards the close, wherein Telemachus
brings a letter from Ulysses, and is charmed from the worms wild'
by Thersites's mother. Some of the relics that she invokes have a
family likeness to those owned by Heywood's two Pardoners.
Heywood, indeed, may plausibly be regarded as the author of the
adaptation, which, in its verve, raciness and, it must be added,
indecency, is akin to his own work. In any case, the adapter of
Thersites, whoever he be, is almost certainly responsible for the
version of another of Textor's dialogues, Juvenis, Pater, Uxor, of
which a black letter fragment has recently been discovered and
reprinted with the title The Prodigal Sons. The fragment con-
1 G. C. Moore-Smith has recently shown (Fasciculus Joanni Willis Clark dicatus,
p. 268) from an entry in the accounts of Queens' college, Cambridge, that a dialogus
of Textor was acted at the college in 1543. A later entry, pro picto clipeo quo miles
generosus usus est in comoedia, suggests that the dialogue was Thersites, probably
performed in the original Latin.
2 Called testudo by Textor, but apparently a snail (as in the English version), since
it has horns.
3 See The Malone Society Collections, part 1, pp. 27—30, and part ir, pp. 106—7.
## p. 109 (#133) ############################################
>
a
* Prodigal Son' Plays 109
tains the episode, greatly expanded from the original, in which the
son, after his marriage against his father's wish, tries to support
himself and his wife by selling wood. In its metrical and verbal
characteristics, and in its introduction of English allusions, as to
Oxynby' and 'Cambrydge,' it bears the same impress, mutilated
though it be, as the spirited version of Thersites.
Another version of Juvenis, Pater, Uxor, which we possess in
complete form, is The Disobedient Child, by Thomas Ingelend,
‘late student of Cambridge. ' Printed about 1560, it not im-
probably dates from the reign of Henry VIII or Edward VI, for,
though it ends with a prayer for queen Elizabeth, the audience,
few lines previously, are bidden 'truly serve the King. In this
adaptation of Textor's dialogue, Ingelend shows rhetorical and
inventive gifts; but, on the whole, compared with the original, The
Disobedient Child is a heavy-handed production. The didactic
element is spun out at wearisome length, and most of the new
characters introduced, the priest, the devil and the perorator, who
speaks the epilogue, deliver themselves of superfluous monologues.
But the scene between the man-cook, Long-tongue, and the maid-
cook, Blanche blab-it-out, who prepare the marriage feast, is a lively
piece of below-stairs humour, which is supplemented by the racy
account of the guests' uproarious behaviour given by the bride-
groom's servant. And Ingelend shows a true lyric vein in the
song wherein the lover declares to his 'sweet rose' his eternal
fidelity :
Wherefore let my father spite and spurn,
My fantasy will never turn.
Though Textor's plays are neo-classic, in so far as they are written
in Latin and under humanist influences, they and the English
versions of them belong in form to the interlude type. It was
from the Dutch school of dramatists that Tudor playwrights
learnt to combine the 'prodigal son' theme with the general
framework and conventions of Roman comedy. The most popular
work produced by this school, the Acolastus of Gnaphaeus,
was issued in England with a translation by John Palsgrave in
1540. It was intended primarily to serve as a schoolbook, each
scene being immediately followed by the English rendering.
But Palsgrave also desired to move into the hearts' of his
countrymen 'some little grain of honest and virtuous envy' of the
foreign author's achievement. It was, not improbably, in emulation
1
## p. 110 (#134) ############################################
IIO
Early English Comedy
of Acolastus that a writer who cannot be identified with certainty
wrote, probably about 1560, a play, Misogonus, which enables us
to claim for England the credit of having produced one of the most
elaborate and original comedies on the prodigal son. In its general
structure and development of plot, Misogonus shows the influence
of its Latin prototype. A distracted father, Philogonus, laments
to his friend and counsellor, Eupelas, over the riotous living of his
son Misogonus. The young prodigal is introduced by Orgalus and
Oenophilus, nominally his servants but, in effect, his boon com-
panions, to the courtesan, Melissa, with whom he drinks and dices
and plays the wanton. When his fortunes fail, he is deserted
by the 'vipers' whom he has cherished. Overcome with remorse
and shame, he returns trembling into his father's presence to find
immediate welcome and pardon. All these episodes have their
counterpart in Gnaphaeus's comedy. But the author of Misogonus
was a creative dramatist, not merely an imitator. He individualised
the somewhat shadowy neo-classic types into English figures of his
own period, though the scene is nominally laid in Italy. He added
new personages of his own invention, and made the dénouement
spring out of an ingenious secondary plot. His remarkable gifts in
the way of dialogue and characterisation are displayed to the full
in the realistic gaming scene, where the revellers are joined by the
parish priest, Sir John, who is of the same kin as Heywood's
clerics—drunken and dissolute, ready, even while bell and clerk
summon him to his waiting congregation, to bandy oaths over the
dicebox, and to dance himself into a share of Melissa's favours. But
it is not merely this 'rabblement' of 'rakehells' that brings the
prodigal to ruin. He has an elder twin brother, Eugonus, who,
6
>
1 In the single matilated manuscript of the play which survives, in the duke of Devon-
shire's library, the prologue is signed •Thomas Richardes,' and the modest terms in
which he begs the muses to guide your clients silly style,' suggest that he is the author
of the play. Under the list of dramatis personae, there is a signature 'Laurentius
Bariwna, Ketteringe. Die 20 Novembris, Anno 1577. ' The signature is evidently a
disguised form of Laurence Johnson, the name of the author of a Latin treatise,
Cometographia, printed in London in 1578, and dated, with the same disguised
signature, from Kettering, 20 January 1578. Johnson, possibly, was the author, but,
more probably, was the transcriber of the play. See Brandl, Quellen, LXXV-LXXVII,
and Kittredge, G. L. , in Journ. of Germ. Philology, vol. , pp. 335-341. It is, perhaps,
worth noting that another 'prodigal son' play, Nice Wanton, printed 1560, has at the
end Finis. T. R. ' Can the initials be those of Thomas Richardes ? Nice Wanton
may, as Brandl states too confidently, have been suggested by Rebelles. But it
develops on different lines, and introduces, by the side of the human figures, such
allegorical personages as Iniquity and Worldly Shame. It is a slight and crude
production compared with Misogonus, but its most powerful episode, the dicing scene
between the prodigal son and daughter and Iniquity, is akin to the similar scene in
the greater play.
6
.
## p. 111 (#135) ############################################
Misogonus. Gammer Gurtons Nedle III
a
immediately after their birth, has been sent to his uncle in 'Polona-
land. ' Owing to the mother's death, the secret is known only to a
group of rustics, Alison a midwife, her husband, Codrus, and two
of her gossips. Codrus, threatened with ruin by the death of his
'bulchin' and the loss of his sow, hints at the truth to Philogonus
in the hope of reward, and then fetches Alison to tell the full tale.
