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RALPH ROISTER DOISTER
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
CLARENCE GRIFFIN CHILD
IVofessor of English in the University
of Pennsylvania
BOSTON NEW YORK AND CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
R.L.S. 2l6
CONTENTS
Introduction:
I. The Earlier Play .
1. Miracle and Morality . .
2. The Interlude .
3. The Farce and Ballad Play
4. The French Farce .
II. The Influence of the Classic Drama
III. Author and Play
1. Nicholas Udall
2. The Date of the Play
3. The Sources of the Play
Ralph Roister Doister .
Notes
Glossary
5
5
6
10
12
19
27
27
31
43
53
157
167
INTRODUCTION
THE EARLIER PLAY
1. MIRACLE AND MORALITY
Ralph Roister Doister and Gorboduc, or Ferrex and
Porrex, are plays of early date and great intrinsic merit.
Have they a further distinction — are they the first " reg-
ular " English comedy and tragedy ? What is their place
in the history of the drama ?
From the earliest times among the English people the
impulse to dramatic expression — which is universal —
took form in folk-dances, folk-games, folk-plays ; some
have remained even to our own day. Such primitive forms
of the play may, as among the Greeks, develop into a reg-
ular drama, but only tardily, without orderly progress or
continuity, with, long deferral of an awakening of con-
scious art. To insure continuity, to hasten progress, some
external agency must give the play more assured social
standing and dignity. Tragedy outstripped comedy among
the Greeks because its presentation was a religious cere-
monial ; in medieval Europe, the Church, the central so-
cial institution of the Middle Ages, at once democratic and
aristocratic, though it had repressed and brought to an
end the Roman drama, itself later, by using drama to en-
rich its services and enforce its teaching, provided t he
starting-point for a new development-. In the liturgical
_p_lay — at first merely a brief action, with~a-worct"or two
of dialogue, inserted in the liturgy of special festivals —
the miracle or religious play, presenting events from the
Bible or the lives of saints, took rise. In time, the play-
6 INTRODUCTION
ing of the miracles was transferred without the church-
building, and into the control of trade-guilds and municipal
authority. Elaborated cycles of plays, covering Bible nar-
rative and prophecy, from the Fall of the Angels to the
Day of Judgment, were acted by tradesmen and artisans.
The religious play became in a complete sense the__posses-
sion of the people and was thereby assured vitality. It
possessed a recognized social status and function, and was
thereby insured the necessary continuity for orderly and
relatively rapid development. While truly popular, it was
never disconnected from the Church, and the possibility
of being improved and adapted to new aims. Popular in-
fluence within the miracle made characterization and dia-
logue realistic, and, with most important bearing on fut-
ure artistic development, educed the element of humor.
But it was the Church, it was a learned, indeed, in a
measure a literary, influence, which called into existence
a new type of play, the morality, that is a moral allegory
in dramatic form. In this new type, the didactic purpose
for which the drama ostensibly existed, which had become
materially weakened in the popular miracle, was, in a most
interesting way, reaffirmed and intensified. None the less,
through substitution of human life and conduct in the ab-
stract in the place of Bible story and saint's legend, the
use of allegory, as it does always, led in time to criticism
of contemporary conditions, to controversy and satire, and
a long step was taken toward the use of other than relig-
ious and moral themes.1
2. THE INTERLUDE
Side by side with the morality appears a second new type
of play, the interlude. While the morality reaffirmed the
didactic purpose of the religious play, the interlude repre-
sents departure from it in the direction of greater freedom.
1 See for a more extended outline, with detailed references, Early
Plays in this series, number 191. The most important reference for the
early drama is The Mediceval Play, of E. K. Chambers ; for the general
development of the drama, and the lines of influence extending into it
from the early drama, the Elizabethan Drama, of F. E. Schelling.
THE EARLIER PLAY 7
A view formerly held, supported or inferred from an assumed
etymology of the word, found the origin of the interlude in
definitely humorous scenes, non-religious in subject, inserted
between the serious scenes of the miracle. Another view,
more near the truth, saw in the interlude a play given for
entertainment between the close of a banquet and the part-
ing cup. Mr. Chambers's surmise is probably nearer the
truth, that the word means simply a dialogue between sev-
eral persons. It is clear that the term was applied alike to
plays indistinguishable in substance and method from mir-
acle and morality and plays purely secular in theme. It is
also equally clear that the term implies that a play in
question was given more or less confessedly for simple en-
joyment. This fact is of great importance when the ques-
tion of the origin of the interlude, in its later specific sense,
is considered.
Several factors enter into the development. Apart from
the stated presentations of the cycles of miracles in the
towns, separate miracles and moralities might be given
upon festival occasions in town and country. These pre-
sentations might be purely local, or local resources eked
out by the engagement of players from other places, or,
indeed, an entire company. This led to amateur actors of
the town assuming in some sort a professional capacity.
With a growing appreciation of the possibilities of the
play as a means of enjoyment came a transfer of miracle
and morality to places, occasions, and circumstances of
presentation unknown to them at first — to the manor-
hall, the guild-hall, even the tavern. The miracle and mor-
ality were necessarily conformed to suit their new purpose
and circumstances of presentation. They were snartgned,
their dramatic interest intensified, their specifically humor-
ous and other entertaining features amplified. Other than
religious themes began to be used. Here, an influence came
in from the various forms of dramatic or quasi-dramatic
activity which were not religious — the folk-games, folk-
plays, puppet-shows, mummings, disguisings, pageants; the
spirit and influence of these must be reckoned with as affect-
ing the religious play in its new surroundings. Again, and
I
8 INTRODUCTION
this factor is one of great importance, the popularity of the
play began seriously to interfere with the vogue of the pro-
fessional minstrel, and his humbler brethren, the acrobat,
juggler, performer of legerdemain, exhibitor of trained ani-
mals. The minstrels tried at first to have the giving of
plays by amateurs restrained, but eventually many yielded
to the inevitable and themselves turned players, so that
at the close of the fifteenth century bodies of professional
players are known to have existed who played under the
protection and patronage of great nobles.
AVhatever the plays used — and any plays would be
used that suited, whether transformed miracle, morality,
or folk-play, or old stories revamped in dramatic form —
with the didactic purpose subordinated, with ever increas-
ing freedom in choice of theme and treatment, the way to
artistic development lay open, though that was not to be
reached till far in the future. Here an important question
at once presents itself. How early were there interludes
on themes not religious and moral ?
Evidence is scanty until a comparatively late date, but
it is a moral certainty that the secular interlude had es-
tablished itself as a recognized source of entertainment in
the fourteenth century, perhaps even the thirteenth. It
need hardly be pointed out that from the earliest times the
folk-plays must have been given in the local manor, even
as they have continued to be given to our own day ; there
was more to this than condescension or a willingness to
enter into the pleasures of retainers and tenantry ; here
may be recalled Sir John Paston's expression of regret at
parting with a servant because he acted so well in the
Robin Hood plays. We must also take into account the
general interest in pageants and muinmings, the possibility
of plays in improvised dumb-show or dialogue ; there is no
reason why such an obvious source of amusement should
have been reserved only for special occasions. What is of
more concern, however, than this attractive possibility is
the question at what time the minstrel made use of the
dramatic form ; began, in place of a narrative in monologue,
to tell the story in dialogue form, either acting all the
THE EARLIER PLAY 9
characters himself or presenting it in company with others,
even with the use of costume.
Scanty though the evidence may appear, it is sufficient
to carry the presentation of interludes hy the minstrel
much farther back than is usually apprehended or kept in
mind. First in importance is the famous Interludium de
clerico et puella, dating certainly in the early fourteenth
century, probably earlier, a little drama with absolutely no
religious or didactic purpose, a direct transfer of a fabliau
or humorous tale into dramatic form. It matters little
whether this interlude -was intended for presentation by
one or several persons. It is impossible to suppose that,
if such dramatizations of fabliaux existed, their rendition
by several persons was not put into practice, as in the
folk-plays. Nor is it fair to assume that this interlude is
an isolated example and exceptional. The fact that we
have one only and not many such interludes preserved is
not to the point ; it is precisely what might be expected.
The Church undoubtedly reprehended and did its best
to suppress plays on secular themes as leading to license,
just as it frowned on frivolous narrative literature, which
nevertheless existed and found its audience ; indeed, the
admonitions of the Church in the abstract, or through its
sterner upholders of good morals, did not succeed in re-
straining its own more worldly and light-minded clerics.
Its influence might well extend to preventing the record-
ing of such plays in permanent form or their destruction
where possible. Here it is to be recalled that the Wycliff-
ites denounced even miracles as sources of evil. Moreover,
how small a part of the recorded literature of the Middle
Ages has in any case come down to us. Yet, again, why
should any large part of such dramatic literature be re-
corded in permanent form at all? Even though enjoyed
with zest, there was no reason why such plays should receive
permanent record or be multiplied for reading; how small
a part of current dramatic literature is recorded perma-
nently to-day. These plays were for acting ; they served
the minstrel's personal use ; if written down, were kept as
his stock in trade and worn out in use ; were often, no
10 INTRODUCTION
doubt, retained and transmitted memoritur With changes
ad libitum at successive performances.
If early evidence in the form of plays is lacking, we are
not so badly off as regards references to the performances
of interludes. Eobert Manning's Eandlynij Synne, the
date of which is about 1303, speaks of " interludes or
singing, or tabor's beat or other piping." In the latter half
of the fourteenth century, in the courtly romance of Sir
Gavain and the Green Knight it is said that such doings
well befit at Christmas time "in default of interludes to
laugh and sing." Fabyan, in his Chronicle, 1494, speaks
of Alfred's going into the camp of the Danes disguised as
a minstrel and showing them his interludes and songs.
Douglas, in the Palace of Honour, 1501, says "at ease
they ate with interludes between."
Without pushing the significance of these references
too far, it seems clear that at the beginning of the four-
teenth century stock humorous stories familiar in narrative
were converted into dramatic form ; that the lines from
Manning at the beginning of that century, and from Sir
Gatvain and the Green Knight towards its close, clearly
associate the term " interlude " with pleasure and enter-
tainment ; that the reference in Fabyan clearly associates
the presentation of interludes with the minstrel There
is no reason for supposing that the interludes referred to
are miracles or moralities ; the probability is decidedly the
other way when the reference in Douglas is considered.
It need hardly be added that there is no evidence of the
use of the term " interlude " for anything else than a play.
There is, accordingly, a reasonable probability, amount-
ing, it is not too much to say, to a moral certainty, that
throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the term
denotes a dramatic performance given for entertainment,
and that such performances were given by minstrels.
3. THE FARCE AXD BALLAD PLAY
At the beginning of the sixteenth century influences
which had been maturing during the previous two cen-
THE EARLIER PLAY 11
turies in conjunction with influences from without Eng-
land made possible the development of a secular drama of
recognized standing and therefore capable of continuous
development.
At the close of the fourteenth century, besides the popu-
lar miracle of the old tradition, there existed a miracle
and morality contemporary and controversial in its teach-
ing, to which, in the plays of Bishop John Bale in the
coming century, was added the impress of a natural dra-
matic talent of high order. To pageants, mummings,
" disguisings," masques, had been added songs and perhaps
spoken dialogue. There were companies of amateurs and
semi-professionals throughout the provinces. There were
companies of professional players under the titular protec-
tion of great nobles. Secular plays, doubtless for the most
part trivial in theme and crude in form, were included,
together with miracles and moralities, in the repertories
of these companies.
Under these new conditions two elements of the great-
est importance for the future of the drama find their op-
portunity for freer development. One is humor. Humor
had long played an important part in the miracle as its
Bible characters became converted into realistic types, and
might even assert itself amid the sententious didacticism
of the morality. In one miracle of the nativity, the Second
Shepherds' Play of the Townely Cycle of miracles,1 the
episode of Male the Sheep-stealer is a farce or low comedy,
complete in itself and of real dramatic merit. The other
element is that of history — the presentation of historic
and legendary personages and events. This element was
derived, on the one hand, from the folk-play, — for ex-
ample, the Robin Hood plays, the St. George plays, plays
on the rebellion of Jack Straw, — and, on the other hand,
from the pageant and mumming. Plays depending for
their interest on these two elements came to form an
important part of the stock in trade of minstrels turned
player and other play-giving associations, and contained
1 See Eni-h/ Plays, Riverside Literature Series, for a modernized ver-
sion of this play and comment upon it.
12 INTRODUCTION
in themselves the germs respectively of the future comedy
and tragedy- '-But, in the case of hoth, external influences
were necessary to lift them to an assured standing and the
possibility of development toward artistic merit.
p
4. THE FRENCH FARCE
Before taking up the first of the external influences
affecting the purely humorous play or farce in England,
it will be helpful to contrast the conditions affecting its
development in France and in England. Throughout
France the performance of farces was furthered by the
activity of so-called puys, or societes joyeuses, associations
of amateurs, purely social and pleasure-seeking in pur-
pose, in addition to the play-giving of confraternities of
students as an incidental feature of their community life.
These societies played pieces of every kind, religious,
moral, and frankly secular. Everywhere in France, appar-
ently, there was immunity from interference as regards
plays of satiric or frivolous content which was apparently
not permitted in England.
In England, only one society resembling the French
puy is known to have existed, namely, in London. Plays
which gave offense to the Church were acted by a guild of
Brothelyngham in Exeter in the middle of the fourteenth
century, and were repressed by Bishop Grandison. The
presumption is that there was more activity of this sort
than appears on record, carried on only as local conditions
gave opportunity. The farce had its chief opportunity in
the hands of quondam minstrels. It was cruder and less
developed than its French analogue ; it was repressed where
it attracted the attention of zealous church authorities ; it
had not attained social standing and the possibility of
higher development.
The difference is not merely one of what may be
called, somewhat invidiously, a fundamental difference in
moral attitude of the two countries, or of a greater aus-
terity in the Church, or the influence of Lollardism,
though these are factors of essential importance. There
THE EARLIER PLAY 13
is also the characteristic inability of England to make
artistic advance without external help, and also its so-
cial conservatism, slowness to accept innovation and
change of any sort. It is no anachronism to assume a dis-
tinction in social status between plays of different charac-
ter at this time. There might well be an entire willingness
to enjoy in hall or on the street an amusing folk-play or
dramatized fabliau of the strolling minstrel, when, on
formal occasions, a pageant or a miracle or morality would
be the only suitable or chief offering, and the purely hu-
morous interlude be admitted only as a more or less casual,
additional, and nominally inferior entertainment, however
much more real enjoyment might be derived from it.
All these differences may be illustrated somewhat aptly
by considering a fairly close parallel in another form of
literature, intimately related to the farce except in form,
the fabliau — both being treatments of single comic in-
cidents, usually from bourgeois life and usually more or less
ribald. In France, there remain in round numbers about
a hundred fabliaux ; in England, apart from the group in
Chaucer, there are only two in the fourteenth century
(one, the Land of Cockayne, not really a fabliau) and a
dozen or so in the fifteenth, which have come to record.
There were, of course, a host of them which have never
come to record. It is worth noting also, by the way, that
Chaucer apologizes not only for repeating the words used
by his churlish characters, — asking that this be not as-
cribed to ill-breeding in him, — but also for the character
of the tales themselves, praying every gentle wight not to
deem that he speaks with evil intent.
If, then, the farce occupied a distinctly inferior posi-
tion, as belonging characteristically to the strolling min-
strel and the tavern audience, how was it to attain to
proper standing and acceptance ? Here, as often before
and afterward, England seems to have learned the neces-
sary lesson from without. In France the farce had reached
its full development in the course of the fourteenth cen-
tury. Between 1494 and 1495 French minstrels visited
England ; we do not know what they played, but we do
14 INTRODUCTION
not need to depend upon this evidence, for the intercourse
between the French and English courts provides the
necessary connection. Young1 has given proper emphasis
to the fact that in 1514 Henry VIII and his sister Mary
visited the court of Louis XII, and that soon after Mary
and Louis were married. And it was within the court, and
under its influence, that we find the element of humor and
of pure entertainment taking more definitely literary and
artistic form, and achieving an assured social recognition,
in the plays of John Heywood, which, indeed, show grada-
tion through plays ostensibly serious in subject to plays
frankly farcical and realistic.
John Heywood was born in 1497 or 1498, and was al-
ready in the service of the court in 1514-15. In 1519
he is entered in Henry VIII's Book of Payments as a
singer, in 1526, 1538-42, as "player of the virginals";
in 1536-37, his servant was paid for bringing the Princess
Mary's " regalles " (a form of small organ) from London to
Greenwich ; in March, 1537, he was paid 40s. for " play-
ing an interlude with his children " before her (the child-
ren are assumed to have belonged to the school of St.
Paul's). He was evidently in Mary's favor. He took part
in a pageant in St. Paul's churchyard in honor of her
coronation, and in 1553 presented a play at court acted by
children, and in 1558 received from her leases of land in
Yorkshire. Elizabeth's accession drove him into exile.
There are various references to him in state papers, includ-
ing a letter thanking Burleigh for the payment of arrears
on his lands at Romney. From 1575 to 1578 he was at
Antwerp in the Jesuit college there, and when its mem-
bers were driven out, went to Louvain. In 1587 there is
mention of him as " dead and gone." 2
Heywood's career presents the familiar association of
service as singer, musician, manager of a child's company
for the presentation of plays, and author; what else he
1 " The Influence of French Farce upon the Plays of John Heywood,"
Modern Philology, 2.
2 On the life of Heywood, see in particular Pollard in Gayley's Re-
presentative English Comedies, and Rang in Englisclte Rtiirfien, 38, 234-SP
THE EARLIER PLAY 15
may have done (his authorship apart from his plays is neg-
ligible) we do not know. But his private relationships are
of great interest and importance. He married the grand-
niece of Sir Thomas More, and his brother-in-law, William
Eastell, printed two plays certainly his and two more
which are ascribed to him. A circle of kinsfolk actively
interested in the drama here discloses itself. Sir Thomas
More even as a lad was interested in pageants and plays ;
the familiar story will be recalled of his stepping among
players acting before Cardinal Morton and improvising a
speaking part. John Heywood, More's brother-in-law, and
Heywood's father-in-law, the lawyer and printer, printed
plays and, it is surmised, was himself a playwright. That
he gave a play on a stage erected in his garden, had cos-
tumes made by a tailor whom Mrs. Eastell superintended
and assisted, and engaged craftsmen of the half-amateur,
half-professional class to take part, appears from the re-
cords of a law-suit with the agent or lessee who had charge
of the costumes later and rented them out for perform-
ances.1
Four extant plays are certainly Heywood's. Wether
and Love bear his name on the title-pages of editions
published by William Eastell. The earliest edition of the
Four F's, dating between 1543-47, gives him as author.
Witty and Witless, which survives in manuscript form,
ends " Amen qd John Heywood."
These plays belong to a type quite distinct from the
morality in form and spirit. They are set debates or plead-
ings on abstract questions, dialogues which depend for
their interest upon the outcome of a conflict of wits, the
adjudication of a case in equity, not at all upon a continu-
ous, and very little upon incidental, dramatic action. In
Witty and Witless, the thesis is whether it is better to
be a fool or a wise man ; in Love, the pains and pleasures
of love ; in Wether, the hearing of pleas preferred to
Jupiter, by a number of his human subjects, who desire
certain kinds of weather for their profit or pleasure, each
of course wishing something different — a gentleman, mer-
1 Spp Pollard's Fifteenth Century Prose am! Verse, pp. 307-21.
16 INTRODUCTION
chant, water-miller, wind-miller, gentlewoman, laundress,
and " boy, the least that can play " ; in The Four P's (i.e.,
"P's" with reference to the professions of the participants),
the Palmer, Pardoner, and Pothecary dispute hotly as to
the superiority of their callings and refer their dispute to
the Pedlar, who evades the responsibility by proposing that
he render judgment as to who can tell the greatest lie.
Delight in the argumentation and arbitration of set
questions, whether wholly serious and to our minds dull,
as in the Melibeus used by Chaucer, or engagingly spright-
ly, as in the early Owl and the Nightingale, goes far back
into medieval times ; its characteristic artistic expression
was in the est r if or " debate," of which the Owl and the
Nightingale is an example. With allegory it is a leading
factor in the development and long life of the morality,
and it rendered easy the transition from the religious mo-
rality to the didactic and controversial morality. Hey-
wood's interludes differ sharply from the morality in their
brevity, in their dependence for interest not upon alle-
goric action but upon the pith, point, humor of the dialogue,
and in their spirit, for despite the pretense of a serious in-
tention their real purpose is to afford entertainment. Form,
and in large part substance, may be alien to us at this dis-
tance of time, but the true comedy spirit is there.
These plays (and, indeed, the two others to the consid-
eration of which we come in a moment)' were long re-
garded as an outgrowth of the morality, their radical de-
parture from its form and spirit being considered as due
to Heywood's original genius. The probability is that
these dialogues are due to inspiration from the French,
and that Heywood, with use of native material and with
indubitable originality and skill, naturalized the new type
found in French models. In the case of one, Young has
pointed out a French parallel. Wit and Folly presents the
same ideas as the French Dyalogue dn Fol e+ du Sage.
Both, indeed, show direct influence from the Encomium,
MoricB of Erasmus, but the resemblance to the French di-
alogue is such as materially to strengthen the probability
that England owed the type to France.
THE EARLIER PLAY 17
Among these four plays is one, The Four P's, which,
while it is in form a debate, is so free from any pretense
of serious purpose, so undisguised ly intended for purposes
of merriment, and so realistic in its characterization, that,
as Young has said, it shows close affiliation with the farce.