The exasperating circumlocution with which she spins it out in a
half incomprehensible jargon; the foolish interruptions by her
husband which lead to a violent quarrel and to further delay in her
disclosures; the suspense, amazement and joy of Philogonus—these
are all portrayed in masterly fashion. Equally effective in purely
farcical vein is the scene that follows after a messenger has been
despatched to bring home the missing heir. Cacurgus, the house-
hold fool, remains faithful to Misogonus, and tries to frighten
Isabel and Madge out of supporting Alison's story. He pretends
that he is a physician, who can cure Madge of a toothache that
makes her stammer with pain, and that he is also a soothsayer, who
foresees damnation for them if they bear witness that Philogonus
had two sons. But the return of the long-lost Eugonus resolves all
doubts, and the prodigal has to confess his sins and beg for forgive-
ness. The play lacks a fifth act in the manuscript, but the action
seems virtually complete. Even in its mutilated state, it claims
recognition as the finest extant comedy that had yet appeared in
England. To the pungent satire of Johan Johan it adds the
structural breadth of Roister Doister, and the insight into rustic
types of the Cambridge farce, Gammer Gurtons Nedle. The
last-named piece, which was 'played on stage' at Christ's college,
probably not long after 1550, will be treated in another chapter,
among university plays? . But it may be pointed out here that the
triviality of its main incident—the loss of the gammer's needle-
and the coarseness of much of the dialogue should not be allowed
to obscure the fact that its author, like Udall and the writer of
Misogonus, had an eye for characterisation and had learned plot
construction from classical or other humanist models.
The Historie of Jacob and Esau, licensed for printing in 1557,
but extant only in an edition of 1568, may be grouped with the
‘prodigal son' plays, though it is a variant from the standard type.
The Biblical story is handled in humanist fashion, and, with the
addition of subsidiary characters, is skilfully worked up into a five
act comedy of orthodox pattern. Esau is the central figure, and,
in an early scene, two of Isaac's neighbours, Hanan and Zethar,
1 See post, vol. vi, chap. XII.
## p. 112 (#136) ############################################
II2 Early English Comedy
6
Scriptural by name but classical by origin, lament that the
patriarch's elder son ‘hath been naught ever since he was born,'
and predict that he will come to an ill end. ' They contrast his
‘loose and lewd living' with the exemplary conduct of Jacob, who
‘keepeth here in the tents like a quiet man. ' But Esau does not
follow the ordinary evil courses of an Acolastus or a Misogonus. In
his insatiable passion for hunting, he rises while yet it is dark,
robbing his voluble servant Ragau of his sleep, and waking the
tent-dwellers with the blowing of his horn. We are given a vivid
picture of the eager follower of the chase talking to his favourite
hounds by name, and ranging the forest from morn to night
without thought of food. Thus, the way is cleverly prepared for
the scene in which Esau, on his return from the hunt, is so
faint with hunger that he is ready to eat a 'cat' or “a shoulder
of a dog,' and catches at Jacob's offer of a mess of pottage even at
the price of his birthright. And, when his hunger has been ap-
peased, and his servant reproaches him with having bought the
meal ‘so dere,' his speech of self-justification shows the dramatist's
insight into character and his analytical power.
If I die to morow, what good would it do me?
If he die to morow, what benefite hath he ?
And for a thing hanging on such casualtie:
Better a mease of pottage than nothing pardy.
Jacob and Esau do not afford much scope for the author's inventive
power,
but Rebecca is drawn with considerable subtlety. She seeks,
in an ingenious way, to justify her schemes on behalf of her younger
son by proclaiming that she is an agent of the Divine Will, and
also by pleading that she scarcely knows whether Esau is her son
or not:
He goeth abroade so early before day light,
And returneth home again so late in the night,
And uneth I sette eye on hym in the whole weeke:
No sometime not in twaine, though I doe for hym seeke.
Well may Mido, Isaac's 'boy,' speak of her 'quick answers' to his
master. Mido, himself possessed of a ready tongue, is one of a group
of servants whom the dramatist has introduced, and who are a very
attractive feature of the play. He prides himself upon his strength,
as Abra, the little handmaid of Rebecca, does upon her cleanliness
and her culinary powers :
I trust to make such broth that, when all things are in,
God almighty selfe may wet his finger therein.
They are both eager partisans of Jacob, as is also Deborah, the
nurse of Isaacs tent,' while Esau's only adherent is Ragau, whose
6
## p. 113 (#137) ############################################
6
>
Gascoigne's The Glasse of Governement 113
fidelity differentiates him from the Vice, a type to which, otherwise,
he is related. The prominence given to servants, the frequent
introduction of songs and the general reconciliation (without
Biblical warrant) at the close, are features which Jacob and Esau
shares with Ralph Roister Doister. There can be little doubt
that it was a school play, and that “the Poet,' who speaks an
epilogue enforcing the protestant doctrine of election,' was the
headmaster who had written the work for performance by his
pupils.
With Gascoigne's The Glasse of Governement (1575), we return
to the more orthodox type of prodigal son play.
in which the pardoner vaunts the virtues of his remarkable assort-
ment of relics, and the 'potycary those of his equally wonderful
collection of medicines, the pedler proposes that each shall tell a
tale as a test of his powers of falsification. Though these tales
are not organically related to the preceding dialogue, they give
Heywood an opportunity for the display of his remarkable narra-
tive faculty at its best. The’potycary's tale is coarse; but, regarded
from the point of view of a Munchausen romance, it is a capital
6
## p. 96 (#120) #############################################
96
Early English Comedy
piece of writing. It is far outdone, however, by the pardoner's
story of his visit to hell to rescue the soul of his friend, Margery
Coorson, who had died during his absence. No such masterpiece
of humorous narrative had appeared in England since Chaucer
ceased to write, though the grimly grotesque vein of the recital
is entirely Heywood's own. The description of the anniversary
festival of Lucifer's fall, when all the devils appeared in gala
dress :
Theyr hornes well-gylt, theyr clowes full clene,
Theyr taylles wellkempt, and, as I wene,
With sothery butter theyr bodyes anoynted;
the account of Lucifer's audience to the pardoner, with the inter-
change of courtesies, and the formal compact that Margery may
go free if the pardoner will undertake that 'there come no mo'
women to hell-all these are combined in a chiaroscuro treatment
unequalled of its kind till, in Byron's Vision of Judgment, it was
applied to a similar theme, with added touches of sublimity and
saeva indignatio. The pardoner's tale gives the palmer his chance.
He cannot understand
That women in hell such shrewes can be,
And here so gentyll, as farre as I se.
He has known five hundred thousand women;
Yet in all places where I have ben
Of all the women that I have sene,
I never sawe nor knewe in my consyens
Any one woman out of paciens.
Such an unheard-of statement startles rivals and judge alike into
involuntary exclamations:
'Por. By the masse, there is a great lye.