The point is important, for we now reach two plays as-
cribed to Hey wood on internal evidence only — save for
the single fact, for what it is worth, that both were pub-
lished by William Rastell. In the Pardoner and the
Friar, the Curate and Neighbor Pratt, the Pardoner and
Friar, urging their respective claims upon a congregation
in a parish church, reach a point where they drop argu-
ment and abuse for a rough-and-tumble fight. The curate
of the church enters and, in wrath, with the help of
Neighbor Pratt, is about to carry them off for punishment,
when they suddenly turn the tables on their captors and
go free. In the justly famous Merry Play between Johan
the Husband Johan, Tyb his wife, and Sir Johan the
Priest, usually called Johan Johan, the husband Johan
Johan, divided between anger and cowardice, is set to soft-
ening wax at the fire to mend a leaky pail, while his wife
Tyb and her lover, the priest, eat a pie of which Johan
Johan sets no share. Answer at last overcomes his coward-
ice and fear of a scandal ; he belabors them and drives
them out, yields again immediately to his fears, and goes
after them lest his outburst might lead to his further be-
trayal.
There can be no question of Heywood's authorship of
these two plays — the internal evidence is too strong. It
may be objected that from the dramatic standpoint they
are strikingly superior to Heywood's known plays; but
this objection may be answered by pointing to The Four
P's among the known plays. It is true, also, that any pre-
tense of conventional moralizing is frankly abandoned for
lively realism, — in both, as Boas notes, the evil-doers are
finally triumphant, — while the known plays (save The
Four P's) treat themes of a recognized status and open
and close upon a note of edification. This objection is at
once removed when it is remembered that the debate pre-
18 INTRODUCTION
supposes a moral, while the farce (both plays in their titles
are called " merry " plays) is expressly freed from moral
restraint.
In the case of these two plays, as in his dialogues, the
assumption is unavoidable that Hey wood worked upon
French models. A close parallel to Johan Johan is af-
forded by the French farce De Pernet quiva au vin, and
there is a general similarity in situation, though not in
detail, to the Pardoner and the Friar in a French farce
dealing with a contest between a Pardoner and an Apoth-
ecary. In both cases, Heywood's plays are thoroughly
English, wholly his own ; in the second, his inspiration
is derived in large part from Chaucer, and influence from
the French cannot confidently be asserted. But the con-
clusion seems unavoidable that he knew and was influenced
by French farce.
The exact character and extent of the French influ-
ence upon Hey wood needs, however, careful definition;
the very fact that his plays are made thoroughly English
indicates this. Young, in urging the indebtedness of Hey-
wood to French models, is inclined to the view that any-
thing resembling the genre of farce in France was un-
known in England. The presumption, as shown above, is
the other way. What happened may well have been this.
The English court, through French minstrels in Eng-
land and visits to France, learned in France of a new
type of play, the dramatized debate. It also found that
in France greater consideration was paid to the " merry
play," the farce; that this type of play, which in Eng-
land occupied a humble and casual place and was under
the Church's disfavor, had come to be treated there
by men of superior education with artistic skill and with
wit and spirit, and had shouldered aside other types of
play in the regard of the court. For a similar develop-
ment the English court was quite ready ; the story may be
recalled of Henry VHI's leaving in the midst of the per-
formance of a morality which he found tedious. Hey wood
was the appointed medium for the development of the
new types. He used French models, but he also had na-
INFLUENCE OF THE CLASSIC DRAMA 19
five English traditions and material to draw from. It is
not derogatory to his genius to say that otherwise his de-
pendence upon French sources would have been more
close and definite. It may, be added that this general view
does not subtract materially from his merits. His freedom
and cleverness in the use of his materials is plain enough in
any case, and there can be no question of his great influence
upon the general development of the drama, — to which, of
course, his connection with the court substantially contrib-
uted. Through Heywood, plays depending upon humor
alone, and freed of the didactic element, achieved an as-
sured standing. Their direct successors are farces and
broad comedy upon native themes such as Gammer Gur-
to7i's Needle.
II
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CLASSIC DRAMA
We must turn next to an element of very great import-
ance in the development of the artistic comedy, and one
of still greater importance in the_ development of the
tragedy, namely, the influence of the classic drama. This
for a moment will take us far afield.
In that complex movement termed the Renaissance,
when, after testing and discarding old beliefs and methods,
a new intellectual world was framed, the most important
element in effecting the transition from medievalism to
modernity was humanism, that is, the study of the
past — tn*e study of the philosophy and literature of the
ancient world — in order to apply the lessons thereby
learned to the problems of the present. We are not con- >
cerned here with humanism in its larger and more import-
ant relations as transforming man's whole interpretation
of the meaning and purpose of life, but with its effects
upon literature and upon a special literary mode, the drama.
Humanism had an immediate effect upon pure literature
in that it gave it greater freedom of development, but it
20 INTRODUCTION
is well to note also that literature per se was not a vital
issue with all humanists. In point of fact humanism re-
placed the old didacticisms hy didacticisms of its own,
which necessarily persisted until certain lessons had been-
learned. This truth has a direct reference to the drama,
for it is only too easy to make the hasty assumption that,
with the recovery and study of the classics, the use of
classic plays as models would readily and directly lead
vto an advance in artistic quality.
Of the Latin dramatists, Terence only was more or less
widely read during the Middle Ages. But even Terence
was not imitated in strict dramatic form.1 It seems clear
also that the classic dramas which were known were not
played. This appears from the widespread misunderstand-
ing of the terms " tragedy " and "comedy " as applied to
narrative poems of sad or happy ending, and from the
fact that no one understood that the classic dramas were
presented hy impersonation with spoken dialogue, the
nearest approach to a proper conception of the manner of
their rendition being that they were declaimed by the poet
from an elevated pulpit while the action was performed
in dumb-show by assistants below.2
The earliest use of the classical drama, in the plays of
Terence, did not spring apparently from a realization of
its original purpose. There exist, dating from an early
period, narrative poems in Latin, partly dramatic in form
as carried on largely or wholly in dialogue, evidently sug-
gested by and sometimes containing material draAvn from
Terence, — though based in larger part on current medie-
val material, — which plainly at first were delivered in
monologue. Cloetta would regard these as designed for
use by minstrels; this is improbable as supposing many
audiences sufficiently versed in Latin — such audiences
as would only be found in the monastery or chapter-house.
1 The plays of Hrotswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, about 1000, form
an exception, but one, it is probable, of curious interest only.
2 See on this whole subject William Creizenach, Gesckichte des Neu-
reren Dramas, and Wilhelm Cloetta, Beitrage zur Litteraturrjesehirhte
des Mittelalters und die Renaissance, Komodie und Trar/odie im Mittel-
alter, or Chambers's helpful summary and comment, 2207 ff.
INFLUENCE OF THE CLASSIC DRAMA 21
Chambers sees no reason why the more edifying of them (
should not have been school-pieces. This supposition is
acceptable if we remove all restrictions and surmise that
they may have been the work of clerics or monks ; of
students at the universities; or of schoolmasters for use
in their schools. In large part, it seems probable, they
may be. referred to members of the faculty or students in
the universities — written for the delectation of special
circles, or for public festival occasions ; now in the ver-
nacular, or again in Latin, especially if intended for an
audience of students from various countries. With the
fifteenth century these quasi-dramatic pieces approximate
more nearly to dramatic form, as consisting wholly of dia-
logue, or may even contain a true dramatic action, albeit
slight and rudimentary. Just when the acting of such
pieces began is not clear. But two points are clear and of '
importance. The acting of such pieces composed by school-
masters for presentation by their scholars to afford them
practice in Latin gave rise to the Latin school-play. The
writing of such plays eventually became general through-
out Italy, France, Germany, Holland, and England. The
second point is that, while they may on occasion make
use of material from Terence, thev do not show, until a
late period and because of a separate development to be
spoken of in a momentr any realization nf :iny advantage
to be attained by an imitation of the £ojfl^ of Roman
comedy. They are purely contemporary in their affiliation
with current modes of drama — the farce or other forms
of lighter entertainment on the one hand, and miracles
and moralities on the other. The object may be merely
entertainment, as in such a little piece as the T/iersites,
one of the dialog I of J. Bavisius Textor (died 1530) pro-
fessor of rhetoric in Paris and later rector of the university ;
or the inculcation of moral truth, as in the important
series of plays upon the parable of the Prodigal Son
which started in Holland and which displays closer imita-
tion of Terence ; or to bring an effective weapon to bear
in theological controversy, as in the plays of Kirchmayer
in Germany, Sixtus Birck and Niklas Manuel in Switzer-
22 INTRODUCTION
land, Wick ram in Alsace, the famous Scotchman, George
Buchanan (who made use of Seneca) in Bordeaux. Here
at the beginning of the sixteenth century the school-play
merges with the controversial and didactic morality, and
is also under a specific influence from the classic drama ot
quite separate origin, and more distinctly non-didactic
and artistic.
Returning to the study of the classic drama among the
humanists, there came an important result of the fruits of
this study among the humanists of Italy in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. Senega- and Plautus were read as
well as Terence, and plays — for reading only, not im-
personation — were modeled upon them.1
The eager interest of the humanists was intensified by
the discovery in 1427 of twelve plays of Plautus. AYhile it
was for the most part concentrated on the Latin drama,
there, was also study and translation of the Greek drama
in Italy throughout the fifteenth century ; this was limited
in amount and far less fruitful in its influence upon the
growth of a new drama.
The interest of the humanists was one largely academic
and scholarly, and too far removed from those aims and
impulses that are essential to the production of a literature
possessed of life and possibilities of independent growth.
The revitalization of the old drama, the true recovery of
it for its proper purpose, in its proper relation, by staging
and impersonation, seem to have been long deferred. Event-
ually this important advance was made. Classic plays were
■ first acted in Italy in the fifteenth century. Strange as it
may seem, there was no general understanding that these
plays had been intended for impersonation until the six-
teenth century. The fact that plays in Latin were being
played — the school-plays described above with theiruseof
classic material and fumbling imitation of classic pi ays —
1 For example, Mussato, Ecerinis, about 1314, Senecan tragedy ;
Petrarch, Philologia, before 1331, Tcrentian comedy ; Aretino, Poliscene,
about 1390, Terentian comedy ; Carrarro, J'ro/jne, before 1428, Terentian
comedy ; Ugolino, Philogena, before 1437, Terentian coined; ; Dati,
Biempsal, 1441, a tragedy based in part on Plautus.
INFLUENCE OF THE CLASSIC DRAMA 23
suggested the experiment of playing the
ves. In Italy the realization of their
does not seem to have sue
classic plays themselves. In Italy
original mode of representation seems to have come through
Alberti's work on architecture, 1452, based on the l)e
Architectures of Vitruvius,1 whose references to the Ro-
man stage made the fact plain. Alberti built a theatrum
in the Vatican for Nicholas V, but there is no record of
its use, as the followers of Nicholas were not humanists.
It was through the influence of Pomponius Laetus, a pro-
fessor in the University of Rome, that the Asinaria of
Plautns and the Pficedra of Seneca were given, the latter
with sensational success. A year or two later in 1486, the
Mencechmi was given at Ferrara, and at the Vatican in
1502. The Mostellaria was given in 1499, and translations
were played at Mantua, G-azzuolo, and Venice, the presenta-
tions of Plautus at Mantua deserving special note. The
first close imitation of classic comedy is credited to Harmo-
nius Marius, about 1500 ; such close imitations were, how-
ever, few. A similar development in the rest of Europe was
delayed till the sixteenth century, though the movement
in Italy was known, and though Terence and Seneca were
studied in the fresh light this knowledge afforded. The
school-dialogue and the lesser forms of humanistic drama
growing out of it continued to suffice, and, either through
ignorance of the new movement or failure to realize its
possibilities in the way of interest, it was not till well on
in the first quarter of the sixteenth century that the
presentation of plays of Terence in the schools became
general. Before this an effort to imitate more closely the
'•'regularity" of the Latin play in the humanistic comedy
can be perceived, but the influence of more frequent
presentation of the plays themselves as emphasizing their
superiority could not but be great both upon the school-
master who drilled his pupils and upon the pupils when
later themselves essaying dramatic composition.
While the study and imitation of classic tragedy went
through the same stages as appear in the case of comedy,
there is one important difference. Even when it was un-
1 See Creizenach, 2, 1 ff.
24 INTRODUCTION
derstood that classic plays had heen impersonated, and
the plays had heen given in the Latin or the vernacular,
and attempts had been made to imitate them closely, the
older forms of humanistic comedy and morality held their
own and obstructed the artistic advance of the comedy which
close imitation would have insured. In the case of tragedy
there was also the obstacle that the comedy of both kinds
offered obstruction to the writing of tragedy, and even
within the academic circles in which the general move-
ment originated it was long before the conception of trag-
edy proper became clear and created its separate and indi-
vidual appeal. Despite the study and imitation and acting
of Seneca in Italy in the fifteenth century, there was not
in the early sixteenth century a clear conception of trag-
edy as a mode distinct from comedy. The only difference
between them apparently to the playwright was that the
one had a happy ending and the other a sad ending. This
appears in the so-called drammi mescidati, or dramas of
mixed mode, in which, by gradual adaptation, tragedy and
comedy became differentiated, and a conception was formed
of their separate and appropriate forms. Early, it must at
once be noted, — in Filostrato e Panfila, played 1499, —
a feature of special importance, the use of the tragic chorus
in so-called intermedi or interludes, which divide the ac-
tion into five acts, is introduced from Seneca. To use of
the chorus follows use of a subject from ancient history,
as in the Sofonisba of Galeotto. A gradual approach to
observance of the unity of place and the limitation of the
action follows, leading through a train of tragi-comedies
or plays of purely tragic theme (among which the Sofon-
isba of Trissino stands out as a marked advance in its ob-
servance of unity of place, its use of blank verse instead
of a variety of meters, its imitation of both Greek and
Latin meters) to the Orbeche of Cinthio, the first " regu-
lar " Italian tragedy and the first " regular " modern trag-
edy presented on the stage. This was acted in 1541. In
Germany, though plays of Seneca were printed as early
as 1487, and Senecan and Greek tragedy were acted in
schools about 1525, classic tragedy was not imitated until
INFLUENCE OF THE CLASSIC DRAMA 25
the seventeenth century, the school-play and its related
forms occupying the field. In France, where there appears
less evidence of early study of the classic tragedies, the in-
fluence of the Biblical tragedies of the Scotch humanist,
Buchanan at Bordeaux, and Muret's tragedy of Julius
Ccssar, gave inspiration, before the middle of the sixteenth
century, to a series of original tragedies as well as transla-
tions of Latin, Greek, and Italian tragedies, which culmi-
nate in the Cleopdtre Captive of Jodelle (1552), and the
Medee of Jean de la Perouse (before 1553), based directly
upon Seneca, but influenced also by Euripides. With
these tragedies — though others followed naturally which
were less advanced in type — the classic tragedy of France
may be said to begin. In Spain, apart from translation,
there was no attempt at formal tragedy until toward the
end of the century. In Portugal, already in the middle of
the century the individual genius of Ferrera, who prob-
ably knew the Sophonisba of Trissino, achieved a great
tragedy upon the theme of Inez di Castro. In the general
development, two facts become clear. The development of
tragedy_ was obstructed by the older and newer types of
comedy — as well, of course, by the difficulty of arriving
at a clear appreciation of tragedy as a separate mode.
Also, earlier plays, through their direct imitation of Sen-
eca, are often measurably more close to the classic model
than plays which follow — but, in these plays which fol-
low, there is a gradual working towards closer imitation,
which is, in fact, more fruitful than mechanical imitation,
as representing a growth in the real understanding of the
underlying principles of the classic form, and their adop-
tion or modification in accordance with the individual
genius of the country.
The history of the movement in its main outlines is
clear, even though the details of the interplay of forces
old and new is now hard to trace with precision. With
this survey of the movement throughout Europe we may
pass to its manifestations in England. Of the secular
school-dialogue in England there are no traces until the
imitation, acted 1537, of Ravisius Textor's little dialogue
26 INTRODUCTION
of Thersltes, a farce on the motive of the " braggart cap-
tain," in this case represented by a boy whose braggart
courage disappears at sight' of a snail, sending him for pro-
tection to his mother, and the Latin, possibly also English,
" tragedies " and " comedies" acted at the school of Ralph
Radclif at Hitchin, established in 1538. Of a previous
native development of the school-dialogue there ai«> no
traces, and the possibility of any general origination of
plays of this simpler type was estopped by the production
of classic plays and imitations of them. In 1520 a comedy
of Plautus was presented at the court of Henry VIII. The
boys of St. Paul's school under their master, John Kit-
wise, who had acted a Continental morality before Henry
in 1527, acted the Phormio before Wolsey in 1528, per-
haps also the MencBchmi in 1527; and they gave — nt
what time is unknown — Kitwise's own Latin tragedy of
Dido. The scholars of Eton were producing plays by
1525-27. In the universities, the giving of plays can be
traced back at Oxford to I486. At Cambridge the earliest
record is 1536, but the "play on this occasion was the
Plutus of Aristophanes in the Greek. Representations of
classic plays at the universities are not recorded before
1550 save in this case and the production of the Pax of
Aristophanes in 1546 also at Cambridge. The translation
of classic plays into English began with the Andria of
Terence under the title of Terens in English, perhaps
printed by John Rastell, and, if so, to be dated before
1533. Before 1550 Greek plays were being translated into
Latin by Ascham and Cheke, and Latin plays were being
written on Greek models. Two plays in Latin, a certain
Marcus Geminus, and a tragedy Prague, by Canon Calf-
hill, were given before Elizabeth on the occasion of her
visit to Oxford, 1564. and an intended production of Ajax
Flagellifer was omitted- owing to the Queen's fatigue. The
numerous translations and imitations of the classics follow-
ing upon the awakened interest in the classics, and lying
beyond the sixties, fall beyond the scope of this volume.
AUTHOR AND PLAY 27
III
AUTHOR AND PLAY
1. NICHOLAS UDALL
The Ralph Roister Doister of Nicholas Udall is the
first English play which we possess — probably the first
English play of substantial merit — to show the influ-
ence, in substance and in form, of the study of the classic
drama.
Born in Hampshire in 1505^ Nicholas Udall1 was
admitted scholar at Winchester in 1517 (aged twelve) and
scholar of Corpus Christi, Oxford, January 18, 152Q
(having "past his fifteenth year at Christmas"). He
received the baccalaureate degree May 30, 1524, and was
appointed probationary fellow September 30. About 1526,
he was one of several arrested on Wolsey's order for pos-
session of Tyndale's New Testament and the purchase of
Lutheran books. Upon recantation he was released, but sus-
picion of Lutheran tendencies delayed his proceeding M. A.
until 1534. He became at Oxford a close friend of the
great antiquary, John Leland, among whose poems are three
which praise his learningand generous temper (Collectanea,
1774, 5, 89, 90, 105). The two friends were joint authors
of verses used in a pageant in celebration of the coronation
of Anne Boleyn in 1533.2 Under this date, though Udall's
1 See, in particular, for his life, W. D. Cooper, ed. R- R. D., Shake-
speare Society, 1847 ; E. Arber, ed. R. R. P., English Reprints, ]8(i9;
J W. Hales, 'Englische Studien, 18, 408-(1893) ; E. Flugel in An English.
Miscellany, 1901 ; also his edition of R. R. D. in C. M. Gayley's Repre-
sentative English Comedies ; E. K. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, 2, 451 ;
F. S. Boas, Cambridge History of English Literature, 5, 45, 452. The
articles in the Dictionary of National Biography and in the edition by
Williams and Robin contain serious errors. See also the now current
error in regard to the dates of Udali's vicariate of Braintree, corrected
below.
2 Date corrected by Fliigel in Gayley, 89. For Udall's verses (which
Bhow the influence of Skelton), see Arber's English Garner, 2, 52.
28 INTRODUCTION
preface is dated 1534, was published Udall's Floures for
Latine Spekynge selected and gathered out of Terence,
a most successful school-book, which, with two enlargements,
ran through five further editions by 1581. 1 In the preface,
written from the Augustinian monastery in London, Udall
dedicated the work to his pupils, so that lie was probably
teaching in London at this time.
In 1534_he proceeded M.A. and was appointed Magister
Informator (head master) of Eton. Traditions of his
severity in the use of the birch are due to Tusser's refer-
ence to his having received at one time fifty stripes from
him " for fault but small, or none at all."2
Evidence of dramatic activity at Eton is drawn from
a consuetudinary, or book of customs, of the school dating
about 1560, in which it is said that the master of the
plays may also present plays in English if they possess keen
wit and grace. Contemporary evidence is afforded by
Thomas Cromwell's accounts for 1538, " Woodall, the
schoolmaster of Eton, for playing before my Lord, £5." 3
While head master at Eton, Udall held the vicariate of
Braintree in Essex from 1537 to 1544. The dates are
given by Chambers incorrectly (in consequence of a slip in
Karl Pearson's The Chances of Death, 2, 412, note) as
1533-37, with the suggestion that Udall "not improbably
wrote the play of Placidas, alias Sir Eustace, recorded
in 1534 in the church-wardens' accounts." The error, and
this infererence from it, are repeated in the Cambridge
History and elsewhere.4
In 154L. silver images and other plate were removed
from the chapjd at Eton by two of the pupils of the
school with connivance of Udall's servant, Gregory.
Udall was accused of complicity and of other offenses, was
1 Compare Boas, Cnmbrir/r/p Ffistori/, 5. 45, 452.
2 Cooper's citation from Ascham to similar effect is shown by Fliigel
to be in error.
3 Chambers, 2, 451, citing- Brewer, xiv, 2, 234.
4 The dates are given correctly by Cooper. Full details have been
most courteously furnished me by the Rev. J. W. Kenworthy, former
Vicar of Rraintree, who writes that he has in hand an article upon
Udall's vicariate of Braintree.