Pard. I never harde a greater, by our lady.
PED. A greater! nay, knowe ye any so great ?
The palmer, manifestly, is the victor, and the situation should have
been rounded off in a few lines. But the pedler spins it out by
the prolix manner of his adjudication, and by his final homily on
matters of conduct and faith.
Were Heywood's place in dramatic history to be determined
purely by his indisputable works, it would be matter of doubt
whether he had not chosen the wrong channel for his great gifts.
His narrative powers might have made him the last and most
brilliant of Chaucer's successors, while his services to the stage,
great as they were, would be limited by his inability to portray action.
But, if The pardoner and the frere and Johan Johan are placed
to his credit, the range of his achievement is materially widened.
## p. 97 (#121) #############################################
The Pardoner and the Frere
97
It must be allowed that both plays differ largely from Heywood's
acknowledged pieces in one respect. The latter all end, as has
been seen, upon an edifying note; but in the pardoner and
the frere and Johan Johan, scoundrels and sinners go off
triumphant. This, however, may be due to the influence of
French farce; while, in general conception of character, in handling
of metre and in peculiarities of vocabulary and nomenclaturel
there is close affinity between the two plays and Heywood's
dialogues and interludes, especially the foure P. P. The balance
of evidence is in favour of his authorship of the anonymous pieces.
The opening of The pardoner and the frere, the curate and
neybour Pratte, where the two worthies set forth their claims and
credentials, is strikingly parallel to that of the foure P. P. But
here, the pardoner, in opposition to the evangelical pretensions of
the frere, emphasises his papal commission to the utmost. And
the dialogue method reaches its culminating point of humorous
effectiveness in an amusing scene where, after each line of the
frere's charity sermon, his rival interjects an appeal to the congre-
gation to contribute to the restoration of the chapel of 'swete
saynte Leonarde,' and to earn the remission of sins promised by
the papal bull. This indirect process of recrimination is varied by
bouts of direct personal abuse, till the quarrel reaches its height
in a vigorous use of fists, not to speak of nails and teeth. At this
point, the parson of the parish enters with an imprecation on the
wranglers who are polluting his church, and who have only been
restrained from bloodshed by the lack of staves or edged tools.
While he deals with the frere, he calls in the help of the lay
arm, in the shape of 'neybour Prat,' to manage the pardoner, who
is also a layman. Prat promises his man a taste of the stocks,
while the parson seeks to hale the frere off to prison. It looks as
1 Some of these points have not been sufficiently noted. Thus, Heywood is fond
of alluding to unfamiliar saints and shrines. The locus classicus is in the palmer's
opening speech in The foure P. P. Among the shrines mentioned is the obscure one
of our Lady at Crome,' by whom Johan is found swearing in his opening speech.
Afterwards, Johan appeals to swete Saynt Dyryk,' and the priest mentions the shrine
of . Saynt Modwin,' which seems to have been at Burton-on-Trent. Two of the sham
relics exhibited by the pardoner in The foure P. P. , 'the great toe of the Trinite' and
of all Hallows the bless'd jaw bone' reappear (as Swoboda has noted) among the
stock-in-trade of his colleague in The pardoner and the frere. But, possibly, more
indicative of a single hand is the parallelism in the respective lists of the buttocke
bone of Pentecoste' and the 'arm of sweet Saint Sunday,' and of the eye-tooth of the
Great Turk, which prevents blindness, and the brayn pan' of 'Saynt Myghell,' a
preservative against headache. It is worth noting, too, that the rare word nyfuls,'
dzed in Wether, reappears in Johan Johan, and that the phrase “VII yeare,' for an
indefinite period of time, occurs in Wether, Johan Johan, and The pardoner and the frere.
E. L. v. CH, V.
7
## p. 98 (#122) #############################################
98
Early English Comedy
if the two knaves were going to get their deserts, when, by an
unexpected rally, they get the better of their captors, and go off
with all the honours of war, and an ominous hint of a return visit!
Chaucer had supplied some of the materials for the characters
of the pardoner and the frere, and there are also resemblances
between the play and the Farce nouvelle d'un Pardonneur, d'un
triacleur et d'une tavernière. In Johan Johan, the resemblances
to episodes in the Farce de Pernet qui va au vin are so
detailed that borrowing on the one side or the other is self-
evident? Apart from a number of verbal coincidences, the
singular situation of a husband being set to chafe wax while his
wife and her lover are making merry together can hardly have oc-
curred independently to two playwrights. The only extant edition
of Pernet qui va au vin dates from 1548, but it was then nouvelle-
ment imprimé, and it is probable that an earlier issue was
available for Heywood's use. If not, the French play must have
been indebted to the English, which is unlikely at this period.
The duped husband, Johan Johan, the central figure of the
piece, is admirably sketched. During his wife's absence, he boasts
loudly about the beating that he will give her; but, on her return,
he protests that he has been merely talking of beating 'stokfysshe
in Temmes Street' for a Lenten dish. He suspects, with only
too good reason, that Tyb's frequent visits to Sir Jhan, the priest,
have other than spiritual motives, but he unburdens himself only
in 'asides,' and he dare not refuse to carry an invitation to Sir
Jhan to come and share a 'pye. ' As he starts on his ungrateful
errand, he is repeatedly called back by his domineering partner
to do various domestic offices. And, when he returns with the
wily priest, who has accepted the invitation after well feigned
reluctance, Tyb has further orders for him. He has to fetch a
pail of water, but the pail has a 'clyfte, both large and wyde,'
which is not likely to have come by mere accident. So, while the
wife and the guest enjoy themselves, the master of the house has
to sit at the fire and melt wax to mend the hole.
As he rue-
fully mutters :
I chafe the wax-
And I chafe it so hard that my fyngers krakks;
And eke the smoke puttyth out my eyes two:
I burne my face, and ray my clothys also,
And yet I dare not say one word,
And they syt laughyng yender at the bord.
1 See Young, K. , 'Influence of French Farce,' etc. , pp. 102–9, and Pollard, A. W. ,
in Gayley, C. M. , R. E. C. p. 15.
## p. 99 (#123) #############################################
Calisto and Melebea
99
But, when the meal has been ended, and the two feasters, after
the 'recreacion' of some spicy stories by Sir Jhan, turn to making
mock of the wretched Johan, it is too much even for him. In a
sudden outburst of valour, born of despair, he rounds upon his
tormentors, gives them a drubbing and turns them out of doors-
though he hurries after them for fear of further misdoing in Sir
Jhan's chamber.
Assuming that Johan Johan and Witty and Witless are by the
same author, we have thus seen Heywood's advance from the
composition of abstract and prolix dialogue to that of tersely
written and realistic farce. In any case, with Johan Johan
English drama had come close to the confines of true comedy.
A still nearer approach, in more than one aspect, was made
by A new comodye in englysh in maner of an enterlude, generally
known, from its hero and heroine, as Calisto and Melebea. This
work was published by John Rastell, probably about 1530. It
was an adaptation of the earlier part of the Spanish dramatic
novel Celestina, issued, probably, first at Burgos in 1499, of which
Fernando de Rojas was the chief, if not the sole, author. Celestina
originally contained sixteen acts; but these were increased in 1502
to twenty-one. A work of these proportions, and containing long
narrative and descriptive passages, was evidently not intended
for the stage, though written in dialogue form. But, in spite of
its hybrid character, it took Spain and Europe by storm, through.
its union of a romantic love-story with realistic and intensely
vivid pictures of the lowest social types? The first four acts,
which alone are adapted in the English version, tell of Calisto's
passion for Melebea, who will not listen to his suit; his appeal,
at the suggestion of his servant, Sempronio, to the noted bawd,
Celestina, to use her arts to soften the heroine's heart; the mis-
givings of Parmeno, fellow-servant of Sempronio, as to Celestina's
aims; and her success, when she has been sufficiently bribed,
in wiling out of Melebea her, girdle, to be carried as a token
of goodwill to Calisto, whose fictitious toothache it is to cure.
The author of Calisto and Melebea shows masterly skill in his
transformation of the earlier part of the Spanish work into an
interlude. With unerring instinct, he selects from the prolix
original the salient points of character and action, and condenses
into narrative form, as in Celestina's opening tale of Elicea and
her two lovers, episodes of minor significance. He manages the
1 For an account of Celestina, see Ticknor, G. , History of Spanish Literature
(ed. 1863), per. I, ch. XII, pp. 235 ff.
7-2
## p. 100 (#124) ############################################
Іоо
Early English Comedy
rime royal, which is used throughout, with such dexterity that,
even in broken passages of dialogue, it is sufficiently supple and
flexible for his purposes. His power of turning the prose of
Rojas into verse, with the minimum of verbal change, as in
Calisto's rhapsody on his mistress's charms, anticipates, in humbler
fashion, Shakespeare's marvellous transmutation of the prose of
Holinshed and North in the English and Roman history plays.
Had he but carried out his work to its natural close, he would
have enriched English drama with its first romantic love-tragedy.
The later pages of his original offered him splendid material in
the clandestine meetings of the enamoured couple, the acci-
dental death of Calisto after one of these meetings, the suicide
of Melebea and the murder of Celestina by her accomplices.
Here, a truly tragic nemesis overtakes passion and crime; but the
English playwright could not be satisfied without a more ob-
viously edifying ending. So he substituted a glaringly incon-
gruous and abrupt finale to the interlude. After Celestina's
interview with Melebea, the father of the heroine appears with an
account of a dream, in which he has seen her lured by a 'foule
roughe bych’ to the brink of a foul pit. Thereupon, Melebea
interprets the dream, and repents aloud of her sins, while her
father points the moral in a long discourse upon the efficacy of
prayer, the importance of youthful training and the remedial
function of wise laws. There is no Tudor play in which the
romantic and the didactic tendencies meet in such violent collision
as in Calisto and Melebea. At the very moment when the inter-
lude seems developing into a full-grown comedy or tragicomedy,
it is strangled by a hostile reactionary force.
Whether there was the same collision of tendencies in The
Play of Lucrece, issued, probably, like Calisto and Melebea, from
he press of John Rastell, it is not possible to say. Only a
fragment, apparently, survives? ; but, from this, it is evident that
the interlude includes a romantic love-story between a Publius
Cornelius and a lady Lucrece otherwise unknown to history or
to the stage. The portions of two scenes which have been pre-
served are written in lively manner, in short lines with, as a rule,
three stresses.
Both Calisto and Melebea and Lricrece, though designed in
interlude form, show the influences of the classical revival. It
was from this revival and the neo-Latin drama which followed in its
1 MSS Harl. 5919, fol. 20, No. 98. Facsimiled in Bang's Materialien, vol. XII, and
printed in The Malone Society's Publications, part II, pp. 139–142.
## p. 101 (#125) ############################################
The Continental Humanist Drama
IOI
>
wake that English comedy, in the full sense, finally sprang. The
influence of the Roman stage never became entirely extinct
throughout the medieval period, as Hrotsvitha's religious adapta-
tions of Terence in the tenth century help to testify. Among
his services to dawning humanism, Petrarch, about 1331, wrote a
Terentian comedy, Philologia, and later products of a kindred
type in Italy were Aretino's Poliscene (c. 1390) and Ugolino's
Philogena, before 1437. The recovery of the twelve lost plays
of Plautus in 1427 was a powerful stimulus to the study of
Roman dramatists in Italy and to the representation of their
works and of neo-Latin imitations of them. This movement soon
spread beyond the Alps. A representation of Terence's Andria
in the original took place at Metz in 1502, though the first
attempt to perform it had to be abandoned owing to the
riotous conduct of the spectators who did not understand Latin.
Ravisius Textor, professor of rhetoric in the college of Navarre,
at Paris, and, afterwards, rector of the university of Paris, wrote
a number of Latin Dialogi for performance by his pupils.
They were published, after his death, in 1530, and, though more
akin to the interlude than to Roman comedy, they exercised, as
will be seen, considerable influence. In Teutonic countries, neo-
Latin drama had a still more vigorous growth. The German
humanist, Reuchlin, in his Henno (1498) put the rogueries of
Patelin into Terentian dress. Holland, early in the sixteenth
century, produced a school of dramatists who, touched by the
moral fervour of the reformation movement, gave the setting of
Roman comedy to Biblical themes. A notable group of these
plays, written for performance by young scholars, were variations
on the story of the Prodigal Son. The most brilliant and popular
plays of this type were the Asotus and the Rebelles of George
Macropedius, the Acolastus of William Gnaphaeus, and the
Studentes of Christopher Stymmelius. Another group of Biblical
comedies, including those by Xystus Betuleius of Basel, centred
round such figures as Ruth, Susanna and Judith. Scriptural per-
sonages of a different type, such as Haman, furnished protestant
controversialists with materials for polemical plays directed against
the Roman pontiff. This anti-papal drama culminated in the
Pammachius (1538) of Thomas Kirchmayer (Naogeorgos) in which
the Roman anti-Christ was overwhelmed in an unparalleled pro-
digality of saturnine humour.