AUTHOR AND PLAY 29
imprisoned, and lost his position. The charges were not
sustained, or were dropped. A letter from Udall without
superscription, addressed to some person in high authority,
probably Sir Thomas Wriothesley, one of the Secretaries
of State, expresses his gratitude for attempts to restore him
to his head mastership, makes confession of debt and disso-
lute habits, and promises with deep contrition entire amend-
ment of life.1
In 1542 2 lie published his translation of two books of
Erasmus's Apophthegms, and for the next three, years he
was one of the collaborators upon the translation of Eras-
mus's Paraphrase of the New Testament, approved by
Henry VIII before his death, and a cherished project of
Queen Katharine. In this work the Princess Mary took
part as a translator until prevented by ill-health. In addi-
tion to his labors as translator, Udall had general supervision
of the first volume, and wrote three prefatory epistles to
it, one to King Edward, one to the reader, and one to Kath-
arine, in which he highly praised the learning of the
Princess Mary. During the reign of Edward, Udall was
engaged upon theological works and in preaching.3
Bale, in his Illustrium Scriptorium, Sum-mat io refers,
in the edition of 1548, to a Tragoedia de Papatu (i.e.,
papal office, papacy), probably a translation of Ochino's
work. A continuous dramatic activity is not necessarily
indicated by this latter reference. During Edward's reign
we have note of other activities, but he may well have
1 See this letter, newly collated, in Fliigel's Lesebuch, 1, 351, and cf.
Hales, Enylische Studien, 18, 414, note.
2 A sojourn in the "north," apparently to engage in teaching, the
subject of one of Leland's poems, is referred by Eliigel to this year. His
stay in any case must have been short and the matter is without mo-
ment.
3 His tract in answer to the rebels of Devonshire and Cornwall (Cam-
den Society, 1884) show him still an ardent reformer. In 1551 he pub-
lished a translation of Peter Martyr's Tractntus de Eucharista et tllspu-
tatio de Euch arista, under a royal patent which also licensed him to print
the Bible in English, a valuable privilege which he apparently did not
use. He was also tutor to Edward Courtenay, who was imprisoned in the
tower, and likewise served for some time as tutor in Bishop Gardiner's
family, who left him a bequest. A collection of letters addressed to
Leland and Herman (vice-provost of Eton) is cited by Bale.
30 INTRODUCTION
continued, at court, his old interest in dramatic matters.
The King's favor was shown him by his presentation in
1551 to a prebend in Windsor, and by a request in the
following year that he be paid emoluments which lie had
forfeited by not taking residence owing to preaching en-
gagements. In 1552 he published a folio edition, notable
for the beauty of its plates, of T. Gemini's Anatomy. In
1553 he was presented by the King to the Parsonage of
Calborne, Isle of Wight. It was in this year that Thomas
Wilson quoted the letter from Ralph Holster Doister in
his Rule of Reason, which establishes Udall's author-
ship.
Still an active reformer in Edward's reign, there is no
evidence that Udall trimmed to secure Mary's continued
favor.1 Mary simply continued her old favor and patronage
to him as she did to Ascham. She would not be likely to
forget her association with him in the translation of Eras-
mus's Paraphrase, and the compliments he paid her
learning in the preface to Katharine. Moreover, he could
serve her, if not as a theologian, as a playwright and man-
ager. His dramatic activities at this time are intimately
associated with the date of Ralf/h Roister Doister and
may he more conveniently treated below.
In 1555. he is mentioned as head master of Westmini-
ster ScIiquJ. The date of his appointment is unknown.
Alexander ISTowell was master from 1543 to 1553. Whether
Udall followed him immediately or not does not appear
from the records, — a fact to be regretted as the matter
has important bearings to be referred to later. In Nov-
ember. 1550, Udall lost the head mastership upon the
reesfcablishment of the monastery of Westminster, died in
the following month, and was buried in St. Margaret's,
Westminster, December 23. It remains only to note that
in the 1557 edition of Bale's Summarium, mention is
made of comedlas plures by Udall, and that, on August
1 Sidney Lee's assumption that the "Mr. Udall" who was one of
those who tried in 1553 to make the Protestant martyr, Thomas Mont-
ford, recant (Nicolls, Narrative of the Reformation, Camden Society,
p. 178;, was Nicholas Udall, seems wholly unjustified.
AUTHOR AND PLAY 31
8, 1564 (Nicolls, Progresses of Elizabeth, 3, 177), there
was given at Cambridge "an English play called Ezechias,
made by Mr. Udall, and handled by King's College men
only." As King's College was founded in connection with
Eton, it is a fair inference that the play Avas one written
for Eton, and was at this time repeated at Cambridge by
Etonians who had taken part in it there.
2. THE DATE OF THE PLAY
In 1818, the Rev. Thomas Briggs printed privately an
edition of thirty copies of an old play, Ralph Royster
Do>/ster, one of a collection "lately upon sale in London."
The play lacked a title-page, and was without a colophon.
The author was unknown. The date was assumed to be
in or about 1566, from an entry in the Stationers' Regis-
ter recording that Rauf Ruyster Duster was licensed for
printing in that year. Mr. Briggs presented his copy to
his old school, Eton, unaware that his gift was the work
of a former head master.
Tanner, in his Bibliotheca, 1748, mentioned that
Thomas Wilson in his Rule of Reason used an illustra-
tion of ambiguity from " some comedy " by Nicholas
Udall. Collier, in his notes on Dodsley's Old Plays,
identified the passage as from Ralph Roister Doister, thus
establishing its authorship. He probably knew of Tanner's
note, but characteristically suppressed the fact to heighten
the merits of his discovery ; at all events, the edition of
Wilson's work which he cites, the first, does not contain
the passage, which first appeared in the third edition.
It is conceded that the play was intended for repre-
sentation by school-boys. Starting from this assumption,
three theories have been urged concerning the date and
circumstances of composition.1 It was at first taken for
granted that Udall wrote the play while at Eton, that is.
1 Arbor, el. R. R. D.; J. W. Hales. "The Date of the First English
Comedy," Enrjlische Stvdien, IS, 408 : Williams anrlRobin, ed. R. R. I> ;
Fltigel, in criticism of Hales, in Gayley, Representative English Come-
dies, p. 98.
32 INTRODUCTION
between 1534-41. In 1893, Hales contended for a later
date, 1552, and the consequent probability that Udall
wrote the play for Westminster School. "Williams and
Robin, in 1901, adopting Hales's reasoning in part, ac-
cepted the date 1552, but conjectured that Udall then
wrote the play either for the court (possibly for the Child-
ren of the Chapel Royal), or for Eton, in consequence of
his taking up his residence as Canon of Windsor. Fliigel,
in 1903, assailed the more important arguments advanced
by Hales, believing the older view, that the play was
written during Udall's head mastership of Eton, to be
more probable.
The tendency has been to accept Hales's argument,
though it will not bear detailed scrutiny, and to disregard
Flugel's criticism of it. A summary of Hales's argument
follows, and of Flugel's criticisms, with the addition of
further evidence in support of Flugel's position and cover-
ing points which he omitted.
1. In the play, a letter written by Ralph to distance
so reads that, after he has copied it from a scrivener's
draft (Act 3, Sc. 5), its sense, by his mispunctuation, is
completely reversed (Act 3, Sc. 4). This letter was used
as an example of ambiguity by Thomas Wilson in the
third edition of his Rule of Reason, dated January, 1553.
Hales argued that the use of the letter in the third edi-
tion, not the first and second of 1550-51, 1552, proves
the comedy to have been written between the dates of the
second and third editions, namely, in 1552, or else "Wil-
son, who had been a pupil of Udall's at Eton and went up
to Cambridge in the year Udall lost his head mastership,
would certainly have used it before.
Fliigel points out that "Wilson's citation of the letter in
1553 does not prove the play to have been written in 1552,
but only that Wilson did not have the letter to cite before
1553. The copy he used might have been in manuscript,
or a printed and now lost edition. Fliigel proceeds to the
conclusion that " most probably Wilson's quotation was
made from an early edition of Roister printed in 1552."
Flugel's answer is to the point, except that his assump-
AUTHOR AND PLAY 33
tion of an early edition is wholly unnecessary. For we
have direct evidence that Udall was in personal communi-
cation with Wilson just before 1553 (see under 3). There
is nothing to prevent the assumption that Wilson then ob-
tained from Udall a copy of the play, and extracted the letter
from it, perhaps at the same time obtaining the material
from the Prologue which he used in the Art of Rhetoric.
2. Bale, in his 1548 edition of the Ulustrium Majoris
Britannice Scriptores, said nothing of Udall's comedies.
The reference to his comedies does not appear until the
1557 edition. Fliigel rejoins that Bale does not give a com-
plete list of Udall's works in either edition concerned.
In the earlier edition he says nothing of Udall's share in
the coronation pageant of Anne Boleyn. Bale might well
never have heard of Udall's school-comedy.
3. Wilson published his Art of Rhetoric in 1553.
Udall knew of it and contributed commendatory verses to
it. In the Art of Rhetoric appears a parallel to the Pro-
logue of Udall's play. Wilson was probably freshly influ-
enced by Udall's Prologue, though it is likely the con-
ception was a favorite one with Udall and had been
impressed upon Wilson at Eton.
The reply to this point is plainly that the play need not
have been recently written for Wilson to make use of the
Prologue. The very fact that Udall contributed prefatory
verses to Wilson's work shows that Udall and Wilson
were in personal communication just before the Art of
Rhetoric was published. It may be added, though not
material to the argument, that the ideas used in Udall's
Prologue and by Wilson were commonplaces.
4. "Certainly," Hales says, "about the year 1552
Udall was in high repute as a dramatist." We know no-
thing, Fliigel truly replies, of Udall's repute as a drama-
tist in 1552. Hales offers no evidence except Udall's em-
ployment by Mary to arrange dramatic entertainments in
1554. All that Mary's warrant of that date tells us is that
Udall had shown dialogues and interludes before her "at
sundry seasons convenient heretofore." Moreover, it may
be added, if we could prove the high repute of Udall in
34 INTRODUCTION
1552, the fact would not have the slightest evidential
value respecting the dating of Ralph Holster Doister in
that year.
5. Hales continues, "Thus there is much to justify us
in assigning ' the first English Comedy ' to the year 1552.
But, if the evidence for exactly so assigning it is not abso-
lutely decisive, yet I think it can certainly be shown to
he later than 1546." Heywood's Proverbs was "printed
in 1546, '47, '49." Udall's play contains many proverbial
expressions which appear in Hey wood. If some fifteen
coincidences can be found, one may justly conclude that
one of the two is indebted to the other.
It is worth while to go into this point at somewhat
greater length than Flugel, — who merely says quite truly
that the use of any number of current phrases by Hey wood
and Udall could not prove dependence, — as the point has
been cited (by Boas in the Cambridge History) as one of
Hales's strongest arguments. The examples cited by Hales
are for the most part the merest commonplaces — "each
finger is a thumb," "in dock, out nettle," "in by
the week," " mock much of you," " bees in his head,"
" chop-logic." Others, not so obviously current, can readily
be proved to be proverbial sayings, or slang, by reference
to the dictionaries. Forexample, the curious word nicebatur
was used by Udall himself in his translation of the
Apophthegms of Erasmus, published in 1542, four years
before the date assumed by Hales himself (the date is
doubtful) for the first edition of Heywood.
6. In Act 5, Sc. 6, 1. 19, distance jokingly threatens
Ralph that she will put him up into the Exchequer as a
usurer, that is, have him indicted, because he will lend no
blows without having back " fifteen for one, which is too
much, of conscience." Hales brings this into connection
with a statute of Henry VIII, properly 1545, not 1546,
as he says, which repealed old laws against interest and
allowed interest to the amount of ten per cent per annum ;
also further, "what perhaps concerns us yet more closely,"
with the statute of 1552, which repealed the former stat-
ute and made all interest illegal.
AUTHOR AND PLAY 35
Fliigel corrected Hales's dating of the earlier statute, and
pointed out in addition that distance's joke turns not
only on 37 Henry VIII, c. 9, but also c. 20, which speci-
fied the period during which " lucre or gain " (note Cus-
tance's use of "gain," 5, 6, 29) should run as one year, not
for a longer or shorter time. For distance says —
And where other usurers take their gains yearly,
This man is angry but he have his by and by, —
that is, at once. Moreover, Hales has not seen the conclu-
sion to which the train of evidence which he has started,
leads. The passage in question, or the whole play, must
date between 1545 and 1552, that is, between the date of
the statute permitting interest at ten per cent and the date
of the later statute repealing this permission and making
all interest illegal. After the repeal of the law, whenever
it occurred in 1552, distance's joke would be without
point.
The importance of this conclusion, as weakening Hales's
argument for the date 1552, is plain. It has further im-
portant bearings to he referred to below.
7. Frequent comment, Hales says, has been made upon
the long interval between the first English comedy and
the second. "But surely now that long interval is discre-
dited." The date 1552 brings Ralph Roister Doister
measurably nearer to the comedies which follow, Misngonus,
1560 or 1561, Gammer Gurton's Needle, 1568.
The apparent cogency of this argument, which has caused
it to be repeated in later references to the subject, is only
superficial. Udall's successful use of his classic models and
the intrinsic merits of his play are no better explained by
assuming a date 1552 than a date 1541 or earlier. It is the
first play of its kind extant. Its successors are not indebted
to it or like it in kind. Every essential condition for its
composition existed when Udall went to Eton as head
master. What happened in the eleven years between
Udall's leaving Eton and 1552 that would make the writ-
ing of such a play more possible ? Above all, it must be
remembered that the history of literature, notably the
36 INTRODUCTION
drama, is full of examples of works which anticipate, by
a number (if years, later developments.
8. Mr. Hales next argues a connection of tbe play with
"Westminster. The play is most probably a school-play.
If so, why can we not assume that it was written not for
Eton but Westminster ? It is true that we do not know
that Udall was master in 1553, but he was in 1555. and
Ave do not know of any other head master from 1553 on.
" If what has been said as to the date of Ralph Roister
Doister and also as to the destination of the play for some
school is judged satisfactory, these considerations might
form an argument in favour of Udall's appointment in
1553."
This reasoning, if analyzed in relation to what Mr.
Hales really desires to prove, runs in a circle. The date
of Udall's appointment is not the real objective. Mr. Hales
says in effect that the character of the play and the as-
sumed date of it, 1552, might lend support to the assump-
tion of Udall's appointment in 1553, and, if then ap-
pointed, the play was written for Westminster. But,
though the reasoning is fallacious, the growing tendency,
because of Mr. Hales's article, to refer to the play offhand
as written in 1552 for Westminster makes it advisable to
point out further that we should have to assume that
Udall, in the portion of 1552 before the repeal of the
statute concerning interest, wrote a play for Westminster,
of which he could not have been head master at the earli-
est before some date in 1553, and of which we do not
know that he was head master before 1555.
Yet again there is no evidence for the acting of Eng-
lish plays at Westminster before Elizabeth's reign, and,
indeed, the acting of Terence in Latin, before Elizabeth
made it statutory -to act a play of his each year, depends
only upon the statement that Kowell (1543-53) intro-
duced the acting of Terence.1
9. In further reference to a possible connection of the
play with Westminster, Mr. Hales notes that the scene is
laid in London. It has been suggested to him by a famous
1 J. Sargeaunt, Annals of Westminster, 49; Athenaeum, 190.1, 1,220.
AUTHOR AND PLAY 37
antiquary that possibly the oath " by the arms of Calais "
used in the play may refer to some inn in the district of
Westminster, as Westminster and Calais were seats of
the wool staple.
The fact that the scene is laid in London is no proof
of connection with Westminster. Considering the plot,
where else could the scene be laid ? It is surely a far cry
to adduce the curious oath "by the arms of Calais" on
the strength of the vaguest surmises concerning its origin.
That oath was used long before by Skelton, from whom
Udall borrowed it. Whatever it means, we may feel sure
it has nothing to do with a supposititious inn in West-
minster (the name of which, by a still more violent sup-
position, is used as an oath), but is connected in some way
with the important part which Calais played in English
history. When a playwright for a definite purpose local-
izes a play, he makes his localization definite and apparent.
As a matter of fact, there, is not a single reference or shred
of evidence connecting the play with Westminster.
The net result of Mr. Hales's argument thus proves,
when analyzed, to be as follows : —
1. The latest date possible for the play, or the particu-
lar passage in it concerning usury, is some time in 1552
before the repeal of the statute concerning interest.
2. There is also a presumption that the play was
actually composed in that year, afforded by the fact that
Wilson's third edition, 1553, of the Rule of Reason cites
Ralph's letter, while the second, published in 1552, does
not.
3. There is no proof for, and there is strong proof on
account of the dates against, the composition of the play
for Westminster.
We may now turn to the views of Williams and Robin,
who, accepting Hales's date, 1552, but not a connection of
the play with Westminster (on which point they are si-
lent), suggest that the play was written as a result of
Udall's taking up his residence at Windsor in 1552, to be
given either at Eton, in consequence of being near his old
school, or for performance before the court, possibly by
38 INTRODUCTION
the Children of the Chapel Royal. Neither possibility is
acceptable, and for the same reason. The latter supposi-
tion would be attractive if we could feel assured that the
play was, indeed, written in 1552. But there are obvious
difficulties in the way. Udall was presented to his pre-
bend in Xovember, 1551, but did not take up his resi-
dence till some time in . 1552. This we know by the
King's letter to the dean and chapter of the chapel, direct-
ing payment of his emoluments despite his absence from
this position which had been given him. Udall dated his
preface to Gemini's Anatomy from Windsor in July, 1552 ;
this may indicate that he was then in residence, but not nec-
essarily, as he might have been constructively though not
actually in residence. If actually in residence, he could not
have been so long before that date, or the matter of the pay-
ment of his emoluments as canon for the period of his ab-
sence would have been taken up earlier than September. We
know from the King's letter that he was absent because he
was engaged in preaching. It is, therefore, improbable that
he was writing a play for presentation at Windsor or Eton.
He must plainly have been preoccupied by matters of import-
ance to defer entering upon his benefice, the King's gift,
and run the chance of losing the emoluments of his posi-
tion. It is hardly likely that the play would be in hand
before he was actually in residence, and, if we are to sup-
pose that the play was written after he took up residence,
we should be forced to suppose it written between this
time and the date of the repeal of the statute concerning
interest in that year, if indeed that event fell later in the
year.
If now it is clear that it is extremely improbable that
Udall wrote the play for Westminster, and almost as im-
probable that he wrote it for the Children of the Chapel
or for Eton when in residence at Windsor, it remains to
review freshly the evidence for his having written it at
Eton during his head mastership, 1534-41.
1. Udall was early concerned with dramatic activities.
He took part in the pageant at Anne Boleyn's coronation.
We have positive evidence that plays were produced un-
AUTHOR AND PLAY 39
der his direction while at Eton, for he presented a play
before Cromwell.
2. The play is admittedly a school-play. Udall might,
of course, at any time have written a play for school-pre-
sentation, though not actually at the time a schoolmaster ;
but is such a supposition to be entertained for a moment as
compared with the likelihood that the eager student of Ter-
ence and author of the Flowers for Latin Speaking, who
had already taken part in dramatic composition, would
eagerly seize the opportunity, while head master of Eton,
to write a play modeled on the classics he had so assidu-
ously studied ?
3. In direct contrast with Westminster, we have clear
evidence that English plays were early acted at Eton. To
this evidence may be added the presumption that the E-.e-
kias, an English play by Udall, acted before Elizabeth in
1564 wholly by King's College men, was a play written
for Eton and there preserved and presented from time to
time.
4. Every necessary condition for the production of an Eng-
lish play modeled on the ancients was in existence. Udall
says in the play that Plautus and Terence now bear the
bell — and there is ample evidence of a lively interest in
the Latin comedies as acting plays before and at the time |
of his mastership at Eton. For example, a reference to the
playing of Plautus appears in the Utopia, 1516. Plautus
was played before Henry in 1520. The fact has not hith-
erto been brought into explicit connection with Udall's
play that the Terens in English, namely, the Andria,
adapted for English presentation and urging the claims of
English to recognition as well as Greek and Latin, ap-
peared a year or two before Udall went to Eton and
might well have been his direct encouragement to his
experiment. Is it possible to argue that a date between
1534-41 is unlikely on the ground of the source of his
inspiration? Or on the ground of the freedom and .skill
with which Udall used his sources, when Heywood was
using French sources with similar freedom ? Were not,
indeed, the conditions just such, as regards the general in-
40 . INTRODUCTION
terest in the sources from which the play is drawn, to
make the writing of such a play the most likely thing
possible ?