The classical revival on the continent, and the consequent de-
velopment of the new humanist drama, began to influence the
## p. 102 (#126) ############################################
102 Early English Comedy
English stage early in the sixteenth century. In 1520, Henry VIII
provided a goodly comedy of Plautus' for the entertainment of
some French hostages. The boys of St Paul's school, under their
master, John Ritwise, performed Menaechmi before Wolsey in
1527 and Phormio in 1528. Ritwise, also, at some date between
1522 and 1531, made the Tragedy of Dido out of Virgil,' and acted
the same with the scholars of his school 'before the Cardinal';
and he was also responsible for an anti-Lutheran play acted in
1527 before Henry VIII. Thus, within a few years, the St Paul's
boys, under his direction, performed classical comedy, neo-Latin
tragedy and a controversial interlude. Plays at Eton can be traced
back to the same decade, as there is a record of the expendi-
ture of 10 shillings 'circa ornamenta ad duos lusus' at Christmas,
1525. Eton boys acted in 1538, under Udall, before Thomas
Cromwell, and, from Malim's Consuetudinary, it is evident that, by
1560, the custom of performing both Latin and English plays was
well established in the school. On Twelfth Night 1573, Eton
scholars, under William Elderton, their headmaster, acted before
Elizabeth at Hampton court. The boys of the Gramarskolle of
Westminster,' where the custom of performing Latin comedies was
to take permanent root, appeared before Elizabeth in Heautonti-
moroumenos and Miles Gloriosus in January 1567; in one of the
five English plays performed during the court Christmas festivities
of 1567—87; and in Truth, faythfulnesse, & Mercye, apparently a
belated morality, on New Year's day, 1574. On Shrove Tuesday,
of the previous year, the Merchant Taylors' boys, under Richard
Mulcaster, had made their first appearance in a play at court; in
1574, they acted Timoclia at the sege of Thebes by Alexander at
Candlemas, and, on Shrove Tuesday, Percius and Anthomiris
(i. e. , probably, Perseus and Andromeda). So late as Shrove
Tuesday 1583, they performed Ariodante and Genevora, based
on an episode in Orlando Furioso.
Nor was it only schools in or near London, and within the
reach of court patronage, that produced plays. At King's school,
Canterbury, under the headmastership of Anthony Rushe, there
was keen dramatic activity, encouraged by the cathedral chapter.
In the treasurer's accounts 1562—3, there is an entry of £14. 68. 8d.
'to Mr Ruesshe for rewards geven him at settynge out of his plays
at Christmas, per capitulum. ' In Acta Capituli, vol. I, f. 20,
relating to the period between 1560 and 1563, a payment of
1 See Chambers, E. K. , ‘Court Performances before Queen Elizabeth,' The Modern
Languages Revicu, vol. n, no. 1.
a
## p. 103 (#127) ############################################
Ralph Radcliff. Nicholas Udall
Udall 103
568. 8d. is recorded to the scholemaster and scholars towards
such expensys as they shall be at in settynge furthe of Tragedies,
Comedyes, and interludes this next Christmas. ' This practice of
acting plays at the Canterbury school, which has only recently
been made known', is, of course, specially interesting inasmuch
as Marlowe was a pupil there.
At the opposite corner of the kingdom, in Shrewsbury, the
boys of the town school gave performances under their master,
Thomas Ashton, in the quarry outside the walls. In the north-
east, there are records of school performances at Beverley. At
Hitchin, a private schoolmaster, Ralph Radcliff, who was a friend
of bishop Bale, wrote plays-jocunda & honesta spectacula-
which were acted by his pupils. They included Scriptural
subjects such as Lazarus, Judith and Job, as well as themes-
Griseldis, Melibaeus, Titus and Gisippus-taken directly or in-
directly from Chaucer and Boccaccio. Though produced, accord-
ing to Bale, before the plebs, some of them, if not all, were
written in Latin. Like most sixteenth century school plays,
they have disappeared. But it was at Oxford and Cambridge,
not at the grammar schools, that the English humanist drama
attained its chief development. The products of the universities
were so important and varied that they receive separate treat-
ment? . But, as evidence of the importance attached by academic
authorities to the acting of plays, at first mainly in Latin,
reference may be made here to regulations in the statutes of two
Cambridge colleges. At Queens' college, it was ordained (1546)
that any student refusing to act in a comedy or tragedy, or
absenting himself from the performance, should be expelled. At
Trinity (1560), the nine domestici lectores were directed on pain
of fine to exhibit at Christmastide in pairs a comedy or tragedy,
while the chief lector had to produce one on his own account.
The earliest completely extant memorial in the vernacular of
the revived study of Roman comedy is the translation of Andria,
entitled Terens in English, printed by John Rastell before 1530.
The further step of writing an English comedy on classical lines
was taken by Nicholas Udall. Born in Hampshire in 1505, Udall
was educated at Winchester and at Corpus Christi college, Oxford,
where he became an exponent of Lutheran views. In May 1533,
he combined with John Leland in composing some verses for a
pageant at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. From 1533 to 1537, he
i See History of the King's School, Canterbury, by Woodruff and Cape (1908), p. 80.
See post, vol. vi, chap. XII.
## p. 104 (#128) ############################################
104
Early English Comedy
a
was vicar of Braintree, and may have written the play Placidas or
St Eustace, performed there in 1534? In February 1534/5, he
issued from the Augustinian monastery in London his Floures for
Latine spekynge selected and gathered oute of Terence. The
'floures' picked by Udall from the Roman playwright's hortus
fragrantissimus are phrases from Andria, Eunuchus, and Heau-
tontimoroumenos, followed by their equivalents in the vernacular.
The compilation of such a handbook for his pupils, to whom it is
dedicated, was an admirable training for Udall's more important
labours in adapting Roman comedy to the English school stage.
In the latter part of 1534, he had become headmaster of Eton,
where he remained till 1541, when he lost his office through mis-
conduct which involved a short term of imprisonment. On his
release, he devoted himself to theological work, including a share
in the English translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase of the New
Testament. His protestant attitude secured him ecclesiastical pre-
ferment from Edward VI, and, even after the accession of Mary
he retained the royal favour through his gifts as a playwright. In
December 1554, a letter of the queen states that he has atásoondrie
seasons' shown 'dilligence’ in exhibiting 'Dialogues and Enter-
ludes' before her, and directs the revels office to provide him with
such 'apparel’ as he may need for the Christmas entertainments.
Before this date, he had resumed the scholastic career. In 1553
or 1554, he had been appointed to the headmastership of West-
minster, which he retained till his death in 1556.
Udall was evidently a man of very versatile gifts and energies,
and it is unfortunate that we have not the materials for a compre-
hensive survey of his work as a dramatist. The Braintree play (if
it was his) is lost; the play performed before Cromwell in 1538
cannot be identified; the revels accounts for 1554 do not enable
us to distinguish between 'certen plaies' provided by him and the
other Christmas shows: Bale's reference (1557) to comoediae plures
by him is tantalisingly vague, and the statement that he translated
tragoediam de papatu is puzzling, and, perhaps, erroneous, as a
version of Ochino's drama by Ponet, bishop of Winchester, was
issued in 15492; the Scriptural play Ezechias, produced post-
humously before Elizabeth at Cambridge in 1564, is known to us
only through the accounts of eye-witnesses:.
Thus, Ralph Roister Doister is the sole work which remains to
i See Chambers, E. K. , vol. II, pp. 342, 451.
? See Herford, C. H. , Literary Relations of England and Germany, p. 110 n.
3 Cf. post, vol. vi, chap. XII.
## p. 105 (#129) ############################################
Udall's Ralph Roister Doister 105
illustrate Udall's dramatic powers. The single extant copy of the
play is undated, but it probably belongs to the edition entered to
Thomas Hacket in the Stationers' register in 1566/7. The evidence
in favour of its having been written in 1553—4 is very strong!
Thomas Wilson, who had been at Eton under Udall, published in
1550/1 The Rule of Reason; a second edition appeared in 1552, and
a third in 1553 or, possibly, 1554. In the third edition only,
Wilson uses as an illustration Roister Doister's mispunctuated
love-letter in act III, sc. 4. The inference is that the play had
been performed for the first time between 1552 and 1553/4,
probably by the Westminster boys. That it is in any case later
than 1546, and, therefore, cannot have been written when Udall
was headmaster of Eton, is suggested by his frequent use of phrases
which appear in John Heywood's Proverbs, published in the above
year. Apart from its evidential value, this is an interesting link
between the two dramatists. But, though Udall could borrow
proverbial phrases from his predecessor, he has scarcely a trace, as
far as Roister Doister shows, of Heywood's genius for incisive and
pregnant expression or of his mordant wit. Nor is any figure in
his play drawn with the vitalising art which, in a few scenes, makes
of Johan Johan a being of flesh and blood. But, far inferior to
Heywood in spontaneous literary gifts, Udall, partly through his
scholastic occupations, and partly through a happy instinct, was led
to direct English comedy into the path on which, in the main,
it was to advance to its later triumphs. In imitation of Plautus
and Terence, he substituted for the loosely knit structure of the
English morality or dialogue or of French farce, an organic plot
divided into acts and scenes. Within this framework, he adjusted
figures borrowed from Roman comedy but transformed to suit
English conditions, and mingled with others of purely native
origin? Miles Gloriosus, supplemented, especially in later scenes,
from Eunuchus, suggested the theme of a love-sick braggart's
wooing of a dame whose heart is given to another suitor. But
Udall condensed into a single plot episodes connected with
the two frail beauties in the Plautine play, and lifted the whole
action into a less pagan atmosphere. Roister Doister is as vain-
glorious and credulous as Pyrgopolinices, and he covets dame
Custance's 'thousande pounde' rather than herself. So confident
See Hales, J. W. , The Date of the First English Comedy,' Englische Studien,
vol. XVIII, pp. 408—421.
2 Cf. Maullby, D. L. , “The Relation between Udall's Roister Doister and the
Comedies of Plautus and Terence,' Englische Studien, vol. XXXVIII, pp. 251–277.
2
## p. 106 (#130) ############################################
106 Early English Comedy
is he that the lady will yield at once, that he woos her at first by
deputy, sending, in turn, her old nurse with his love-letter, his
servant with a ring and his companion, Mathewe Merygreeke, to
bring back her instant assent 'to be wedded on Sunday next. '
Her refusal so overcomes him that he declares he must die; but,
after a mock requiem has been said over him, he revives at Mery-
greeke's suggestion to try the effect of a personal interview with
Custance. It does not even need Merygreeke's perverse mis-
reading of the love-letter in Roister Doister's presence to make the
widow 'fume and frette and rage. ' The braggart is again over-
come by his second repulse, and begins to blubber,' till his
companion prompts him to seek revenge. After much mock-
heroic preparation, he makes a grand assault upon Custance's
house, only to be put to shameful rout by her Amazonian legion of
maids. Throughout the play, these maids, with their high spirits,
their gay loquacity and their love of song, form one of its most
attractive and original features. They are closer studies from
life than are the semi-Plautine leading figures.
Yet, in the
person of Merygreeke, Udall succeeded, to some degree, in
anglicising a classical type or combination of types. The first
suggestion for the character comes, of course, from Artotrogos, the
parasite in Miles Gloriosus. But the parasite appears only in the
opening scene, and takes no part in the action of the play. It
is Palaestrio, the captain's servant, who cajoles and tricks him,
as Merygreeke does Roister Doister. Yet, though Merygreeke
makes of Roister Doister his 'chiefe banker both for meate and
money,' he follows and serves him less for gain than for fun. He
is a light-hearted and whimsical mischiefmaker, after the fashion
of the Vice of the later moralities, who plays, in turn, upon every
weakness of his patron, but who, unlike the Plautine plotter, bears
his victim no real illwill. It is a touch of true dramatic irony that
the person whom his foolery brings, for the moment, into serious
trouble is not Roister Doister, but the virtuous Custance, whose
loyalty to her betrothed comes under unjust suspicion. When she
lifts a prayer to the same Lord, who helped 'Susanna'and 'Hester'
in their need, to vindicate her innocence, Udall, in the true spirit
of romantic drama, lets a graver strain mingle with the sprightly
tones of the comedy. But, on his return, Goodluck is soon con-
vinced that she is still 'the pearle of perfect honestie,' and, in bluff
seafaring fashion, brings about a general reconciliation between
the former combatants—a suitably edifying close to a play written
for schoolboys.
## p. 107 (#131) ############################################
Jacke Jugeler
107
Another adaptation from Plautus for performance by boys
is Jacke Jugeler, entered for printing in 1562/3, but written,
very probably, during the reign of Mary. The author states
in the prologue that the plot is based upon Amphitruo, and it
is true that the chief characters in the Roman play have English
citizen equivalents. But the central theme of Jupiter's amour,
in her husband's shape, with Alcmena, disappears, and nothing
is retained but the successful trick of Jacke Jugeler-the Vice
who replaces Mercury-upon Jenkin Careaway, who corresponds
to Sosia, servant of Amphitryon. Disguising himself like Jenkin,
Jacke, by arguments and blows, forces the hapless lackey
to believe that he, and not himself, is the genuine Careaway.
When Jenkin tells the tale of his loss of identity to his mistress
dame Coy, and her husband Bongrace, he gets further drubbings
for his nonsensical story
That one man may have two bodies and two faces,
And that one man at on time may be in too placis.
Regarded purely as a play, Jacke Jugeler, in spite of its classical
origin, is little more than a briskly written farcical episode. But,
beneath its apparently jocular exterior, it veils an extraordinarily
dextrous attack upon the doctrine of transubstantiation and the
persecution by which it was enforced. This is hinted at in the
epilogue, where 'this trifling enterlude' is credited with some
further meaning, if it be well searched. '
Such is the fashyon of the world now a dayes,
That the symple innosaintes ar deluded . . .
And by strength, force, and violence oft tymes compelled
To belive and saye the moune is made of a grene chese
Or ells have great harme, and parcace their life lese.
It has been the fate of many dramatic forms and conventions to go
through a remarkable 'sea-change' in their transportation from
one country or epoch to another. But seldom has any device
of the comic muse been 'translated’ more nearly out of recog-
nition than the classical confusion of identity, when enlisted, as
here, in the service of protestant theology.