4. The evidence for a date 1552. which excludes Udall's
writing of the play for Westminster while head master,
and renders improbable his writing it for production there
before his head mastership, does not exclude its composi-
tion for Eton. Custance's joke regarding permissible in-
terest, and tbe period during which interest must run, dates
between 1546 and some time in 1552. This reference could
perfectly well be a late insertion. It is not at all necessary
to assume, with Fliigel, a lost edition of the play, for such
topical allusions are often inserted when a play is freshened
up for a new presentation. The subject of usury was one
of widespread interest both in a practical and theological
connection, and the assumed insertion might have been
made for some presentation at Eton or elsewhere, either
when the statute was first passed or at a later date, perhaps
when the question of its repeal was in the air. We have
seen that the year 1552 itself is an unlikely year, because
of Udall's preoccupations in that year. But it is perfectly
possible that the play may have been given at the court at
some time previous. In this connection the warrant dor-
mer addressed by Mary to the Master of the Revels in
1554 is of interest. It reads as follows : —
" Trusty and well beloved we greet you well. And where-
as our well beloved Nicolas Udall hath at sundry seasons
convenient heretofore showed and mindeth hereafter to
show, his diligence in setting forth of Dialogues, and In-
terludes before us for our regal disport and recreation, to
the intent that we may be in the better readiness at all
time when it shall be our pleasure to call, we will and
command you, and every of you, that at all and every such
time and times, so oft and whensoever he shall need, and
require it, for showing of any thing before us, ye deliver
or cause to he delivered to the said Udall. or to the hringer
hereof in his name, out of our office of revels such ap-
parel for setting forth of his devices before us, and such as
may be seemly to be shoued in our royal presence, and
AUTHOR AND PLAY 41
the same to be restored, and redelivered by the said Udall
into your hands and custody again. And that ye fail not
thos to do from time to time as ye tender our pleasure,
till ye shall receive express commandment from us to the
contrary hereof. And this shall be your sufficient warrant
in this behalf. Given under our signet the 3rd. day of
December in the second year of our reign." 1
The point which is of moment here is that it is extremely
unlikely that Mary had discovered Udall's dramatic
ability only upon her accession to the throne. It is of
course not possible to infer from the reference to Udall's
previous activity in Mary's service that he had been em-
ployed in this capacity before her coming fo the throne in
1553. But it is also a fair inference that his dramatic ac-
tivities were known to her before her accession. Consid-
ering his keen interest in dramatic activities, considering
also her interest in dramatic entertainments evidenced by
performances before her prior to her accession, considering
Udall's close connection with the court of Edward, and with
Mary personally, in the forties, does it seem unlikely that,
having a play the excellence of which he must have well
known, he may at sometime have had that play presented at
court, as he could readily do, and may at that time (which
includes the date of the passing of the statute) have in-
serted the reference to the law regarding usury in Custance's
joke ? The only argument against such a supposition is the
fact that Bale in his edition of 1548 says nothing of Udall's
play, as one might suppose that he might do if it had been
presented at court, in which case he might be likely to
have heard of it. But this fact has really no evidential
value whatsoever, for Bale might never have heard of the
play, or might not have thought of it when treating Udall,
or the play might have been given after 1548. Were Bale's
omission of a mention of it an argument against its
existence in 1548, we would have to suppose that the
reference to Udall's corned las pi ares in the edition of 1557
i Given in full by Hales, Enqlixcke Sludien, 18, 415. It was first printed
by A. J. Kempe, Losely MSS. No. 31, p. 03.
42 INTRODUCTION
proved that Udall wrote all his plays between 154G and
1557, which would be contrary to the actual fact.
The supposition made above, or any similar supposition,
is, it must be remembered, not material to the argument,
which is simply that the play, if written for Eton, was not
given once only, and that, at some date later than the
original writing, Custance's joke was inserted. If Udall's
Ezekias could be given years after it was written, for
Eton (as no doubt it was), we may feel sure Ralph
Roister Doister was given at intervals after its first per-
formance. Nor must it be forgotten that the play, as we
have it, shows obvious marks of revamping to suit current
conditions. The phrase ''keep the Queen's peace" occurs
in Act 1, Sc. 1, 1. 38, and a prayer for the " Queen " occurs
at the close. These afford no proof for date of composition,
for Mary was not queen in 1552, Hales's assumed date,
and both passages could be readily changed by substitution
of " Queen " for " King " and correction of a few pronouns.
They merely illustrate the familar process of revamping a
play to suit present conditions — in this case to make the
play fit Elizabeth's reign.
5. The use made by "Wilson of Ralph's letter as an ex-
ample of ambiguity, which Hales uses to determine a date
1552, is in reality a strong proof in favor of the play's
having been made for Eton during Udall's head master-
ship. Wilson left Eton the year Udall lost his place. We
have seen that the year 1552 cannot be accepted as the
year of composition. The conclusion is plain that Wilson
did not include the letter in the two earlier editions because
he was not in touch with his old teacher and did not have
the letter to quote. He came into touch with Udall in
1552, as proved by Udall's commendatory verses to the
Art of Rhetoric, published in 1553, obtained the letter,
and inserted it.
| To sum up the argument — the balance of evidence is
in favor of the presumption that Udall wrote the phi) for
Eton between 1534-41, and that, at some later date, the
Joke of Custance concerning usury was inserted in it.
AUTHOR AND PLAY 43
3. THE SOURCES OF THE PLAY
Udall, in the Prologue of Ralph Roister Doister, re-
fers to Plautus and Terence, " which among the learned
at this day hears the bell." No one familiar with the two
playwrights could for a moment he in doubt as to which
would be the more likely to prompt imitation, and there
was direct evidence of Udall's intimate acquaintance with
Terence in his Flowers for Latin SpeakiiLa. Yet stu-
dents of Udall's play were long satisfied with regarding
Ralph Roister Doister as modeled directly upon the
Miles Gloriosus. of Plautus. Possible indebtedness to
other plays was suggested, but received scant considera-
tion or none at all. No doubt the later importance of
the Miles Gloriosus in its influence upon English comedy
here served to prejudice judgment.
A study of Udall's play in relation to its sources made
by Mr. Maulsby 1 has gone far to establish a more correct
view. Admitting that there is justice in placing emphasis
upon a single comedy of Plautus, he aimed to show that,
none the less, too much stress had been laid upon its in-
fluence, and that resemblances "almost if not equally
striking," in other plays of both Plautus and Terence, had
been left out o£ account.
There is, in the first place, no general resemblance in plot 5r£*
between Ralph Roister Doister and the 3Iil.es Glnrmsvsi '&-£i
or any other play of either Plautus or Terence. What is
more, the parallelisni of special scenes is both rare and re;
mote. An excellent example is the scene in which Ralph
and his cohorts, attacking Custance's house, are routed by
Custance and her maids — declared by an earlier student
of the play, Faust, to be " a copy, neither more nor less,"
of Scene 1, Act 5, of the Miles Gloriosus. The two
scenes are, as Maulsby pointed out, " essentially diverse ";
a scene in Rudens (3, 5) is measurably closer, and a far
1 "The relation between Udall's Roister Doister and the Comedies of
Plautus and Terence," Enylische Studien, 38, 251. See his review of
previous literature on the subject.
44 INTRODUCTION
truer parallel, as had been rioted by Habersang, is af-
forded by the Eunuclius of Terence (4, 7), where a simi-
lar braggart, Thraso, coming to carry off Pamphila, is
forced to flee.
Next may be noted a group of resemblances and differ-
ences of a general character, rapidly summarized at the
close of Maulsby's article, which fall under the headings
of construction, business, scene, and style ; the notes on
features of character also included by him here will be
taken up later. Drinking, quarreling, abuse, good-na-
tured and otherwise, among the servants, is found both in
Udall and in the classic comedy; in both servants are re-
buked and threatened by their masters. Use of allusive
names for characters are found in both ; for this, we may
interject, Udall did not, of course, need to go to the clas-
*sic comedy. The plot of Ralph Bolster Dpister is simple,
while the Latin plays are full of involved intrigue. Unity
of place is observed by Udall, and the three days of his
comedy suggest influence of the classic unity of time.
The 1'rolofjiiji is passably like those of the classic dramas.
Thanks upon return from a voyage are a convention in
the Latin plays; Suresbv's expression of relief at reach-
ing land if. 1) form a remote parallel. Giving of blows
and horse-play occur in the Latin plays. Music and danc-
ing is not unknown. The feast at the end of Ralph Rois-
ter Doister was perhaps suggested by the feasts with which
Latin plays sometimes closed. The scene in Plautus and
Terence is commonly the space before two houses, in
Udall it is the space before one ; this is due. it may be
added, to the simplicity of Udall's plot the Latin play-
wrights needed two for the convenient carrying on of the
intrigues of which their plots consisted. As regards style,
• passing by what Mr. Maulsby calls " the interesting in-
quiry concerning the possible effect of the Latin meters
upon the English comedy " which he will defer till a
" more favorable occasion," the long soliloquies of Udall
make the same appeal, in disguise, as the confidential ap-
peals to the audience in the Plautine comedy. A remote
parallel for Udall's slight use of dialect is found in the il-
AUTHOR AND PLAY 45
literate mistakes of the clown Stratilax in Plautus. Udall
and Plautus both use' long-drawn-out explanations,* jokes
that lose their point by repetition, and a*lengthening of
the dialogue at expense of delaying the action.
These points, summarized, as Mr. Maulsby summarizes
them rapidly, in a single paragraph, will certainly convey
a false impression unless the reader is warned to delay
judgment; Mr. Maulsby, careful though he is to say that,
"numerous as they are," they "do not mean that the
Westminster schoolmaster was lacking in a sturdy English
nonconformity," by that very statement shows that he
gives them too much weight. The list includes both sim-
ilarities and differences. The similarities are of little signi-
ficance when, after a careful study of the whole matter, it
is perceived that Udall is distinguished by the freedom, -f~*^
and not the mechanical dependence, with which he uses ;; "
his sources and exemplars. The details of the incidental
business, such as drinking, quarreling, reproof of servants,
horse-play, singing, and dancing, all existed in English
tradition, and are used in a manner thoroughly English
and not like the Latin play ; Udall can at most have been
encouraged or confirmed in his use of them by their use in jfij^
his sources. The only possibly significant features are these C£*+
— his observance of the unity of nlace. though one may sur- ^
mise this to have been accidental ; the use of a Pmlorjiie <£>
and its character possibly ; and the feast employed, as ®)
sometimes in Latin plays, to bring the play to a close.
Mr. Maulsby's assumption that the meter of Ralph
Bolster Bolster shows influence from the Latin comedy
may be briefly touched on here. This assumption receives
the most explicit statement in the edition of W illiams
and Robin, in which it is stated that the meter " is an at-
tempt to naturalize the comic iambics and trochaics of
Plautus and Terence." Mr. Maulsby was prepared to con-
sider this as a possibility, and even Professor Flligel, who
apparently recognizes the meter as traditionally English,
though he scans it incorrectly, says that, on the whole,
lines of six accents seem to prevail, corresponding to the
Middle English Alexandrine, or " in Wall's case perhaps
4 6 IN Tli OD UC TION
rather to the classical senarius, to the trimeter of the
Roman comedy as understood by Udall." There is no
space here, and there is no occasion, to go into the matter
in detail. The verse is simply four-stressed tumbling verse
of a familiar type as used in earlier English plays; no other
scansion of it is possihle without impossible wrenchim' of
accents.
Specific passages of dialogue may readily he discovered
both in Plautus and Terence which evidently served
Udall as models. To those pointed out by his predeces-
sors Maulsby has added others, showing that, in this re-
gard also, as in the case of the material for situations and
scenes, there is no reason for assuming a particular in-
debtedness to the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus. But it is pos-
sible to go farther than this. After one has read Plautus and
Terence through, with the intent to discover features of in-
debtedness of this kind, one becomes convinced that Udall
did not place a selected scene before himself and then set
to work to paraphrase it, substituting his own words and al-
lusions and retaining only its general purpose and spirit,
— for his independence is such that it is a puzzle to de-
termine which of two or more similar scenes is more prob-
ably his source, — but that his indebtedness is rather that
of a student of the Latin comedy who knows it so well
that he does not rummage out particular scenes for imita-
tion, but writes freely from the general conception of ef>-
fective scenes and situations floating freely in his mind,.1
We pass next to the salient fact that Udall broadly
modeled the two basic characters of his play, Ralph and
Merygreeke, upon typical characters in the Latin Comedy.
/Ralph is an adaptation of the " Miles flloriosiis.'? so called
from the play of that name by Plautus ; a notable figure
in both Plautus and Terence, and one which, in a much
modified form, has played an important part in English
comedy.2,
i A number of parallels are indicated in the Notes ; the texts of one or
two are given in illustration of Udall's independence.
2 He first appears in English in Thersites, from the school-dia'ogue of
Eavisius Textor. Two of the more familiar examples of adaptations of
AUTHOR AND PLAY 47
The " Miles Gloriosus," or " braggart captain," is a
swashbuckler, a mass of vanity, the hero of many imagin-
ary feats of impossible valor invented either by himself or
by those who prey upon his conceit, but really an arrant
onward whose arrogance at ouch deserts him most ludi-
crously when confronted with the slightest resistance or
show of peril ; withal amorous and eager for gallant ad-
ventures and easily led to believe himself the admiration
and despair of all women who behold him, a trait played
upon, of course, by those who make him their dupe. Sim-
ilarly, Udall's character is a fool, a braggart and yet a
coward, a fatuous dupe in his eagerness to play the gallant. od
But the differences between Ralph and the part he [days .
and the portrayal in Latin comedy of Pyrgopolinices and rbfB*
other braggart captains is as significant as it is marked. *"/^
Udall has both simplified and refilled the character. The
cowardice of Ralph, as Maulsby truly says, is more ob-
vious_and more comical. The use made of his gallantry,
also, is devoid of offense, and much more effectively comi-
caL
Merygreeke in his turn, who, in Udall's play, avails
himself of Ralph's monstrous conceit to his own advant-
age and involves him in the complications which form
the theme of the play, unquestionably represents the Jyp-
ical parasite who is ubiquitous in Latin comedy, but he
combines with the parasite the traits of the clever, schem-
ing servant, such as Palgestro and his kind. He is, to quote
1^
Maulsby again, " more independent and more aggressive," /#
more of a master mind, more openly contemptuous, am
wholly free in the lengths he allows himsplf to go in d?
jjsion and horse-play, being always quite sure of his auto-
cratic control of his dupe. And it has been truly observed
that his enjoyment of fooling Ralph and the horse-play to
which he subjects him count quite as much with Mery-
the character are Sir Thopas in Lyly's Endimion, and (at a far remove)
Ea! staff iu Shakespeare. For studies of the character in detail, see
J. Tlmmmel, " Der Miles Gloriosus bei Shakespeare," Shah speare J"hr-
huch, 13; and Herman Graf, Der Miles Gloriosus im Englischen Drama,
Rostock, 1891.
/
:
48 INTRODUCTION
greeke as the dinners and other desirable perquisites he
obtains by his flatteries. But just as Udall avoided the re-
pulsiveness of the Latin character, so also he avoids gross-
ness in the intrigue involving him and in the manner of
his discomfiture ; it is all, after all, harmless fooling and
good fun. Fliigel says admirably that Udall, skillful writer
that he was, has carefully avoided the " danger of marring
J our enjoyment of Merygreeke's part by inserting traits of
a finer or grosser brutality," and it is certainly better that
Ralph should be left to the last quite satisfied with him-
self and still an object of unbounded amusement to the
merry company about him as they go off to dinner.
To return to Maulsby's admirable article, it is in no
spirit of depreciation that it must be pointed out that we
must make a more forcible break with the critical tradi-
tion which assumes a large degree of dependence of Udall
upon his Latin exemplars, or (as it is too easy to assume) a
dependence of a mechanical and imitative kind calling
merely for cleverness in selecting and patching together
material not essentially original. It must again be asserted
that, while Maulsby clearly recognizes and affirms that
Udall made his play an English play, there is danger in
laying stress, as he does, upon " numerous resemblances " ;
f^e resemhlanrpH are not numerous. The ways in which
Udall was influenced are few ; the significant fact is that,
I while few, they are of the greatest importance. The first
is that Udall learned from the Roman comedy to make a
play with a unified and regulated action. His division of
his play into acts and scenes is not a mere formal imita-
tion of his models. He h"as"a definite idea of what belongs
to each act. Taking a simple thread of story, he distrib-
utes the events it includes so that its interest cumulates
in the fourth act and reaches an appropriate solution in
the fifth. It was no lack of inventive skill that made him
make his plot simple, or discard the wretched hole-and-
corner farcicalities and far-fetched devices of the Latin
comedy. He has ability enough of his own to diversify
his simple theme with incidental action, the fooling of
Merygreeke with Ralph, the episode of the mock funeral,
AUTHOR AND PLAY 49
the chatter and quarreling of the maids and varlets. Para-
doxically, the very fact that the action is thin in the
second act (though reinforced skillfully by incidental epi-
sodes) is the best proof that he knew perfectly well what
he was about. He would not put into that act what neces-
sarily belonged in the next.
The second indebtedness of importance is his use of the
two typical characters of the boastful captain and of the,
combination of parasite and wily servants His independ-
ence, freedom from any necessity for servile imitation, in
this connection has already been indicated.
The fact that Udall drew suggestions from certain
scenes, borrowed certain passages, is of course of import-
ance, but relatively of much less importance — it is
really a necessary consequence of his adaptation of two
chief characters from Latin originals. The extent of his
borrowings, which is small, and the substance of the dia-
logue borrowed, are of no significance, as concerns the
history of English drama. What is really of significance is
the fact that his indebtedness for special scenes is mosL
vague and remote, _so freely has he refashioned the ideas
he burrowed, and that the passages of dialogue he imitated
are entirely made over, as regards words and allusions, to
a fresh and individual form.
This leads to the consideration of the specifically Eng- \
lish elements in the comedy. On the one hand, the comedy
is, in a word, both in spirit and substance thoroughly
English ; where there was borrowing, only7 so much was
borrowed as could be made English. If Ralph is a strongly
accentuated caricature, just as the various boastful captains
are in the Latin comedy, he is none the less in no sense
exotic, a figure transferred bodily from its foreign setting
and successful because of intrinsic absurdity ; all that
would have been exotic in Udall's models has been omitted
or changed — Ralph was recognizable to an English audi-
ence as a delightful exaggeration of a type in real life. In-
deed, largely freed as he is of the grotesque and monstrous
elements of the Latin character, he is to a very great de-
gree more realistic and probable without any loss of hu-
50 INTRODUCTION
morous effectiveness, and therefore artistically superior to
his artificial and highly seasoned original. The same holds
' true of Merygreeke. As regards the incidental business of
the play, it is hardly necessary to emphasize again the
obvious fact that much of it, while apparently paralleled
in the Latin comedy, is really traditional in England and
English in character, — horse-play, joking and quarreling
of servants, and the like — while not a little is absolutely
original with Udall in the dramatic use he makes of it.
Possessed of a natural dramatic instinct, a very real natu-
ral skill and sense of what was useful to his purpose,
Udall used and improved upon material already developed
in religious play and farce. His delightful picture of Cus-
tance's household, of her management, at_once strict and
gracious of her servants, belongs neither to English tradi-
tion nor to Latin exemplars ; it anticipates in a remark-
able way iealistic_conLedy in its later artistic development.
A word must be added touching the racy, idiomatic
English of the play, so full of sparkle and fun (and S0
free of offense), plainly a free and flexible medium for the
author's expression of his characters and action, unstudied
and without trace of constraint and awkwardness. Surely,
with respect to the abundant and most natural use which
Udall makes of proverbs, catch-words, and current slang,
a word of protest may be permitted against the view of
one of Udall's editors that " Bolster Bolster is largely a
cento, though the patchwork is cleverly disguised.''1 This
comment is the more strange and unwarranted seeing that
a large part of the parallels on which it is based are drawn
from literature later than Udall, including such authors
as Lyly, Massinger, and Shakespeare; but, apart from
these, the parallels from earlier works and authors are
merely cases of proverbs and other current phrases, most
of them familiar, some of them, indeed, used in Middle
English literature. The notion that Udall patched to-
gether phrases and allusions from his predecessors — and,
i W. H. Williams, Englische Stvdien, 36, 179, an article supplement-
ary to the glossary in the edition by Williams and Kobin in the Temple
Dramatists.
(
AUTHOR AND PLAY 51
so it would seem, his successors — might hardly seem
worthy of comment, were it not that such statements are
often accepted and passed on without scrutiny of their
truth. It is important that the fact should not be obscured
that Udall made his characters talk as people talked in;
his day — though of course with heightened spirit, point,/,
and pungency.
So far we may go in recognizing the essentially English
character of the play. But it does not follow English tra-'
dition in respect to structure, the use of conventional types
of character, and the like. It is absurd to speak of " me-
dieval elements " in Ralph Roister Doister or to regard i
Merygreeke as a Vice in a thin disguise. Here we are led
to the question of the priority of Roister Doister as the
first "regular drama" in English. Assuming the play to
date from Detail's head mastership at Eton, it is still pre-
ceded by Thersites and Calisto and Melibea, but here, as
in the case of the Latin plays of Grimald and Buchanan,
other criteria than date give it preference. Mr. Schelling
has said truly l that if by the term " regular drama " we
understand a. matter of form only, including the division I
into acts and scenes, regularity may be claimed for this
play and several successors, but must be denied to Ther*
sites and Calisto and Melibea ; if we mean by regularity the
artistic principle set free and disburdened of religious in-
tent, much might be said for Thersites, and indeed in
Calisto " we have passed out of the atmosphere of both
morality and interlude." This is true, but Mr. Schelling
is at the moment interested in pointing out that in the
general development progress has been made here in^this
play and there in that. It is necessary to go a step fartner
and apply in conjunction the criteria which he uses sep-
arately. In considering the claims of Ralph Roister
Doister, it is essential to note not merely that Udall used
the formal division into acts and scenes, but that he used
that division with a clear understanding as to the proper
distribution of his material. It is essential to note not
merely that the artistic principle is set free, so that didac-
1 Elizabethan Drama, l, 87 f.
52 INTRODUCTION
tic purpose no longer dictates selection of content, but that
the artistic principle in its newly won freedom does not in
Udall's play run to extravagance and absurdity as in Ther-
sites, but is working consciously and conscientiously on its
chosen material to present a story rationalized and restrained
to a definite moderation and decorum, through characters
made realistic and effectively vitalized, so that the result is
measurably within the bounds of artistic fitness. Regular-
ity we may define as\a complex artistic unity of substance
and form due to a perception of, and an attainment of,
artistic excellencies that are, in the further development
of the drama, to justify themselves as of permanent
worth. Under this definition, no other play can claim pri-
ority over Udall's — even if we were not forced to ex-
clude Thersites and Calisto mid Melibea as following
closely their. foreign originals while Ralph Roister Rois-
ter is demonstrably original and English.