But it was less in the classical than in the neo-classical drama
that the earlier Tudor writers of comedy found their chief stimulus.
Probably, the first of continental humanist playwrights (as recent
research has shown') to influence the English stage was Ravisius
7
i See, especially, Holthausen, F. , Studien zum älteren englischen Drama,' in
Englische Studien, vol. XXXI, pp. 77–103.
## p. 108 (#132) ############################################
108 Early English Comedy
Textor. His dialogue Thersites, written in Latin hexameters, was
adapted into English in a version which must have been acted (as
a reference to the birth of prince Edward proves) in October 15371
Thersites is an even more burlesque type of miles gloriosus than is
Roister Doister. Arrayed by Vulcan in full armour, he boasts to
the god and afterwards to his own mother of the mighty deeds
that he will do. But at the sight of a snail2 he is terror stricken,
and calls upon his servants for help, though he plucks up courage
enough, at last, to use club and sword, and to make the snail
draw in his horns. While he is exulting over this feat, he is
challenged by a soldier; whereupon, he first takes shelter behind
his mother's back, and afterwards runs away dropping his club and
sword. The author of the English version shows remarkable
dramatic instinct in his handling of this grotesquely farcical plot.
The medley of metres that he uses is more appropriate to the
bizarre incidents of the story than are the stately hexameters of
Textor. He considerably expands the original text, vivifying the
dialogue by the addition of many details that would appeal to
an English audience. Thus, Mulciber tells Thersites not to fear
' Bevis of Hampton, Colburne and Guy,' and the braggart
challenges to combat 'King Arthur and the Knightes of the Rounde
Table, and afterwards 'Robin John and Little Hode'! These
and similarly deft touches give a curious plausibility to the piece in
its English guise. But there is loss rather than gain in the long
irrelevant episode added towards the close, wherein Telemachus
brings a letter from Ulysses, and is charmed from the worms wild'
by Thersites's mother. Some of the relics that she invokes have a
family likeness to those owned by Heywood's two Pardoners.
Heywood, indeed, may plausibly be regarded as the author of the
adaptation, which, in its verve, raciness and, it must be added,
indecency, is akin to his own work. In any case, the adapter of
Thersites, whoever he be, is almost certainly responsible for the
version of another of Textor's dialogues, Juvenis, Pater, Uxor, of
which a black letter fragment has recently been discovered and
reprinted with the title The Prodigal Sons. The fragment con-
1 G. C. Moore-Smith has recently shown (Fasciculus Joanni Willis Clark dicatus,
p. 268) from an entry in the accounts of Queens' college, Cambridge, that a dialogus
of Textor was acted at the college in 1543. A later entry, pro picto clipeo quo miles
generosus usus est in comoedia, suggests that the dialogue was Thersites, probably
performed in the original Latin.
2 Called testudo by Textor, but apparently a snail (as in the English version), since
it has horns.
3 See The Malone Society Collections, part 1, pp. 27—30, and part ir, pp. 106—7.
## p. 109 (#133) ############################################
>
a
* Prodigal Son' Plays 109
tains the episode, greatly expanded from the original, in which the
son, after his marriage against his father's wish, tries to support
himself and his wife by selling wood. In its metrical and verbal
characteristics, and in its introduction of English allusions, as to
Oxynby' and 'Cambrydge,' it bears the same impress, mutilated
though it be, as the spirited version of Thersites.
Another version of Juvenis, Pater, Uxor, which we possess in
complete form, is The Disobedient Child, by Thomas Ingelend,
‘late student of Cambridge. ' Printed about 1560, it not im-
probably dates from the reign of Henry VIII or Edward VI, for,
though it ends with a prayer for queen Elizabeth, the audience,
few lines previously, are bidden 'truly serve the King. In this
adaptation of Textor's dialogue, Ingelend shows rhetorical and
inventive gifts; but, on the whole, compared with the original, The
Disobedient Child is a heavy-handed production. The didactic
element is spun out at wearisome length, and most of the new
characters introduced, the priest, the devil and the perorator, who
speaks the epilogue, deliver themselves of superfluous monologues.
But the scene between the man-cook, Long-tongue, and the maid-
cook, Blanche blab-it-out, who prepare the marriage feast, is a lively
piece of below-stairs humour, which is supplemented by the racy
account of the guests' uproarious behaviour given by the bride-
groom's servant. And Ingelend shows a true lyric vein in the
song wherein the lover declares to his 'sweet rose' his eternal
fidelity :
Wherefore let my father spite and spurn,
My fantasy will never turn.
Though Textor's plays are neo-classic, in so far as they are written
in Latin and under humanist influences, they and the English
versions of them belong in form to the interlude type. It was
from the Dutch school of dramatists that Tudor playwrights
learnt to combine the 'prodigal son' theme with the general
framework and conventions of Roman comedy. The most popular
work produced by this school, the Acolastus of Gnaphaeus,
was issued in England with a translation by John Palsgrave in
1540. It was intended primarily to serve as a schoolbook, each
scene being immediately followed by the English rendering.
But Palsgrave also desired to move into the hearts' of his
countrymen 'some little grain of honest and virtuous envy' of the
foreign author's achievement. It was, not improbably, in emulation
1
## p. 110 (#134) ############################################
IIO
Early English Comedy
of Acolastus that a writer who cannot be identified with certainty
wrote, probably about 1560, a play, Misogonus, which enables us
to claim for England the credit of having produced one of the most
elaborate and original comedies on the prodigal son. In its general
structure and development of plot, Misogonus shows the influence
of its Latin prototype. A distracted father, Philogonus, laments
to his friend and counsellor, Eupelas, over the riotous living of his
son Misogonus. The young prodigal is introduced by Orgalus and
Oenophilus, nominally his servants but, in effect, his boon com-
panions, to the courtesan, Melissa, with whom he drinks and dices
and plays the wanton. When his fortunes fail, he is deserted
by the 'vipers' whom he has cherished. Overcome with remorse
and shame, he returns trembling into his father's presence to find
immediate welcome and pardon. All these episodes have their
counterpart in Gnaphaeus's comedy. But the author of Misogonus
was a creative dramatist, not merely an imitator. He individualised
the somewhat shadowy neo-classic types into English figures of his
own period, though the scene is nominally laid in Italy. He added
new personages of his own invention, and made the dénouement
spring out of an ingenious secondary plot. His remarkable gifts in
the way of dialogue and characterisation are displayed to the full
in the realistic gaming scene, where the revellers are joined by the
parish priest, Sir John, who is of the same kin as Heywood's
clerics—drunken and dissolute, ready, even while bell and clerk
summon him to his waiting congregation, to bandy oaths over the
dicebox, and to dance himself into a share of Melissa's favours. But
it is not merely this 'rabblement' of 'rakehells' that brings the
prodigal to ruin. He has an elder twin brother, Eugonus, who,
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1 In the single matilated manuscript of the play which survives, in the duke of Devon-
shire's library, the prologue is signed •Thomas Richardes,' and the modest terms in
which he begs the muses to guide your clients silly style,' suggest that he is the author
of the play. Under the list of dramatis personae, there is a signature 'Laurentius
Bariwna, Ketteringe. Die 20 Novembris, Anno 1577. ' The signature is evidently a
disguised form of Laurence Johnson, the name of the author of a Latin treatise,
Cometographia, printed in London in 1578, and dated, with the same disguised
signature, from Kettering, 20 January 1578. Johnson, possibly, was the author, but,
more probably, was the transcriber of the play. See Brandl, Quellen, LXXV-LXXVII,
and Kittredge, G. L. , in Journ. of Germ. Philology, vol. , pp. 335-341. It is, perhaps,
worth noting that another 'prodigal son' play, Nice Wanton, printed 1560, has at the
end Finis. T. R. ' Can the initials be those of Thomas Richardes ? Nice Wanton
may, as Brandl states too confidently, have been suggested by Rebelles. But it
develops on different lines, and introduces, by the side of the human figures, such
allegorical personages as Iniquity and Worldly Shame. It is a slight and crude
production compared with Misogonus, but its most powerful episode, the dicing scene
between the prodigal son and daughter and Iniquity, is akin to the similar scene in
the greater play.