But when one considers Udall in relation to his sources
and evaluates the amount of his indebtedness justly, when
we consider what he took and what he did not take, what
he did and what he did not choose to do, when Ave come
to realize the measure of his success, we arrive at a much
higher estimate of his powers — which assuredly, consid-
ering his historic place, had in them a touch of genius —
than if one pays him tribute merely as the author of a
play to be considered the first of " regular " English plays.
RALPH ROISTER DOISTER
DRAMATIS PERSONS
Ralph Roister Doister
Mathew Merygrefke jl«~«^'('
Gawyk Gooixluck, affianced to Dame distance
Tristram Trustie, his friend
Dobinet Doughtik, boy to Roister Doister
Tom Trupenie, servant to Dame Custance
\ Sym Suresby, servant to Goodluelc
Scrivener
Harpax
Dame Christian Custance, a widow , ,
Margerie Mumblecrust, her nurse — ' ^
Tibkt Talkapace ; , . ,
>• her maidens
Anjsiot Alyface )
Scene : London
THE PROLOGUE
What creature is in health, either young or old,
But some mirth with modesty will be glad to use ? —
As we in this interlude shall now unfold,
Wherein all scurrility we utterly refuse,
Avoiding such mirth wherein is abuse, 5
Knowing1 nothing more commendable for a man's re-
creation
Than mirth which is used in an honest fashion.
For mirth prolongeth life, and causeth health,
Mirth recreates our spirits and voideth pensiveness,
Mirth increaseth amity, not hindering our wealth, 10
Mirth is to be used both of more and less,
Being mixed with virtue in decent comeliness,
As we trust no good nature can gainsay the same ;
Which mirth we intend to use, avoiding all blame.
The wise poets long time heretofore 15
Under merry comedies secrets did declare,
Wherein was contained very virtuous lore,
With mysteries and forewarnings very rare.
Such to write neither Plautus nor Terence did spare,
Which among the learned at this day bears the bell;
These, with such other, thei-ein did excel. 21
Our comedy, or interlude, which we intend to play
Ts named Roister Doister indeed,
Which against the vainglorious doth inveigh,
58 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
Whose humour the roistiug sort continually doth
feed. 25
Thus by your patience we intend to proceed
In this our interlude by God's leave and grace;
And here I take my leave for a certain space.
FINIS
ACTUS I, SC^ENA I
Mathew Mkrtgkeeke. He enlereth singing.
As long liveth the merry man, they say,
As doth the sorry man, and longer, by a day.
Yet the grasshopper, for all his summer piping,
Starveth in winter with hungry griping.
Therefore another said saw doth men advise, 5
That they be together both merry and wise.
This lesson must I practise, or else ere long,
With me, Mathew Merygreeke, it will be wrong.
Indeed men so call me, for by Him that us bought,
Whatever chance betide, I can take no thought, 10
Yet wisdom would that I did myself bethink
Where to be provided this day of meat and drink —
For know ye that, for all this merry note of mine,
He might appose me now that should ask where I dine.
Mv living lietli here and there, of God's grace, 15
Sometime with this good man, sometime in that place ;
Sometime Lewis Loytrer biddeth me come near ;
Somewhiles Watkin Waster maketh us good cheer,
Sometime Davy Diceplayer, when he hath well cast,
Keepeth revel rout as long as it will last ; 20
Sometime Tom Titivile maketh us a feast;
Sometime with Sir Hugh Pye I am a bidden guest;
Sometime at Nicol Neverthrive's I get a sop ;
\
Scf.na I] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 59
Sometime I am feasted with Bryan Blinkinsoppe ;
Sometime I hangonHankyn Hoddydodie's sleeve; 25
But this day on Ralph Roister Doister's, by his leave.
For, truly, of all men he is my chief banker
Both for meat and money, and ray chief shoot-anchor.
For, sooth Roister Doister in that he doth say,
And, require what ye will, ye shall have no nay. 30
But now of Roister Doister somewhat to express,
That ye may esteem him after his worthiness,
In these twenty towns, and seek them throughout,
Is not the like stock whereon to graff a lout.
All the day long is he facing and craking 35
Of his great acts in fighting and fray-making,
But when Roister Doister is put to his proof,
To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoof.
If any woman smile, or cast on him an eye,
Up is he to the hard ears in love by and by ; 40
And in all the hot haste must she be his wife,
Else farewell his good days, and farewell his life ;
Master Ralph Roister Doister is but dead and gone
Except she on him take some compassion.
Then chief of counsel must be Mathew Merygreeke, 45
" What if I for marriage to such an one seek ? "
Then must I sooth it, whatever it is —
For what he sayeth or doeth cannot be amiss ;
Hold up his yea and nay, be his nown white son,
Praise and roose him well, and ye have his heart won, 50
For so well liketh he his own fond fashions
That he taketh pride of false commendations.
But such sport have I with him as I would not lese,
Though I should be bound to live with bread and
cheese.
For exalt him, and have him as ye lust indeed — 55
Yea, to hold his finger in a hole for a need.
60 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
I can with a word make him fain or loth,
I can with as much make him pleased or wroth,
I can, when I will, make him merry and glad,
I can, when me lust, make him sorry and sad, 60
I can set him in hope and eke in despair,
I can make him speak rough, and make him speak fair.
But I marvel I see him not all this same day ;
I will seek him out. — But, lo ! he cometh this way.
I have yond espied him sadly coming, 65
And in love, for twenty pound, by his gloming!
ACTUS I, SCLENA II
Rafe Roister Doister. Mathew Merygreeke.
R. Holster. Come death when thou wilt, I am weary
of my life.
M. Mery. I told you, I, we should woo another wife.
[Aside.
R. Holster. Why did God make me such a goodly
person ?
M. Mery. He is in by the week, we shall have sport
anon.
R. Roister. And where is my trust}7 friend, Mathew
Merygreeke? 5
M. Mery. I will make as I saw him not, he doth me
seek.
R. Roister. I have him espied me thinketh, jond
is he.
Ho! Mathew Merygreeke, my friend, a word with thee.
M. Mery. I will not hear him, but make as I had
haste. 9
Farewell all my good friends, the time away doth waste,
And the tide, they say, tarrieth for no man.
ScenaII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 61
R. Roister. Thou must with thy good counsel help
me if thou can.
M. Mery. God keep thee, worshipful Master Rois-
ter Doister,
And fare well thee, lusty Master Roister Doister.
R. Roister. I must needs speak with thee a word
or twain. 15
M. Mary. Within a month or two I will be here
again.
Negligence in great affairs, ye know, may mar all.
R. Roister. Attend upon me now, and well reward
thee I shall.
M. Mery. I have take my leave, and the tide is well
spent.
R. Roister. I die except thou help, I pray thee be
content. 20
Do thy part well now, and ask what thou wilt,
For without thy aid my matter is all spilt.
M. Mery. Then to serve your turn I will some pains
take,
And let all mine own affairs alone for your sake.
R. Roister. My whole hope and trust resteth only
in thee. 25
M. Mery. Then can ye not do amiss, whatever it be.
R. Roister. Gramercies, Merygreeke, most bound
to thee I am.
M. Mery. But up with that heart, and speak out
like a ram !
Ye speak like a capon that had the cough now.
Be of good cheer, anon ye shall do well enow. 30
R. Roister. Upon thy comfort, I will all things well
handle.
M. Mery. So, lo, that is a breast to blow out a
candle !
62 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
But what is this great matter, I would fain know?
We shall find remedy therefore I trow.
Do ye lack money? Ye know mine old offers ; 35
Ye have always a key to my purse and coffers.
R. Roister. I thank thee ! had ever man such a
friend !
M. Mery. Ye give unto me, I must needs to you lend.
R. Roister. Nay, I have money plenty all things
to discharge.
M. Mery. That knew I right well when I made
offer so large. [Aside. 40
[R. Roister.'] But it is no such matter.
M. Mery. What is it then ?
Are ye in danger of debt to any man ?
If ye be, take no thought nor be not afraid.
Let them hardly take thought how they shall be paid.
R. Roister. Tut, I owe nought.
M. Mery. What then ? fear ye imprisonment ?
R. Roister. No. 46
M. Mery. No, I wist ye offend not, so to be shent.
But if ye had, the Tower could not you so hold,
But to break out at all times ye would be bold.
What is it — hath any man threatened you to beat ?
R. Roister. What is he that durst have put me in
that heat ? 50
He that beateth me, by His arms, shall well find,
Thnt I will not be far from him nor run behind.
M. Mery. That thing know all men ever since ye
overthrew
The fellow of the lion which Hercules slew.
But what is it theu ?
R. Roister. Of love I make my moan. 55
M. Mery. " Ah, this foolish-a love, wil't ne'er let us
alone ? "
Sckna II] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 63
But because ye were refused the last day,
Ye said ye would ne'er more be entangled that way —
" I would meddle no more, since I find all so unkind."
R. Roister. Yea, but I cannot so put love out of
my mind. 60
M. Mery. But is your love, tell me first in any
wise,
In the way of marriage, or of merchandise?
If it may otherwise than lawful be found,
Ye get none of my help for a hundred pound.
R. Roister. No, by my troth, I would have her to
my wife. 65
M. Mery. Then are ye a good man, and God save
your life !
And what or who is she, with whom ye are in love?
R. Roister. A woman whom I know not by what
means to move.
M. Mery. Who is it?
R. Roister. A woman yond.
M. Mery. What is her name ?
R. Roister. Her yonder.
M.Mery. Whom?
R. Roister. Mistress — ah —
M. Mery. Fie, fie, for shame !
Love ye, and know not whom — but "her yond," "a
woman? ' 71
We sli:iTl then get you a wife, I cannot tell whan.
R. Roister. The fair woman, that supped with us
yesternight,
And I heard her name twice or thrice, and had it
right.
M. Mery. Yea, ye may see ye ne'er take me to good
cheer with yon, — 75
If ye had, I could have told you her name now.
G-4 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
R. Roister. I was to blame indeed, but the next
time perchance —
And she dwelleth in this house.
M. Mery. What, Christian distance?
R. Roister. Except I have her to my wife, I shall
run mad.
M. Mery. Nay, " unwise " perhaps, but I warrant
you for " mad." 80
R. Roister. I am utterly dead unless I have my
desire.
M. Mery. Where be the bellows that blew this sud-
den fire?
R. Roister. I hear she is worth a thousand pound
and more.
M. Mery. Yea, but learn this one lesson of me
afore —
An hundred pound of marriage-money, doubtless, 85
Is ever thirty pound sterling, or somewhat less ;
So that her thousand pound, if she be thrifty,
Is much near about two hundred and fifty.
Howbeit, wooers and widows are never poor.
R. Roister. Is she a widow ? I love her better
therefore. 90
M. Mery. But I hear she hath made promise to an-
other.
R. Roister. He shall go without her, and he were
my brother !
M. Mery. I have heard say, I am right well ad-
vised,
That she hath to Gawyn Goodluck promised.
R. Roister. What is that Gawyn Goodluck ?
M. Mery. A merchant-man.
R. Roister. Shall he speed afore me ? Nay, sir, by
sweet Saint Anne ! 96
ScenaII] RALPH ROISTER DOTSTER 65
Ah, sir, " ' Backare,' quod Mortimer to his sow,"
I will have her mine own self I make God avow.
For I tell thee, she is worth a thousand pound.
M. JMery. Yet a fitter wife for your maship might
be found. 100
Such a goodly man as you might get one with land,
Besides pounds of gold a thousand and a thousand,
And a thousand, and a thousand, and a thousand,
And so to the sum of twenty hundred thousand.
Your most goodly personage is worthy of no less. 105
R. Roister. I am sorry God made me so comely,
doubtless,
For that maketh me eachwhere so highly favoured,
And all women on me so enamoured.
M. Mery. " Enamoured," quod you ? — have ye spied
out that?
Ah, sir, marry, now I see you know what is what. 110
"Enamoured," ka? marry, sir, say that again,
But I thought not ye had marked it so plain.
R. Roister. Yes, eachwhere they gaze all upon me
and stare.
M. Mery. Yea, Malkyn, I warrant you, as much as
they dare.
And ye will not believe what they say in the street,
When your maship passeth by, all such as I meet, 116
That sometimes I can scarce find what answer to
make.
" Who is this," saith one, " Sir Launcelot du Lake ? "
" Who is this — great Guy of Warwick?" saith an-
other.
" No," say I, " it is the thirteenth Hercules' brother."
"Who is this — noble Hector of Troy," saith the
third. 121
" No, but of the same nest," say I, "it is a bird."
66 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
"Who is this — great Goliah, Sampson, or Colbrand ?"
" No," say I, " but it is a brute of the Alie Land."
" Who is this — great Alexander, or Charle le
Maigne ? " 125
"No, it is the tenth Worthy," say I to them again. —
I know not if I said well.
R. Roister. Yes, for so I am.
M. Mery. Yea, for there were but nine Worthies
before ye came.
To some others, the third Cato I do you calL
And so, as well as I can, I answer them all. 130
"Sir, I pray you, what lord or great gentleman is
this?"
" Master Ralph Roister Doister, dame," say I, " ywis."
"O Lord," saith she then, "what a goodly man it is.
Would Christ I had such a husband as he is! "
" O Lord," say some, " that the sight of his face we
lack ! " 135
" It is enough for you," say I, " to see his back.
His face is for ladies of high and noble parages,
With whom he hardly 'scapeth great marriages " —
With much more than this, and much otherwise.
R. Roister. I can thee thank that thou canst such
answers devise ; 140
But I perceive thou dost me throughly know.
M. Mery. I mark your manners for mine own learn-
ing, I trow,
But such is your beauty, and such are your acts,
Such is your personage, and such are your facts,
That all women, fair and foul, more and less, 145
They eye you, they lub yon, they talk of you doubt-
less.
Your p[l]easant look maketh them all merry ;
Ye pass not by, but they laugh till they be weary ;
ScjsnaII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 67
Yea and money could I have, the truth to tell,
Of many, to bring you that way where they dwell. 150
R. Holster. Merygreeke, for this thy reporting well
of me —
M. Mery. What should I else, sir? It is my duty,
pardee.
R. Roister. I promise thou shalt not lack, while I
have a groat.
M. Mery. Faith, sir, and I ne'er had more need of
a new coat.
R. Holster. Thou shalt have one to-morrow, and
gold for to spend. 155
M. Mery. Then I trust to bring the day to a good
end ;
For, as for mine own part, having money enow,
I could live only with the remembrance of you.
But now to your widow whom you love so hot.
R. Holster. By Cock, thou sayest truth ! I had al-
most forgot. 160
M. Mery. What if Christian Custance will not have
you, what?
R. Holster. Have me? Yes, I warrant you, never
doubt of that ;
I know she loveth me, but she dare not speak.
M. Mery. Indeed, meet it were some body should
it break.
R. Holster. She looked on me twenty times yester-
night, 165
And laughed so —
M. Mery. That she could not sit upright.
R. Roister. No, faith, could she not.
M. Mery. No, even such a thing I cast.
R. Roister. But for wooing, thou knowest, women
are shamefast.
68 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
But, and she knew my mind, I know she would be
glad,
And think it the best chance that ever she had. 170
M. Mery. To her then like a man, and be bold forth
to start !
Wooers never speed well that have a false heart.
R. Roister. What may I best do ?
M. Mery. Sir, remain ye awhile [here].
Ere long one or other of her house will appear.
Ye know my mind.
R. Roister. Yea, now, hardly, let me alone !
M. Mery. In the meantime, sir, if you please, I
will home, — 176
And call your musicians, for, in this your case,
It would set you forth, and all your wooing grace ;
Ye may not lack your instruments to play and sing.
R. Roister. Thou knowest I can do t.l-iaiy
M. Mery. As wellas anything.
Shall I go call your folks, that ye may show a cast? 181
R. Roister. Yea, run, I beseech thee, in all pos-
sible haste.
M. Mery. I go. [Exeat.
R. Roister. Yea, for I love singing out of measure,
It comforteth my spirits and doth me great pleasure.
But who cometh forth yond from my sweetheart dis-
tance ? 185
My matter frameth well, this is a lucky chance.
ACTUS I, SCJENA III
Madge Mumblecrust, spinning on the distaff. Tibet Talkapace,
sewing. Annot Alyface, knitting. R. Roister.
M. Mumble. If this distaff were spun, Margerie
Mumblecrust —
SCiENA III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 69
Tib. Talk. Where good stale ale is, will drink no
water, I trust.
M. Mumble. Dame distance hath promised us good
ale and white bread.
Tib. Talk. If she keep not promise, I will beshrew
her head :
But it will be stark night before I shall have done. 5
H. Holster. I will stand here awhile, and talk with
them anon.
I hear them speak of Custance, which doth my heart
good ;
To hear her name spoken doth even comfort my blood.
M. Mumble. Sit down to your work, Tibet, like a
good girl,
Tib. Talk. Nurse, meddle you with your spindle
and your whirl! 10
No haste but, good Madge Mumblecrust, for " whip
and whur,"
The old proverb doth say, " never made good fur."
M. Mumble. Well, ye will sit down to your work
anon, I trust.
Tib. Talk. " Soft fire maketh sweet malt," good
Madsje Mumblecrust.
M. Mumble. And sweet malt maketh jolly good ale
for the nones. 15
Tib. Talk. Which will slide down the lane without
any bones. [Cantet.
" Old brown bread crusts must have much good mum-
bling,
But good ale down your throat hath good easy
tumbling."
R. Roister. The jolliest wench that ere I heard, little v
mouse!
May I not rejoice that she shall dwell in my house! 20
70 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
Tib. Talk. So, sirrah, now this gear beginneth for to
frame.
31. Mumble. Thanks to God, though your work stand
still, your tongue is not lame.
Tib. Talk. And though your teeth be gone, both so
sharp and so fine,
Yet your tongue can run on pattens as well as mine.
31. Mumble. Ye were not for nought named Tib
Talkapace. 25
Tib. Talk. Doth my talk grieve you? Alack, God
save your grace !
31. Mumble. I hold a groat ye will drink anon for
this gear. [Enter Annot.]
Tib. Talk. And I will pray you the stripes for me
to bear.
31. 31 'amble. I hold a penny ye will drink without a
cup.
Tib. Talk. Whereinsoe'er ye drink, I wot ye drink
all up. 30
An. Ah/face. By Cock, and well sewed, my good
Tibet Talkapace!
Tib. Talk. And e'en as well knit, my nown Annot
Alyface.
R. Roister. See what a sort she keepeth that must
be my wife!
Shall not I, when I have her, lead a merry life?
Tib. Talk. Welcome, my good wench, and sit here
by me just. 35
An. Alyface. And how doth our old beldame here,
Madge Mumblecrust?
Tib. Talk. Chide, and find faults, and threaten to
complain.
An. Ah/face. To make us poor girls shent to her is
small gain.
Soena III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 71
31. Mumble. I did neither chide, nor complain, nor
threaten.
R. Roister. It would grieve my heart to see one of
them beaten. 40
31. Mumble. I did nothing but bid her work and
hold her peace.
Tib. Talk. So would I, if you could your clattering
cease —
But the devil cannot make old trot hold her tongue.
An. Alyface. Let all these matters pass, and we
three sing a song,
So shall we pleasantly both the time beguile now, 45
And eke dispatch all our works ere we can tell how.
Tib. Talk. I shrew them that say nay, and that shall
not be I.
M. Mumble. And I am well content.
Tib. Talk. Sing on then, by and by.
R. Roister. And I will not away, but listen to their
song,
Yet Merygreeke and my folks tarry very long. 50
[ Tib., An., and Margerie do sing here.
Pipe, merry Annot! etc.
Trilla, trilla, trillarie.
Work, Tibet! work, Annot! work, Margerie!
Sew, Tibet! knit, Annot! spin, Margerie!
Let us see who shall win the victory. 55
Tib. Talk. This sleeve is not willing to be sewed,
I trow.
A small thing might make me all in the ground to throw.
[Then they sing again.
Pipe, merry Annot! etc.
Trilla, trilla, trillarie.
What, Tibet ! what, Annot ! what, Margerie ! 60
72 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
Ye sleep, but we do not, that shall we try.
Your fingers be numbed, our work will not lie.
Tib. Talk. If ye do so again, well I would advise
you nay.
In good sooth one stop more, and I make holiday.
[ They sing the third time.
Pipe, merry Annot ! etc. 65
Trilla, trilla, trillarie.
Now, Tibet ! now, Annot ! now, Margerie !
Now whippet apace for the maistry,
But it will not be, our mouth is so dry.
Tib. Talk. Ah, each finger is a thumb to-day, me-
think ; 70
I care not to let all alone, choose it swim or sink.
[They sing the fourth time.
Pipe, merry Annot, etc.
Trilla, trilla, trillarie.
When, Tibet? when, Annot? when, Margerie?
I will not, I cannot, no more can I. 75
Then give we all over, and there let it lie.
[Let her cast down her work.
Tib. Talk. There it lieth ; the worst is but a cur-
ried coat —
Tut, I am used thereto, I care not a groat !
An. Alyface. Have we done singing since? Then
will I in again.
Here I found you, and here I leave both twain. 80
[Exeat.
M. Mumble. And I will not be long after — Tib
Talkapace !
Tib. Talk. What is the matter?
M. Mumble. Yond stood a man all this space
And hath heard all that ever we spake together.
Sc^cnaIII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 73
Tib. Talk. Marry, the more lout he for his coming
hither,
And the less good he can to listen maidens talk. 85
I care not, and I go bid him hence for to walk;
It were well done to know what he maketh herea-
way.
R. Roister. Now might I speak to them, if I wist
what to say.
M. Mumble. Nay, we will go both off, and see what
he is.
R. Roister. One that hath heard all your talk and
singing, i-wis. 90
Tib. Talk. The more to blame you ! A good thrifty
husband
Would elsewhere have had some better matters in
hand.
R. Roister. I did it for no harm, but for good love
I bear
To your dame mistress distance, I did your talk hear.
And, mistress nurse, I will kiss you for acquaintance. 95
M. Mumble. I come anon, sir.
Tib. Talk. Faith, I would our dame Custance
Saw this gear.
M. Mumble. I must first wipe all clean, yea, I must.
Tib. Talk. Ill chieve it, doting fool, but it must
be cust.
M. Mumble. God yelde you, sir ; chad not so much,
ichotte not when —
Ne'er since chwas bore, — chwine — of such a gay
gentleman. 100
R. Roister. I will kiss you too, maiden, for the
good will I bear you.
Tib. Talk. No, forsooth, by your leave, ye shall
not kiss me.
74 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
R. Roister. Yes, be not afeard, I do not disdain
you a whit.
Tib. Talk. Why should I fear you? I have not so
little wit —
Ye are but a man I know very well.
R. Roister. Why then? 105
Tib. Talk. Forsooth for I will not ! I use not to
kiss men.
R. Roister. I would fain kiss you too, good maiden,
if I might.
Tib. Talk. What should that need ?
R. Roister. But to honour you by this light.
I use to kiss all them that I love, to God I vow.
Tib. Talk. Yea, sir ? — I pray you, when did ye
last kiss your cow? 110
R. Roister. Ye might be proud to kiss me, if ye
were wise.
Tib. Talk. What promotion were therein?
R. Roister. Nurse is not so nice.
Tib. Talk. Well, I have not been taught to kissing
and licking.
R. Roister. Yet I thank you, mistress nurse, ye
made no sticking.
M. Mumble. I will not stick for a kiss with such
a man as you. 115
Tib. Talk. They that lust — ! I will again to my
sewing now. [Enter Annot.]
An. Alyface. Tidings, ho ! tidings ! dame distance
greeteth you well.
R. Roister. Whom? me?
An. Alyface. You, sir? No, sir! I do no such tale
tell*
R. Roister. But and she knew me here.
An. Alyface. Tibet Talkapace,
Scsna III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 75
Your mistress distance and mine, must speak with
your grace. 120
Tib. Talk. With me?
An. Alyface. Ye must come in to her, out of all
doubts.
Tib. Talk. And my work not half done? A mischief
on all louts. [Ex.
am.
1
R. Roister. Ah, good sweet nurse!
M. Mumble. Ah, good sweet gentleman !
R. Roister. What?
M. Mumble. Nay, I cannot tell, sir, but what thing
would you ?
R. Roister. How doth sweet Custance, my heart
of gold, tell me how? 125
31. Mumble. She doth very well, sir, and command
me to you.
R. Roister. To me?
M. Mumble. Yea, to you, sir.
R. Roister. To me ? Nurse, tell me plain,
To me?
M. Mumble. Ye.
R. Roister. That word maketh me alive again.
M. Mumble. She command me to one, last day,
whoe'er it was.
R. Roister. That was e'en to me and none other,
by the Mass. 130
M. Mumble. I cannot tell you surely, but one it was.
R. Roister. It was I and none other; this cometh
to good pass.
I promise thee, nurse, I favour her.
M. Mumble. E'en so, sir.
R. Roister. Bid her sue to me for marriage.
M. Mumble. E'en so, sir.
1 Exeant ambo, let both go out.
76 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
R. Roister. And surely for thy sake she shall speed.
M. Mumble. E'en so, sir. 135
R. Roister. I shall be contented to take her.
M. Mumble. E'en so, sir.
R. Roister. But at thy request and for thy sake.
M. Mumble. E'en so, sir.
R. Roister. And come — hark in thine ear what
to say.
M. Mumble. E'en so, sir.
[Here let him tell her a great long tale in her ear.
ACTUS I, SC.ENA IV
Mathew Merygreeke. Dobinet Doughtie. Harpax. [Musicians.]
Ralph Roister. Margerie Mcmblecrust.
M. Mery. Come on, sirs, apace, and quit yourselves
like men,
Your pains shall be rewarded.
D. Dough. But I wot not when.
M. Mery. Do your master worship as ye have done
in time past.
D. Dough. Speak to them ; of mine office he shall
have a cast.
M. Mery. Harpax, look that thou do well too, and
thy fellow. 5
Harpax. I warrant, if he will mine example fol-
low.
M. Mery. Curtsy, whoresons, duck you, and crouch
at every word.
D. Dough. Yes, whether our master speak earnest
or bord.
M. Mery. For this lieth upon his preferment indeed.
D. Dough. Oft is he a wooer, but never doth he
speed.
SoenaIV] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 77
M. Mery. But with whom is he now so sadly round-
ing vond ?
D. Dough. With " N~obs, nieebecetur, miserere "
fond.
M. Mery. God be at your wedding, be ye sped
already ?
I did not suppose that your love was so greedy.
I perceive now ye have chose of devotion, 15
And joy have ye, lady, of your promotion.
R. Roister. Tush, fool, thou art deceived, this is
not she.
M. Mery. Well, mock much of her, and keep her
well, I 'vise ye.
I will take no charge of such a fair piece' keeping.
M. Mumble. What aileth this fellow? he driveth
me to weeping. 20
M. Mery. What, weep on the wedding day ? Be
merry, woman,
Though 1 say it, ye have chose a good gentleman.
R. Roister. Cocks nouns, what meanest thou, man ?
tut-a- whistle !
M. Mery. Ah, sir, be good to her ; she is but a
gristle.
Ah, sweet lamb and coney !
R. Roister. Tut, thou art deceived. 25
31. Mery. Weep no more, lady, ye shall be well
received.
Up witli some merry noise, sirs, to bring home the
bride.
7?. Roister. Gogs arms, knave, art thou mad? I tell
thee thou art wide.
M. Mery. Then ye intend by night to have her
home brought.
R. Roister. I tell thee no.
78 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus 1
M. Mery. How then ?
R. Roister. 'T is neither meant ne thought. 30
M. Mery. What shall we then do with her ?
R. Roister. Ah, foolish harebrain,
This is not she.
M. Mery. No is ! Why then, unsaid again !
And what young girl is this with your maship so bold ?
R. Roister. A girl ?
M. Mery. Yea — I dare say, scarce yet three score
year old.
R. Roister. This same is the fair widow's nurse, of
whom ye wot. 35
M. Mery. Is she but a nurse of a house ? Hence
home, old trot,
Hence at once !
7?. Roister. No, no.
M. Mery. What, an please your maship,
A nurse talk so homely with one of your worship?
R. Roister. I will have it so : it is my pleasure and
will.
M. Mery. Then I am content. Nurse, come again,
tarry still. 40
R. Roister. What, she will help forward this my
suit for her part.
M. Mery. Then is 't mine own pigsney, and bless-
ing on my heart.
R. Roister. This is our best friend, man.
M. Mery. Then teach her what to say.
M. Mumble. I am taught already.
M. Mery. Then go, make no delay.
R. Roister. Yet hark, one word in thine ear.
M. Mery. Back, sirs, from his tail. 45
R. Roister. Back, villains, will ye be privy of my
counsel?
SoenaIV] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 79
M. Mery. Back, sirs, so : I told yon afore ye would
be slient.
R. Roister. She shall have the first day a whole
peck of argent.
M. Mumble. A peek ! Nomine Patris, have ye so
much spare?
R. Roister. Yea, and a cart-load thereto, or else
were it bare, 50
Besides other moveables, household stuff, and land.
M. Mumble. Have ye lands too?
R. Roister. An hundred marks.
M. Mery. Yea, a thousand.
M. Mumble. And have ye cattle too ? and sheep
too?
R. Roister. Yea, a few.
M. Mery. He is ashamed the number of them to
shew.
E'en round about him, as many thousand sheep
goes, 55
As he and thou, and I too, have fingers and toes.
M. Mumble. And how many years old be you?
R. Roister. Forty at least.
M. Mery. Yea, and thrice forty to them.
R. Roister. Nay, now thou dost jest.
I am not so old ; thou misreckonest my years.
M. Mery. I know that ; but my mind was on bul-
locks and steers. 60
M. Mumble. And what shall I show her your mas-
tership's name is?
R. Roister. Nay, she shall make suit ere she know
that, i-wis.
M. Mumble. Yet let me somewhat know.
M. Mery. This is he, understand,
That killed the Blue Spider in Blanchepowder land.
80 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
M. Mumble. Yea, Jesus, William zee law, did he
zo, law ! 65
M. Mery. Yea, and the last elephant that ever he
saw,
As the beast passed by, he start out of a busk,
And e'en with pure strength of arms plucked out his
great tusk.
M. Mumble. Jesus, nomine Patris, what a thing
was that !
R. Holster. Yea, but, Merygreeke, one thing thou
hast forgot. 70
M. Mery. What ?
R. Roister. Of th' other elephant.
M. Mery. Oh, him that fled away.
R. Roister. Yea.
M. Mery. Yea, he knew that his match was in
place that clay.
Tut, he bet the King of Crickets on Christmas day,
That he crept in a hole, and not a word to say.
M. Mumble. A sore man, by zembletee.
M. Mery. Why, he wrung a club
Once in a fray out of the hand of Belzebub. 76
R. Roister. And how when Mumfision — ?
M. Mery. Oh, your custreling
Bore the lantern a-field so before the gosling —
Nay, that is too long a matter now to be told.
Never ask his name, nurse, I warrant thee, be bold. 80
He conquered in one day from Rome to Naples,
And won towns, nurse, as fast as thou canst make
apples.
M. Mumble. O Lord, my heart quaketh for fear :
he is too sore.
R. Roister. Thou makest her too much afeard,
Merygreeke, no more.
Scena IV] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 81
This tale would fear my sweetheart Custance right
evil. 85
M. Mery. Nay, let her take him, nurse, and fear
not the devil.
But thus is our song dashed. Sirs, ye may home
again.
R. Roister. No, shall they not. I charge you all
here to remain —
The villain slaves, a whole day ere they can be
found.
M. Mery. Couch on your marybones, whoresons,
down to the ground. 90
Was it meet he should tarry so long in one place
Without harmony of music, or some solace?
Whoso hath siich bees as your master in his head
Had need to have his spirits with music to be fed.
By your mastership's licence —
R. Roister. What is that ? a mote ? 95
M. Mery. No, it was a fowl's feather had light on
your coat.
R. Roister. I was nigh no feathers since I came
from my bed.
M. Mery. No, sir, it was a hair that was fall from
your head.
R. Roister. My men come when it please them.
M. Mery. By your leave —
R. Roister. What is that ?
M. Mery. Your gown was foul spotted with the
foot of a gnat. 100
R. Roister. Their master to offend they are nothing
afeard —
What now ?
M. Mery. A lousy hair from your mastership's
beard.
82 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I
Omnes famuli.1 And sir, for nurse's sake, pardon
this one offence.
We shall not after this show the like negligence.
R. Roister. I pardon you this once, and come,
sing ne'er the worse. 105
M. Mery. How like you the goodness of this gen-
tleman, nurse ?
M. Mumble. God save his mastership that so can
his men forgive !
And I will hear them sing ere I go, by his leave.
R. Roister. Many, and thou shalt, wench. Come,
we two will dance !
M. Mumble. Nay, I will by mine own self foot the
song, perchance. 110
R. Roister. Go to it, sirs, lustily.
M. Mumble. Pipe up a merry note,
Let me hear it played, I will foot it for a groat.
[Content.
R. Roister. Now, nurse, take this same letter here
to thy mistress,
And as my trust is in thee, ply my business.
M. Mumble. It shall be done.
M. Mery. Who made it ?
R. Roister. I wrote it each whit. 115
M. Mery. Then needs it no mending.
R. Roister. No, no.
M. Mery. No, I know your wit.
I warrant it well.
M. Mumble. It shall be delivered.
But, if ye speed, shall I be considered ?
M. Mery. Whough ! dost thou doubt of that ?
Madge. What shall I have ?
1 All the serving-men.
Scena V] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 83
M. Mery. An hundred times more than thou canst
devise to crave. 120
M. Mumble. Shall I have some new gear ? — for
my old is all spent.
M. Mery. The worst kitchen wench shall go in
ladies' raiment.
M. Mumble. Yea ?
M. Mery. And the worst drudge in the house shall
go better
Than your mistress doth now.
Mar. Then I trudge with your letter.
It. Roister. Now, may I repose me — Custance is
mine own. 125
Let us sing and play homeward that it may be known.
M. Mery. But are you sure that your letter is well
enough?
It. Roister. I wrote it myself.
M. Mery. Then sing we to dinner.
[Here they sing, and go out singing.
ACTUS I, SC^NA V
Christian Custance. Margerie Mumblecrust.
C. Custance. Who took thee this letter, Margerie
Mumblecrust?
M. Mumble. A lusty gay bachelor took it me of trust,
And if ye seek to him he will love your doing.
C. Custance. Yea, but where learned he that
manner of wooing?
M. Mumble. If to sue to him, you will any pains take,
He will have you to his wife, he saith, for my sake. 6
C. Custance. Some wise gentleman, belike. I am
bespoken ;
And I thought verily this had been some token
84 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus II
From my dear spouse, Gawin Goodluck, whom when
him please,
God luckily send home to both our hearts' ease. 10
M. Mumble. A joyly man it is, I wot well by report,
And would have you to him for marriage resort.
Best open the writing, and see what it doth speak.
C. distance. At this time, nurse, I will neither
read ne break.
M. Mumble. He promised to give you a whole peck
of gold. 15
C. distance. Perchance, lack of a pint when it
shall be all told.
M. Mumble. I would take a gay rich husband, and
I were you.
C. distance. In good sooth, Madge, e'en so would
I, if I were thou.
But no more of this fond talk now — let us go in,
And see thou no more move me folly to begin. 20
Nor bring me no more letters for no man's pleasure,
But thou know from whom.
M. Mumble. , I warrant ye shall be sure.
ACTUS II, SCiENA I
DOBINET DOUGHTIE.
D. Dough. Where is the house I go to, before or
behind ?
I know not where nor when nor how I shall it find.
If I had ten men's bodies and legs and strength,
This trotting that I have must needs lame me at length.
And now that my master is new set on wooing, 5
I trust there shall none of us find lack of doing.
Two pair of shoes a day will now be too little
To serve me, I must trot to and fro so mickle.
Scena I] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 85
" Go bear me this token," " carry me this letter,"
Now this is the best way, now that way is better. 10
Up before clay, sirs, I charge you, an hour or twain,
Trudge, "do me this message, and bring word quick
again."
If one miss but a minute, then, " His arms and wounds,
I would not have slacked for ten thousand pounds!
Nay, see, I beseech you, if my most trusty page 15
Go not now about to hinder my marriage ! ,! ^
So fervent hot wooing, and so far from wiving, *^
I trow, never was any creature living.
With every woman is he in some love's pang,
Then up to our lute at midnight, twangledom twang, 2G
Then twang with our sonnets, and twang with our
dumps.
And heigho from our heart, as heavy as lead lumps ;
Then to our recorder with toodleloodle poop,
As the howlet out of an ivy bush should hoop.
Anon to our gittern, thrumpledum, thrumpledum
thrum, 25
Thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrumple-
dum, thrum.
Of sonsrs and ballads also he is a maker,
And that can he as finely do as Jack Raker ;
Yea, and extempore will he ditties compose,
Foolish Marsyas ne'er made the like, I suppose, 30
Yet must we sing them, as good stuff I undertake,
As for such a pen-man is well fitting to make.
" Ah, for these long nights! heigho! when will it be day?
I fear ere I come she will be wooed away."
Then when answer is made that it may not be, 35
" O death, why comest thou not by and by ? " saith he.
But then, from his heart to put away sorrow,
He is as far in with some new love next morrow.
8G RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus II
But in the mean season we trudge and we trot.
From dayspring to midnight I sit not, nor rest not. 40
And now am I sent to dame Christian distance,
But I fear it will end with a moek for pastance.
I bring hei a ring, with a token in a clout,
And by all guess this same is her house out of doubt.
I know it now perfect, I am in my right way. 45
And, lo ! yond the old nurse that was with us last day.
ACTUS II, SCiENA II
Madge Mumblecrcst. Dobinet Doughtie.
M. Mumble. I was ne'er so shoke up afore, since I
was born.
That our mistress could not have chid, I would have
sworn —
And I pray God I die, if I meant any harm,
But for my life-time this shall be to me a charm.
D. Dovgh. God you save and see, nurse, and how
is it with you ? 5
M. Mumble. Marry, a great deal the worse it is for
such as thou.
D. Dough. For me? Why so?
M. Mumble. Why, were not thou one of them, say,
That sang and played here with the gentleman last day?
D. Dovgh. Yes, and he would know if you have
for him spoken,
And pravs you to deliver this ring and token. 10
M. Mumble. Now by the token that God tokened,
brother.
I will deliver no token, one nor other.
I have once been so shent for your master's pleasure,
As I will not be again for all his treasure.
Scena III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 87
D. Dough. He will thank you, woman.
31. Mumble. I will none of his thank. iEx-
D. Dough. I ween I am a prophet, this gear will
prove blank : 16
But what, should I home again without answer go?
It were better go to Rome on my head than so.
I will tarry here this month, but some of the house
Shall take it of me, and then I care not a louse. 20
But yonder cometh forth a wench or a lad,
If he have not one Lombard's touch, my luck is bad.
ACTUS II, SC.ENA III
Tbupenie. D. Doughtie. Tibet Talkapace. Annot Alyface.
Trupenie. I am clean lost for lack of merry com-
pany,
We Vree not half well within, our wenches and I :
They will command like mistresses, they will forbid,
If they be not served, Trupenie must be chid.
Let them be as merry now as ye can desire, 5
With turning of a hand, our mirth lieth in the mire.
I cannot skill of such changeable mettle,
There is nothing with them but " in dock out nettle."
D. Dough. Whether is it better that I speak to
him first,
Or he first to me? — It is good to cast the worst. 10
If I begin first, he will smell all my purpose,
Otherwise I shall not need anything to disclose.
Trupenie. What boy have we yonder? I will see
what he is.
D. Dough. He cometh to me. It is hereabout, i-wis.
Trupenie. Wouldest thou ought, friend, that thou
lookest so about? 15
^
88 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus II
D. Dough. Yea, but whether ye can help me or no,
I doubt.
I seek to one mistress Custance house here dwelling.
Trupenie. It is my mistress ye seek to, by your
telling.
D. Dough. Is there any of that name here but she?
Trupenie. Not one in all the whole town that I
know, pardee. 20
D. Dough. A widow she is, I trow.
Trupenie. And what and she be ?
D. Dough. But ensured to an husband.
Trupenie. Yea, so think we.
D. Dough. And I dwell with her husband that
trusteth to be.
Trupenie. In faith, then must thou needs be welcome
to me —
Let us for acquaintance shake hands togither, 25
And whate'er thou be, heartily welcome hither.
Enter Tibet and Annot
Tib. Talk. Well, Trupenie, never but flinging?
An. Alyface. And frisking?
Trupenie. Well, Tibet and Annot, still swinging
and whisking?
Tib. Talk. But ye roil abroad —
An. Alyface. In the street everywhere.
Trupenie. Where are ye twain — in chambers —
when ye meet me there ? 30
But come hither, fools, I have one now by the hand,
Servant to him that must be our mistress' husband,
Bid him welcome.
An. Alyface. To me truly is he welcome.
Tib. Talk. Forsooth, and as I may say, heartily
welcome.
Sc^na III] RALPH ROISTER DOTSTER 89
D. Dough. I thank you, mistress maids.
An. Alyface. I hope we shall better know. 35
Tib. Talk. And when will our new master come ?
D. Dough. Shortly, I trow. «
Tib. Talk. I would it were to-morrow: for till he
resort,
Our mistress, being a widow, hath small comfort ;
And I heard our nurse speak of an husband to-day
Kendy for our mistress, a rich man and a gay. 40
And we shall go in our French hoods every day,
In our silk cassocks (I warrant you) fresh and gay,
In our trick ferdegews and biliments of gold ;
Brave in our suits of change, seven double fold
Then shall ye see Tibet, sirs, tread the moss so
trim — 45
Nay, why said I "tread"? — ye shall see her glide
and swim,
Not lumperdee, clumperdee, like our spaniel Rig.
Tmpenie. Marry, then, prick-me-dainty, come toast
me a fig !
Who shall then know our Tib Talkapace, trow ye ?
An. Alyface. And why not Annot Alyface as fine
as she ? 50
Trupenie. And what had Tom Trupenie, a father
or none?
An. Alyface. Then our pretty new-come man will
look to be one.
Tntpenie. We four, I trust, shall be a joyly merry
knot.
Shall we sing a fit to welcome our friend, Annot ?
An. Alyface. Perchance he cannot sing.
D. Dough. I am at all assays. 55
Tib. Talk. By Cock, and the better welcome to us
always. [Here they sing.
90 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus II
A tiling very fit
For them that have wit,
And are fellows knit
Servants in one house to be, 60
Is fast for to sit,
And not oft to flit,
Nor vary a whit,
But lovingly to agree.