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## p. 111 (#135) ############################################
Misogonus. Gammer Gurtons Nedle III
a
immediately after their birth, has been sent to his uncle in 'Polona-
land. ' Owing to the mother's death, the secret is known only to a
group of rustics, Alison a midwife, her husband, Codrus, and two
of her gossips. Codrus, threatened with ruin by the death of his
'bulchin' and the loss of his sow, hints at the truth to Philogonus
in the hope of reward, and then fetches Alison to tell the full tale.
The exasperating circumlocution with which she spins it out in a
half incomprehensible jargon; the foolish interruptions by her
husband which lead to a violent quarrel and to further delay in her
disclosures; the suspense, amazement and joy of Philogonus—these
are all portrayed in masterly fashion. Equally effective in purely
farcical vein is the scene that follows after a messenger has been
despatched to bring home the missing heir. Cacurgus, the house-
hold fool, remains faithful to Misogonus, and tries to frighten
Isabel and Madge out of supporting Alison's story. He pretends
that he is a physician, who can cure Madge of a toothache that
makes her stammer with pain, and that he is also a soothsayer, who
foresees damnation for them if they bear witness that Philogonus
had two sons. But the return of the long-lost Eugonus resolves all
doubts, and the prodigal has to confess his sins and beg for forgive-
ness. The play lacks a fifth act in the manuscript, but the action
seems virtually complete. Even in its mutilated state, it claims
recognition as the finest extant comedy that had yet appeared in
England. To the pungent satire of Johan Johan it adds the
structural breadth of Roister Doister, and the insight into rustic
types of the Cambridge farce, Gammer Gurtons Nedle. The
last-named piece, which was 'played on stage' at Christ's college,
probably not long after 1550, will be treated in another chapter,
among university plays? . But it may be pointed out here that the
triviality of its main incident—the loss of the gammer's needle-
and the coarseness of much of the dialogue should not be allowed
to obscure the fact that its author, like Udall and the writer of
Misogonus, had an eye for characterisation and had learned plot
construction from classical or other humanist models.
The Historie of Jacob and Esau, licensed for printing in 1557,
but extant only in an edition of 1568, may be grouped with the
‘prodigal son' plays, though it is a variant from the standard type.
The Biblical story is handled in humanist fashion, and, with the
addition of subsidiary characters, is skilfully worked up into a five
act comedy of orthodox pattern. Esau is the central figure, and,
in an early scene, two of Isaac's neighbours, Hanan and Zethar,
1 See post, vol. vi, chap. XII.
## p. 112 (#136) ############################################
II2 Early English Comedy
6
Scriptural by name but classical by origin, lament that the
patriarch's elder son ‘hath been naught ever since he was born,'
and predict that he will come to an ill end. ' They contrast his
‘loose and lewd living' with the exemplary conduct of Jacob, who
‘keepeth here in the tents like a quiet man. ' But Esau does not
follow the ordinary evil courses of an Acolastus or a Misogonus. In
his insatiable passion for hunting, he rises while yet it is dark,
robbing his voluble servant Ragau of his sleep, and waking the
tent-dwellers with the blowing of his horn. We are given a vivid
picture of the eager follower of the chase talking to his favourite
hounds by name, and ranging the forest from morn to night
without thought of food. Thus, the way is cleverly prepared for
the scene in which Esau, on his return from the hunt, is so
faint with hunger that he is ready to eat a 'cat' or “a shoulder
of a dog,' and catches at Jacob's offer of a mess of pottage even at
the price of his birthright. And, when his hunger has been ap-
peased, and his servant reproaches him with having bought the
meal ‘so dere,' his speech of self-justification shows the dramatist's
insight into character and his analytical power.
If I die to morow, what good would it do me?
If he die to morow, what benefite hath he ?
And for a thing hanging on such casualtie:
Better a mease of pottage than nothing pardy.
Jacob and Esau do not afford much scope for the author's inventive
power,
but Rebecca is drawn with considerable subtlety. She seeks,
in an ingenious way, to justify her schemes on behalf of her younger
son by proclaiming that she is an agent of the Divine Will, and
also by pleading that she scarcely knows whether Esau is her son
or not:
He goeth abroade so early before day light,
And returneth home again so late in the night,
And uneth I sette eye on hym in the whole weeke:
No sometime not in twaine, though I doe for hym seeke.
Well may Mido, Isaac's 'boy,' speak of her 'quick answers' to his
master. Mido, himself possessed of a ready tongue, is one of a group
of servants whom the dramatist has introduced, and who are a very
attractive feature of the play. He prides himself upon his strength,
as Abra, the little handmaid of Rebecca, does upon her cleanliness
and her culinary powers :
I trust to make such broth that, when all things are in,
God almighty selfe may wet his finger therein.
They are both eager partisans of Jacob, as is also Deborah, the
nurse of Isaacs tent,' while Esau's only adherent is Ragau, whose
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Gascoigne's The Glasse of Governement 113
fidelity differentiates him from the Vice, a type to which, otherwise,
he is related. The prominence given to servants, the frequent
introduction of songs and the general reconciliation (without
Biblical warrant) at the close, are features which Jacob and Esau
shares with Ralph Roister Doister. There can be little doubt
that it was a school play, and that “the Poet,' who speaks an
epilogue enforcing the protestant doctrine of election,' was the
headmaster who had written the work for performance by his
pupils.
With Gascoigne's The Glasse of Governement (1575), we return
to the more orthodox type of prodigal son play.