No man complaining, 65
No other disdaining,
For loss or for gaining,
But fellows or friends to he.
No grudge remaining,
No work refraining, 70
Nor help restraining,
But lovingly to agree.
No man for despite,
By word or by write
His fellow to twite, 75
But further in honesty,
No good turns entwite,
Nor old sores recite,
But let all go quite,
And lovingly to agree. 80
After drudgery,
When they be weary,
Then to be merry,
To laugh and sing, they be free —
With chip and cherry, 85
Heigh derry derry,
Trill on the berry —
And lovingly to agree.
Finis.
Sc.ena IV] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 91
Tib. Talk. Will you now in with us unto our mis-
tress go?
D. Dough. I have first for my master an errand or
two. 90
But I have here from him a token and a ring,
They shall have most thank of her that first doth it
bring.
Tib. Talk. Marry, that will I !
Trupenie. See and Tibet snatch not now.
Tib. Talk. And why may not I, sir, get thanks as
well as you ? [Exeat.
An. Alyface. Yet get ye not all, we will go with
you both, 95
And have part of your thanks, be ye never so loth.
[Exeant omnes.
D. Dough. So my hands are rid of it, I care for no
more.
I may now return home, so durst I not afore. [Exeat.
ACTUS II, SC.ENA IV
C. Custance. Tibet. Annot Alyface. Trupenie.
C. Custance. Nay, come forth all three ; and come
hither, pretty maid.
Will not so many forewarnings make you afraid?
Tib. Talk. Yes, forsooth.
C. Custance. But still be a runner up and down,
Still be a bringer of tidings and tokens to town.
Tib. Talk. No, forsooth, mistress.
C. Cvtstance. Is all your delight and joy 5
In whisking and ramping abroad like a tom-boy ?
Tib. Talk. Forsooth, these were there too, Annot
and Trupenie.
Trupenie. Yea, but ye alone took it, ye cannot deny.
92 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus II
An. Alyface. Yea, that ye did.
Tibet. But if I had not, ye twain would.
C distance. You great calf, ye should have more
wit, so ye should ; 10
But why should any of you take such things in hand?
Tibet. Because it came from him that must be
your husband.
C. distance. How do ye know that ?
Tibet. Forsooth, the boy did say so.
C. distance. What was his name ?
An. Ali/face. We asked not.
C. distance. No ?
An. Alyface. He is not far gone, of likelihood.
Tmpenie. I will see. 15
C. distance. If thou canst find him in the street,
bring him to me.
Tmpenie. Yes. [Exeat.
C. distance. Well, ye naughty girls, if ever I per-
ceive
That henceforth you do letters or tokens receive,
To bring unto me from any person or place,
Except ye first show me the party face to face, 20
Either thou or thou, full truly abye thou shalt.
Tibet. Pardon this, and the next time powder me
in salt.
C. distance. I shall make all girls by you twain
to beware.
Tibet. If ever I offend again, do not me spare !
But if ever I see that false boy any more 25
By your mistresship's licence, I tell you afore,
I will rather have my coat twenty times swinged,
Than on the naughty wag not to be avenged.
C. distance. Good wenches would not so ramp
abroad idly, 29
ScenaI] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 93
But keep within doors, and ply their work earnestly.
If one would speak with me that is a man likely,
Ye shall have right good thank to bring me word
quickly.
But otherwise with messages to come in post
From henceforth, I promise you, shall be to your
cost.
Get you in to your work. 35
Tibet. Yes, forsooth.
C. distance. Hence, both twain.
And let me see you play me such a part again.
Re-enter Tkupenie.
Trupenie. Mistress, I have run past the far end of
the street,
Yet can I not yonder crafty boy see nor meet.
C. distance. No?
Trupenie. Yet I looked as far beyond the people,
As one may see out of the top of Paul's steeple. 41
C distance. Hence, in at doors, and let me no
more be vexed.
Trupenie. Forgive me this one fault, and lay on for
the next. [Exeat.
C. distance. Now will I in too, for I think, so
God me mend,
This will prove some foolish matter in the end. 45
[Exeat.
ACTUS III, SCyENA I
Mathew Mekygreeke.
M. Menj. Now say this again — he hath somewhat
to doing
Which followeth the trace of one that is wooing,
94 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
Specially that hath no more wit in his head,
Than my cousin Roister Doister withal is led.
I am sent in all haste to espy and to mark 5
How our letters and tokens are likely to wark.
Master Roister Doister must have answer in haste,
For he loveth not to spend much labour in waste.
Now as for Christian distance, by this light,
Though she had not her troth to Gawin Goodluck
plight, 10
Yet rather than with such a loutish dolt to marry,
I daresay would live a poor life solitary.
But fain would I speak with distance, if I wist how,
To laugh at the matter — yond cometh one forth
now.
ACTUS III, SdENA II
Tibet. M. Merygreeke. Christian Custance.
Tib. Talk. Ah, that I might but once in my life have
a sight
Of him that made us all so ill shent — by this light,
He should never escape if 1 had him by the ear,
But even from his head I would it bite or tear !
Yea, and if one of them were not enow, 5
1 would bite them both off, I make God avow !
M. Mery. What is he, whom this little mouse doth
so threaten ?
Tib. Talk. I would teach him, I trow, to make girls
shent or beaten !
M. Mery. I will call her. Maid, with whom are ye
so hasty ?
Tib. Talk. Not with you, sir, but with a little
wagpasty,- U 10
A deceiver of folks by subtle craft and guile.
SCiENAlI] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 95
M. Merry. I know where she is — Dobinet hath
wrought soinewile.
Tib. Talk. He brought a ring and token which he
said was sent
From our dame's husband, but I wot well I was
shent —
For it liked her as well, to tell you no lies, 15
As water in her ship, or salt cast in her eyes ;
And yet whence it came neither we nor she can tell.
M. Mery. We shall have sport anon — I like this
very well !
And dwell ye here with mistress distance, fair maid?
Tib. Talk. Yea, marry do I, sir — what would ye
have said ? 20
M. Mery. A little message unto her by word of
mouth.
Tib. Talk. No messages, by your leave, nor tokens
forsooth.
M. Mery. Then help me to speak with her.
Tib. Talk. With a good will that.
Here she cometh forth. Now speak ye know best what.
C. distance. None other life with you, maid, but
abroad to skip? 25
Tib. Talk. Forsooth, here is one would speak with
your mistress-ship.
C. distance. Ah, have ye been learning of mo
messages now ?
Tib. Talk. I would not hear his mind, but bade
him show it to you.
C. distance. In at doors.
Tib. Talk. I am gone. [Ex.
M. Mery. Dame distance, God ye save.
C. distance. Welcome, friend Merygreeke — and
what thing would ye have? 30
9G RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
M. Mery. I am come to you a little matter to break.
C. distance. But see it be honest, else better not
to speak.
M. Mery. How feel ye yourself affected here of
late ?
C. distance. I feel no manner change but after
the old rate.
But whereby do ye mean?
M. Mery. Concerning marriage. 35
Doth not love lade you ?
C. distance. I feel no such carriage.
M. Mery. Do ye feel no pangs of dotage? answer
me right.
C. distance. I dote so, that I make but one sleep
all the night.
But what need all these words ?
M. Mery. Oh, Jesus, will ye see
What dissembling creatures these same women be? 40
The gentleman ye wot of, whom ye do so love
That ye would fain marry him, if ye durst it move,
" Among other rich widows, which are of him glad,"
Lest ye, for lesing of him, perchance might run
mad,
Is now contented that, upon your suit-making, 45
Ye be as one in election of taking.
C. distance. What a tale is this? "that I wote
of?" "whom I love?"
M. Mery. Yea, and he is as loving a worm, again,
as a dove.
E'en of very pity he is willing you to take,
Because ye shall not destroy yourself for his sake. 50
C. distance. Marry, God yield his maship what-
ever he be.
It is gentmanly spoken.
Scena II] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 97
M. Mery. Is it not, trow ye ?
If ye have the grace now to offer yourself, ye speed.
C. distance. As much as though I did — this time
it shall not need.
But what gentman is it, I pray you tell me plain, 55
That wooeth so finely ?
M. Mery. Lo, where ye be again,
As though ye knew him not.
C. distance. Tush, ye speak in jest. f
M. Mery. Nay sure, the party is in good knacking
earnest, / ' 1
And have you he will, he saith, and have you he must.
C. distance. I am promised during my life ; that
is just. 60
M. Mery. Marry so thinketh he, unto him alone.
C. distance. No creature hath my faith and troth
but one,
That is Gawyn Goodluck, and, if it be not he,
He hath no title this way whatever he be, 64
Nor I know-none to whom I have such word spoken.
M. Mery. Ye know him not, you, by his letter and
token ?
C. distance. Indeed true it is, that a letter I have,
But I never read it yet, as God me save.
M. Mery. Ye a woman, and your letter so long
unread ?
C. distance. Ye may thereby know what haste I
have to wed. 70
But now who it is, for my hand I know by guess.
M. Mery. Ah, well I say !
C. distance. It is Roister Doister, doubtless.
M. Mery. Will ye never leave this dissimulation ?
Ye know him not?
C. distance. But by imagination,
98 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
For no man there is but a very dolt and lout 75
That to woo a widow would so go about.
He shall never have me his wife while he do live.
M. Mery. Then will he have you if he may, so
mote I thrive,
And he biddeth you send him word by me,
That ye humbly beseech him, ye may his wife be, 80
And that there shall be no let in you nor mistrust,
But to be wedded on Sundav next if he lust,
And biddeth you to look for him.
C. Casta nee. Doth he bid so?
M. Mery. When he cometh, ask him whether he
did or no.
C. Cu stance. Go say that I bid him keep him
warm at home, 85
For if he come abroad, he shall cough me a mome ;
My mind was vexed, I shrew his head, sottish
dolt!
M. Mery. He hath in his head —
C. distance. As much brain as a burbolt.
M. Mery. Well, dame Custance, if he hear you
thus play choploge — - <
C. Custance. What will he ?
M. Mery. Play the devil in the horologe. 90
C. Custance. I defy him, lout.
M. Mery. Shall I tell him what ye say?
C. Custance. Yea, and add whatsoever thou canst,
I thee pray.
And I will avouch it, whatsoever it be.
M. Mery. Then let me alone — ;we will laugh well,
ye shall see,
It will not be long ere he will hither resort. 95
C. Custance. Let him come when him lust, I wish
no better sport.
Scena III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 99
Fare ye well, I will in, and read my great letter.
I shall to my wooer make answer the better.
[Exeat.
ACTUS III, SCJENA III
Mathew Merygreeke. Roister Doister.
M. Mery. Now that the whole answer in my device
doth rest,
I shall paint out our wooer in colours of the best,
And all that I say shall be on Custance's mouth;
She is author of all that I shall speak forsooth.
But yond cometh Roister Doister now in a trance. 5
R. Roister. Juno send me this day good luck and
good chance!
I cannot but come see how Merygreeke doth speed.
M. Mery. I will not see him, but give him a jut
indeed.
I cry your mastership mercy.
R. Roister. And whither now?
M. Mery. As fast as I could run, sir, in post against
you. 10
But why speak ye so faintly, or why are ye so sad?
R. Roister. Thou knowest the proverb — because
I cannot be had.
Hast thou spoken with this woman?
M. Mery. Yea, that I have.
R. Roister. And what will this gear be?
M. Mery. No, so God me save.
R. Roister. Hast thou a flat answer?
M. Mery. Nay, a sharp answer.
R. Roister. What? 15
M. Mery. Ye shall not, she saith, by her will marry
her cat.
100 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
Ye are such a calf, such an ass, such a block,
Such a lilburn, such a hoball, such a lobcock,
And because ye should come to her at no season,
She despised your inaship out of all reason. 20
"Bavvawe what ye say," ko I, "of such a gentman."
"Nay, I fear him not," ko she, "do the best he can.
He vaunteth himself for a man of prowess great,
Whereas a good gander, I daresay, may him beat.
And where he is louted and laughed to scorn, 25
For the veriest dolt that ever was born,
And veriest lover, sloven and beast,
Living in this world from the west to the east:
Yet of himself hath he such opinion,
That in all the world is not the like minion. 30
He thinketh each woman to be brought in dotage
With the only sight of his goodly personage.
Yet none that will have him — we do him lout and
flock,
And make him among us our common sporting
stock,
And so would I now," ko she, " save only because." 35
"Better nay," ko I, "I lust not meddle with daws.
Ye are happy," ko I, "that ye are a woman.
This would cost you your life in case ye were a man."
R. Roister. Yea, an hundred thousand pound
should not save her life!
M. Mery. No, but that ye woo her to have her to
your wife — 40
But I could not stop her mouth.
R. Roister. Heigh ho, alas!
M. Mery. Be of good cheer, man, and let the world
pass.
R. Roister. What shall I do or say now that it will
not be?
Scena III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 101
M. Mery. Ye shall have choice of a thousand as
good as she,
And ye must pardon her ; it is for lack of wit. 45
R. Roister. Yea, for were not I an husband for her fit?
Well, what should I now do?
M. Mery. In faith I cannot tell.
R. Roister. 1 will go home and die.
M. Mery. Then shall I bid toll the bell?
R. Roister. No.
M. Mery. God have mercy on your soul, ah, good
gentleman,
That e'er ye should th[u]s die for an unkind woman. 50
Will ye drink once ere ye go?
R. Roister. No, no, I will none.
M. Mery. How feel your soul to God ?
R. Roister. I am nigh gone.
M. Mery. And shall we hence straight?
R. Roister. Yea.
M. Mery. Placebo dilexi. [utinfra.i
Master Roister Doister will straight go home and die.
R. Roister. Heigh-ho! Alas, the pangs of death
my heart do break! 55
M. Mery. Hold your peace for shame, sir, a dead,
man may not speak!
Nequando. — What mourners and what torches shall
we have?
R. Roister. None.
M. Mery. Dirige. He will go darkling to his grave,
Neque lux, neque crux, neque mourners, neque clink, _
He will steal to heaven, unknowing to God, 1 think, 60
A porta inferi. Who shall your goods possess?
R. Roister. Thou shalt be my sectour, and have all
more and less.
1 As below (referring to the Psalmody at the end of the play).
102 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus Til
M. Mery. Requiem cetcrnam. — Now, God reward
your mastership.
And I will cry halfpenny-dole for your worship.
Come forth, sirs, hear the doleful news I shall you
tell. [Evocat servos militis.1 65
Our good master here will no longer with us dwell,
But in spite of distance, which hath him wearied,
Let us see his maship solemnly buried.
And while some piece of his soul is yet him within,
Some part of his funerals let us here begin. 70
Audivi vocem. All men take heede by this one gentle-
man,
How you set your love upon an unkind woman.
For these women be all such mad peevish elves,
They will not be won except it please themselves.
But in faith, distance, if ever ye come in hell, 75
Master Roister Doister shall serve you as well !
And will ye needs go from us thus in very deed?
R. Roister. Yea, in good sadness.
M. Mery. Now, Jesus Christ be your speed.
Good-night, Roger, old knave ! farewell, Roger, old
knave ! 79
Good-night, Roger, old knave! knave, knap! [ut infra.
Pray for the late master Roister Doister's soul,
And come forth, parish clerk, let the passing bell toll.
[Ad servos militis.
Pray for your master, sirs, and for him ring a peal.
He was vour right good master while he was in heal.
Qui Lazarum.
R. Roister. Heigh-ho !
M. Mery. Dead men go not so fast 85
In Paradisum.
1 He calls up the servants of the Miles Gloriosus, or Braggart
Captain, i.e., Roister Doister.
ScenaIII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 103
R. Boister. Heigh-ho !
M. Mery. Soft, hear what I have cast.
R. Roister. I will hear nothing, I am past.
M. Mery. Whough, wellaway!
Ye may tarry one hour, and hear what I shall say,
Ye were best, sir, for a while to revive again,
And quite them ere ye go.
R. Roister. Trowest thou so ?
M. Mery. Yea, plain ! 90
R. Roister. How may I revive, being now so far past?
M. Mery. I will rub your temples, and fet you again
at last.
R. Roister. It will not be possible.
M. Mery. Yes, for twenty pound.
R. Roister. Arms, what dost thou ?
M. Mery. Fet you again out of your sound.
By this cross ye were nigh gone indeed, I might feel 95
Your soul departing within an inch of your heel.
Now follow my counsel.
R. Roister. What is it?
M. Mery. If I were you,
distance should eft seek to me, ere I would bow.
R. Roister. Well, as thou wilt have me, even so
will I do.
M. Mery. Then shall ye revive again for an hour
or two. 100
R. Roister. As thou wilt, I am content for a little
space.
M. Mery. "Good hap is not hasty, yet in space
cometh grace."
To speak with distance yourself should be very well,
What good thereof may come, nor I nor you can tell.
But now the matter standeth upon your marriage, 105
Ye must now take unto you a lusty courage.
104 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
Ye may not speak with a faint heart to Custance,
But with a lusty breast and countenance,
That she may know she hath to answer to a man.
R. Holster. Yes, I can do that as well as any can. 110
M. Mery. Then because ye must Custance face to
face woo,
Let us see how to behave yourself ye can do.
Ye must have a portly brag after your estate.
R. Holster. Tush, I can handle that after the best
rate.
M. Mery. Well done ! so lo, up man with your
head and chin, 115
Up with that suout, man ! So, lo, now ye begin ! —
So, that is something like — but, pranky cote, neigh
whan !
That is a lusty brute — hands under your side,
man!
So, lo, now is it even as it should be —
That is somewhat like, for a man of your degree. 120
Then must ye stately go, jetting up and down.
Tut, can ye no better shake the tail of your gown ?
There, lo, such a lusty brag it is ye must make.
R. Roister. To come behind, and make curtsy,
thou must some pains take.
M. Mery. Else were I much to blame, I thank your
mastership. 125
The Lord one day all-to-begrime you with worship !
Back, Sir Sauce, let gentlefolks have elbow room,
Void, sirs, see ye not master Roister Doister come ?
Make place, my masters.
R. Roister. Thou jostlest now too nigh.
M. Mery. Back, all rude louts !
R. Roister. Tush!
M. Mery. I cry your maship mercy. 130
SciENA III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 105
Heyday — if fair fine mistress distance saw you now,
Ralph Roister Doister were her own, I warrant you.
R. Roister. Ne'er an M. by your girdle ?
M. Mery. Your Good Mastership's
Mastership were her own Mistress-ship's Mistress-ship!
Ye were take up for hawks, ye were gone, ye were
gone ! 135
But now one other thing more yet I think upon.
R. Roister. Show what, it is.
M. Mery. A wooer, be he never so poor,
Must play and sing before his best-beloved's door,
How much more, then, you?
R. Roister. Thou speakest well, out of doubt.
M. Mery. And perchance that would make her the
sooner come out. 140
R. Roister. Go call my musicians, bid them hie
apace.
M. Mery. I will be here with them ere ye can say
"Treyace." ^ \ [Exeat.
R. Roister. This was well said of Merygreeke. I 'low
his wit.
Before my sweetheart's door we will have a fit,
That if my love come forth, that I may with her
talk, 145
I doubt not but this gear shall on my side walk.
But, lo, how well Merygreeke is returned sence.
[Re-enter Merygreeke.
M. Mery. There hath grown no grass on my heel
since I went hence,
Lo, here have 1 brought that shall make you pasr-
ance.
R. Roister. Come, sirs, let us sing to win my dear
love Custance. 150
[Content.
106 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
31. Mery. Lo, where she cometh, some countenance
to her make,
And ye shall hear me be plain with her for your
sake.
ACTUS III, SCLENA IV
Custance. Merygreeke. Roister Doister.
C. Custance. What gauding and fooling is this
afore my door ?
31. Mery. May not folks be honest, pray you,
though they be poor?
C. distance. As that thing may be true, so rich
folks may be fools.
R. Roister. Her talk is as fine as she had learned
in schools.
M. Mery. Look partly toward her, and draw a
little near. 5
C. Custance. Get ye home, idle folks!
31. 31ery. Why, may not we be here ?
Nay, and ye will ha'ze, ha'ze — otherwise, I tell you
plain,
And ye will not ha'ze, then give us our gear again.
C. Custance. Indeed I have of yours much gay
things, God save all.
R. Holster. Speak gently unto her, and let her
take all. 10
31. 31ery. Ye are too tender-hearted : shall she
make us daws?
Nay, dame, I will be plain with you in my friend's
cause.
R. Roister. Let all this pass, sweetheart, aud ac-
cept my service.
Sc.ena IV] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 107
C. distance. I will not be served with a fool in no
wise.
When I choose an husband I hope to take a man. 15
M. Mery. And where will ye find one which can
do that he can ?
Now this man toward you being so kind,
You not to make him an answer somewhat to his
mind !
C. distance. I sent him a full answer by you, did
I not ?
M. Mery. And I reported it.
C. distance. Nay, I must speak it again. 20
R. Roister. No, no, he told it all.
M. Mery. Was I not meetly plain ?
R. Roister. Yes.
M. Mery. But I would not tell all ; for faith, if I
had,
With you, dame distance, ere thishour it had been bad,
And not without cause — for this goodly personage
Meant no less than to join with you in marriage. 25
C. distance. Let him waste no more labour nor
suit about me.
M. Mery. Ye know not where your preferment
lieth, I see,
He sending you such a token, ring and letter.
C. distance. Marry, here it is — ye never saw a
better.
M. Mery. Let us see your letter.
C. distance. Hold, read it if ye can, 30
And see what letter it is to win a woman.
M. Mery. " To mine own dear coney-bird, sweet-
heart, and pigsney,
Good Mistress Custance, present these by and by."
Of this superscription do ye blame the style?
108 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
C. Custance. With the rest as good stuff as ye
read a great while. 35
M. Mery. " Sweet mistress, where as I love you
nothing at all —
Regarding your substance and richesse chief of all — ■
For your personage, beauty, demeanour and wit,
I commend me unto you never a whit. —
Sorry to hear report of your good welfare, 40
For (as I hear say) such your conditions are,
That ye be worthy favour of no living man,
To be abhorred of every honest man,
To be taken for a woman inclined to vice,
Nothing at all to virtue giving her due price. — 45
Wherefore, concerning marriage, ye are thought
Such a fine paragon, as ne'er honest man bought. —
And now by these presents I do you advertise
Tliat I am minded to marry you in no wise. —
For your goods and substance, I could be content 50
To take you as ye are. If ye mind to be my wife,
Ye shall be assured, for the time of my life,
I will keep you right well from good raiment and
fare —
Ye shall not be kept but in sorrow and care —
Ye shall in no wise live at your own liberty. 55
Do and say what ye lust, ye shall never please me ;
But when ye are merry, I will be all sad ;
When ye are sorry, I will be very glad ;
When ye seek your heart's ease, I will be unkind ;
At no time in me shall ye much gentleness find, 60
But all things contrary to your will and mind,
Shall be done — otherwise I will not be behind
To speak. And as for all them that would do you
wrong,
I will so help and maintain, ye shall not live long —
SoenaIV] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 109
Nor any foolish dolt shall cumber you but I. 65
I, whoe'er say nay, will stick by you till I die.
Thus, good mistress Custance, the Lord you save and
keep;
From me, Roister Doister, whether I wake or sleep —
Who favoureth you no less, ye may be bold,
Than this letter purporteth, which ye have unfold." 70
C. distance. How by this letter of love ? is it not
fine ?
R. Roister. By the arms of Caleys, it is none of
mine.
31. Mevy. Fie, you are foul to blame, this is your
own hand !
C. Custance. Might not a woman be proud of such
an husband ?
31. 3Iery. Ah, that ye would in a letter show such
despite ! 75
R. Roister. Oh, I would I had him here, the which
did it endite!
31. 3tery. Why, ye made it yourself, ye told me, by
this light.
R. Roister. Yea, I meant I wrote it mine own self
yesternight.
C. Custance. I-wis, sir, I would not have sent you
such a mock.
R. Roister. Ye may so take it, but I meant it not
so, by Cock. 80
31. 3Iery. Who can blame this woman to fume and
fret and rage?
Tut, tut! yourself now have marred your own marriage.
Well, yet mistress Custance, if ye can this remit,
This gentleman otherwise may your love requit.
C. Custance. No, God be with you both, and seek
no more to me. [Exeat.
110 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
R. Roister. Wough ! she is gone for ever, I shall
her no more see. 86
M. Mery. What, weep? Fie, for shame! And blub-
ber ? For manhood's sake,
Never let your foe so much pleasure of you take.
Rather play the man's part, and do love refrain.
If she despise you, e'en despise ye her again. 90
it. Roister. By Goss, and for thy sake I defy her
indeed.
M. Mery. Yea, and perchance that way ye shall
much sooner speed,
For one mad property these women have in fey,
When ye will, they will not, will not ye, then will they.
Ah, foolish woman ! ah, most unlucky Custance! 95
Ah, unfortunate woman ! ah, peevish Custance !
Art thou to thine harms so obstinately bent,
That thou canst not see where lieth thine high prefer-
ment ?
Canst thou not lub dis man, which could lub dee so
well ?
Art thou so much thine own foe?
R. Roister. Thou dost the truth tell. 100
M. Mery. Well I lament.
R. Roister. So do I.
M. Mery. Wherefore ?
it. Roister. For this thing.
Because she is gone.
M. Mery. I mourn for another thing.
R. Roister. What is it, Merygreeke, wherefore
thou dost grief take ?
M. Mery. That I am not a woman myself for your
sake,
I would have you myself, and a straw for yond gill, 105
And mock much of you, though it were against my will.
Sc,ENA IV] RALPH R 01 S TER D 01 S TER 111
I would not, I warrant you, fall in such a rage,
As so to refuse such a goodly personage.
R. Roister. In faith, I heartily thank thee, Mery-
greeke.
M. Mery. And I were a woman —
R. Roister. Thou wouldest to me seek. 110
M. Mery. For, though I say it, a goodly person ye
be.
R. Roister. No, no.
M. Mery. Yes, a goodly man as e'er I did see.
R. Roister. No, I am a poor homely man, as God
made me.
M. Mery. By the faith that I owe to God, sir, but
ye be !
Would 1 might for your sake spend a thousand pound
land. 115
R. Roister. I dare say thou wouldest have me to
thy husband.
M. Mery. Yea, and I were the fairest lady in the
shire,
And knew you as I know you, and see yoti now here —
Well, I say no more.
R. Roister. Gramercies, with all my heart !
M. Mery. But since that cannot be, will ye play a
wise part? 120
R. Roister. How should I ?
M. Mery. Refrain from distance a while now,
Ami I warrant her soon right glad to seek to you.
Ye shall see her anon come on her knees creeping,
And pray you to be good to her, salt tears weep-
ing.
R. Roister. But what and she come not ?
M. Mery. In faith, then, farewell she. 125
Or else if ye be wroth, ye may avenged be.
112 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
R. Roister. By Cock's precious potstick, and e'en
so I shall.
I will utterly destroy her, and house and all.
But I would be avenged in the mean space,
On that vile scribbler, that did my wooing disgrace. 130
M. Mery. " Scribbler," ko you, indeed he is worthy
no less.
I will call him to you, and ye bid me doubtless.
R. Roister. Yes, for although he had as many lives,
As a thousand widows, and a thousand wives,
As a thousand lions, and a thousand rats, 135
A thousand wolves, and a thousand cats,
A thousand bulls, and a thousand calves,
And a thousand legions divided in halves,
He shall never 'scape death on my sword's point,
Though I should be torn therefore joint by joint. 140
M. Mery. Nay, if ye will kill him, I will not fet
him,
I will not in so much extremity set him ;
He may yet amend, sir, and be an honest man,
Therefore pardon him, good soul, as much as ye can.
R. Roister. Well, for thy sake, this once with his
life he shall pass, 145
But I will hew him all to pieces, by the Mass.
M. Mery. Nay, faith, ye shall promise that he shall
no harm have,
Else I will not fet him.
R. Roister. I shall, so God me save —
But I may chide him a-good.
M. Mery. Yea, that do, hardily.
R. Roister. Go, then.
M. Mery. I return, and bring him to you by and
by. 150
\Ex.
Scena V] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 113
ACTUS III, SCiENA V
Roister Doister. Mathew Merygreeke. Scrivener.
R. Roister. What is a gentleman but his word
and his promise ?
I must now save this villain's life in any wise,
And yet at him already my hands do tickle,
I shall uneth hold them, they will be so fickle.
But, lo, and Merygreeke have not brought him sence.
M. Mery. Nay, I would I had of my purse paid
forty pence. 6
Scrivener. So would I too ; but it needed not, that
stound.
M. Mery. But the gentman had rather spent five
thousand pound,
For it disgraced him at least five times so much.
Scrivener. He disgraced himself, his loutishness is
such. 10
R. Roister. How long they stand prating ! Why
comest thou not away ?
M. Mery. Come now to himself, and hark what
he will say.
Scrivener. I am not afraid in his presence to appear.
R. Roister. Art thou come, fellow?
Scrivener. How think you? Am I not here?
R. Roister. What hindrance hast thou done me,
and what villainy? 15
Scrivener. It hath come of thyself, if thou hast
had any.
R. Roister. All the stock thou comest of later or
rather,
From thy first father's grandfather's father's father,
Nor all that shall come of thee to the world's end,
114 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
Though to threescore generations they descend, 20
Can be able to make me a just recompense,
For this trespass of thine and this one offence.
Scrivener. Wherein ?
R. Roister. Did not you make me a letter, brother?
Scrivener. Pay the like hire, I will make you such
another.
R. Roister. Nay, see and these whoreson Pharisees
and Scribes 25
Do not get their living by polling and bribes.
If it were not for shame —
Scrivener. Nay, hold thy hands still.
M. Mery. Why, did ye not promise that ye would
not him spill?
Scrivener. Let him not spare me.
R. Roister. Why wilt thou strike me again?
Scrivener. Ye shall have as good as ye bring of
me, that is plain. 30
M. Mery. I cannot blame him, sir, though your
blows would him grieve.
For he knoweth present death to ensue of all ye give.
R. Roister. Well, this man for once hath pur-
chased thy pardon.
Scrivener. And what say ye to me? or else I will
be gone.
R. Roister. I say the letter thou madest me was
not good. 35
Scrivener. Then did ye wrong copy it, of likelihood.
R. Roister. Yes, out of thy copy word for word I
wrote.
Scrivener. Then was it as ye prayed to have it, I wot,
But in reading and pointing there was made some fault.
R. Roister. I wot not, but it made all my matter
to halt. 40
SCiENAV] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 115
Scrivener. How say you, is this mine original or no ?
R. Holster. The self same that I wrote out of, so
mote I go !
Scrivener. Look you on your own fist, and I will
look on this,
And let this man be judge whether I read amiss.
u To mine own dear coney-bird, sweetheart, and
pigsney, 45
Good Mistress distance, present these by and by."
How now ? doth not this superscription agree ?
R. Roister. Read that is within, and there ye
shall the fault see.
Scrivener. " Sweet mistress, whereas I love you
nothing at all 49
Regarding your richesse and substance — chief of all
For your personage, beauty, demeanour, and wit
I commend me unto you. — Never a whit
Sorry to hear report of your good welfare,
For (as I hear say) such your conditions are,
That ye be worthy favour ; of no living man 55
To be abhorred ; of every honest man
To be taken for a woman inclined to vice
Nothing at all ; to virtue giving her due price. —
Wherefore concerning marriage, ye are thought
Such a fine paragon, as ne'er honest man bought. — 60
And now by these presents I do you advertise,
That I am minded to marry you — in no wise
For your goods and substance — I can be content
To take you as you are. If ye will be my wife,
Ye shall be assured for the time of my life, 65
I will keep you right well ; from, good raiment and
fare,
Ye shall not be kept ; but in sorrow and care
Ye shall in no wise live ; at your own liberty,
116 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus III
Do and say what ye lust ; ye shall never please me
But when ye are merry ; I will be all sad 70
When ye are sorry; I will be very glad
When ye seek your heart's ease ; 1 will be unkind
At no time ; in me shall ye much gentleness find.
But all things contrary to your will and mind
Shall be done otherwise ; I will not be behind 75
To speak. And as for all them that would do you
wrong —
I will so help and maintain ye — shall not live long.
Nor any foolish dolt shall cumber you, but I,
I, whoe'er say nay, will stick by you till I die.
Thus, good mistress Custance, the Lord you save and
keep. — 80
From me, Roister Doister, whether I wake or sleep,
Who favoureth you no less, ye may be bold,
Than this letter purporteth, which ye have unfold."
Now, sir, what default can ye find in this letter?
R. Roister. Of truth, in my mind there cannot be
a better. 85
Scrivener. Then was the fault in reading, and not
in writing,
No, nor I dare say in the form of enditing.
But who read this letter, that it sounded so naught ?
M. Mery. I read it, indeed.
Scrivener. Ye read it not as ye ought.
R. Roister. Why, thou wretched villain, was all
this same fault in thee ? 90
M. Mery. I knock your costard if ye offer to strike
me !
R. Roister. Strikest thou, indeed? and I offer but
in jest ?
M. Mery. Yea, and rap you again except ye can sit
in rest —
Sc,enaI] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 117
And I will no longer tarry here, me believe !
R. Roister. What, wilt thou be angry, and I do thee
forgive ? 95
Fare thou well, scribbler, I cry thee mercy indeed.
Scrivener. Fare ye well, bibbler, and worthily may
ye speed !
R. Roister. If it were another but thou, it were a
knave.
M. Mery. Ye are another yourself, sir, the Lord us
both save.
Albeit in this matter I must your pardon crave. 100
Alas, would ye wish in me the wit that ye have ?
But as for my fault I can quickly amend,
I will show Custance it was I that did offend.
R. Roister. By so doing her anger maybe reformed.
M. Mery. But if by no entreaty she will be turned,
Then set light by her and be as testy as she, 106
And do your force upon her with extremity.
R. Roister. Come on, therefore, let us go home in
sadness.
M. Mery. That if force shall need all may be in a
readiness —
And as for this letter, hardily, let all go. 110
We will know where she refuse you for that or no.
[Exeant am.
ACTUS IV, SC2ENA I
Sym Suresby.
Sym Sure. Is there any man but I, Sym Suresby,
alone,
That would have taken such an enterprise him upon,
In such an outrageous tempest as this was,
Such a dangerous gulf of the sea to pass?
118 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
I think, verily, Neptune's mighty godship 5
Was angry with some that was in our ship,
And but for the honesty which in me he found,
I think for the others' sake we had been drowned.
But fie on that servant which for his master's wealth
Will stick for to hazard both his life and his health. 10
My master, Gawyn Goodluck, after me a day,
Because of the weather, thought best his ship to stay,
And now that I have the rough surges so well past,
God grant I may find all things safe here at last.
Then will I think all my travail well spent. 15
Now the first point wherefore my master hath me sent.
Is to salute dame Christian distance, his wife
Espoused, whom he tendereth no less than his life.
I must see how it is with her, well or wromr.
And whether for him she doth not now think lon<r. 20
Then to other friends I have a message or tway,
And then so to return and meet him on the way.
Now will I go knock that I may despatch with speed,
But lo, forth cometh herself happily indeed.
ACTUS IV, SCJENA II
Christian Custance. Sym Suresby.
C. distance. I come to see if any more stirring
be here,
But what stranger is this which doth to me appear?
Sym Sure. I will speak to her. Dame, the Lord
you save and see.
C. Custance. What, friend Sym Suresby? For-
sooth, right welcome ye be !
How doth mine own Gawyn Goodluck, I pray thee
tell?
Sc*:na III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 119
Sym Sure. When he knoweth of your health he
will be perfect well.
C. distance. If he have perfect health, I am as I
would be.
Sym Sure. Such news will please him well, this
is as it should be.
C. distance. I think now long for him.
Sym Sure. And he as long for you.
C. distance. When will he be at home?
Sym Sure. His heart is here e'en now, 10
His body cometh after.
C. distance. I would see that fain.
Sym Sure. As fast as wind and sail can carry it
amain. —
But what two men are yond coming hitherward?
C. distance. Now I shrew their best Christmas
cheeks both togetherward.
ACTUS IV, SOENA III
Christian Custance. Sym Suresby. Ralph Roister. Mathew
Merygreeke. Trupenie.
C. Custance. What mean these lewd fellows thus
to trouble me still?
Sym Suresby here perchance shall thereof deem some
ill,
And shall suspect in me some point of naughtiness —
And they come hitherward !
Sym Sure. What is their business?
C. distance. I have nought to them ; nor they to
me in sadness. 5
Sym Sure. Let us hearken them ; somewhat there
is, I fear it.
120 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
R. Roister. I will speak out aloud best, that she
may hear it.
M. Mery. Nay, alas, ye may so fear her out of her
wit.
R. Roister. By the cross of my sword, I will hurt
her no whit.
M. Mery. Will ye do no harm indeed? shall I
trust your word? 10
R. Roister. By Roister Doister's faith, I will speak
but in bord.
Sym Sure. Let us hearken them ; somewhat there
is, I fear it.
R . Roister. I will speak out aloud, I care not who
hear it :
Sirs, see that my harness, my target, and my shield,
Be made as bright now, as when I was last in field, 15
As white as I should to war agfain to-morrow :
For sick shall I be, but I work some folk sorrow.
Therefore see that all shine as bright as Saint George,
Or as doth a key newly come from the smith's forge,
I would have my sword and harness to shine so
bright, 20
That I might therewith dim mine enemies' sight,
I would have it cast beams as fast, I tell you plain,
As doth the glittering grass after a shower of rain.
And see that in case I should need to come to arming,
All things may be ready at a minute's warning, 25
For such chance may chance in an hour, do ye hear?
M. Mery. As perchance shall not chance again in
seven year.
R. Roister. Now draw we near to her, and hear
what shall be said.
M. Mery. But I would not have you make her
too much afraid.
ScenaIII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 121
R. Roister. Well found, sweet wife, I trust, for
all this your sour look. 30
C. distance. " Wife " — why call ye me wife ?
Sym Sure. " Wife ? " This gear goeth a-crook.
M. Mery. Nay, mistress distance, I warrant you,
our letter
Is not as we read e'en now, but much better,
And where ye half stomached this gentleman afore.
For this same letter, ye will love him now therefore,
Nor it is not this letter, though ye were a queen, 36
That should break marriage between you twain, I ween,
C. distance. I did not refuse him for the letter's
sake.
R. Roister. Then ye are content me for your hus-
band to take ?
C. distance. You for my husband to take ? no-
thing less, truly. 40
R. Roister. Yea, say so, sweet spouse, afore
strangers hardily.
M. Mery. And though I have here his letter of
love with me,
Yet his ring and tokens he sent, keep safe with ye.
C. distance. A mischief take his tokens, and him
and thee too !
But what prate I with fools? have I naught else to do?
Come in with me, Sym Suresby, to take some
repast. 46
Sym Sure. I must ere I drink, by your leave, go
in all haste,
To a place or two, with earnest letters of his.
C. distance. Then come drink here with me.
Sym Sure. I thank you !
C. distance. Do not miss.
You shall have a token to your master with you. 50
122 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
Sym Sure. No tokens this time, gramercies, God be
with you. [Exeat.
C. Custance. Surely this fellow misdeemeth some
ill in me,
Which thing but God help, will go near to spill me.
R. Roister. Yea, farewell, fellow, and tell thy mas-
ter Good luck
That he cometh too late of this blossom to pluck 55
Let him keep him there still, or at leastwise make no
haste,
As for his labour hither he shall spend in waste.
His betters be in place now.
M. Mery. As long as it will hold.
C. Custance. I will be even with thee, thou beast,
thou mayst be bold !
R. Roister. Will ye have us then?
C. distance. I will never have thee ! 60
R. Roister. Then will I have you ?
C. Custance. No, the devil shall have thee !
I have gotten this hour more shame and harm by thee,
Than all thy life days thou canst do me honesty.
M. Mery. Why now may ye see what it cometh to,
in the end,
To make a deadly foe of your most loving friend ; 65
And, i-wis, this letter, if ye would hear it now —
C Custance. I will hear none of it.
M. Mery. In faith, would ravish you.
C. Custance. He hath stained my name for ever,
this is clear.
R. Roister. I can make all as well in an hour.
M. Mery. As ten year.
How say ye, will ye have him ?
C. Custance. No.
M. Mery. Will ye take him ? 70
Sc;ena III] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 123
C. distance. I defy him.
M. Mery. At my word ?
C. distance. A shame take him.
Waste no more wind, for it will never be.
M. Mery. This one fault with twain shall be mended,
ye shall see.
Gentle mistress distance, now, good mistress dis-
tance !
Honey mistress Custance, now, sweet mistress Cus-
tance ! 75
Golden mistress Custance, now, white mistress dis-
tance !
Silken mistress distance, now, fair mistress distance!
C. distance. Faith, rather than to marry with such
a doltish lout,
I would match myself with a beggar, out of doubt.
M. Mery. Then I can say no more ; to speed we
are not like, 80
Except ye rap out a rag of your rhetoric.
C. distance. Speak not of winning me, for it shall
never be so !
R. Roister. Yes, dame, I will have you, whether
ye will or no !
I command you to love me, wherefore should ye not ?
Is not my love to you chafing and burning hot ? 85
M. Mery. To her ! That is well said.
R. Roister. Shall I so break my brain
To dote upon you, and ye not love us again?
M. Mery. Well said yet !
C. distance. Go to, you goose !
R. Roister. I say, Kit Custance,
In case ye will not ha'ze, — well, better " yes,"
perchance !
C. distance. Avaunt, losel! pick thee hence.
124 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
M. Mery. Well, sir, ye perceive, 90
For all your kind offer, she will not you receive.
R. Roister. Then a straw for her, and a straw for
her again,
She shall not be my wife, would she never so fain —
No, and though she would be at ten thousand pound
cost!
M. Mery. Lo, dame, ye may see what an husband
ye have lost. 95
C. distance. Yea, no force, a jewel much better
lost than found.
M. Mery. Ah, ye will not believe how this doth
my heart wound.
How should a marriage between you be toward,
If both parties draw back, and become so froward?
R. Roister. Nay, dame, I will fire thee out of thy
house, 100
And destroy thee and all thine, and that by and by !
M. Mery. Nay, for the passion of God, sir, do not so.
R. Roister. Yes, except she will say yea to that she
said no.
C. distance. And what — be there no officers, trow
we, in town
To check idle loiterers, bragging up and down? 105
Where be they, by whom vagabonds should be re-
pressed,
That poor silly widows might live in peace and rest?
Shall I never rid thee out of my company?
I will call for help. What ho, come forth, Trupenie!
[Enter Trupenie.
Trupenie. Anon. What is your will, mistress? did
ye call me? 110
C. distance. Yea. Go run apace, and as fast as may
be.
ScenaIII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 125
Pray Tristram Trustie, my most assured friend,
To be here by and by, that he may me defend.
Trupenie. That message so quickly shall be done,
by God's grace,
That at my return ye shall say, I went apace. 115
[Exeat.
C. Custance. Then shall we see, I trow, whether
ye shall do me harm.
R. Roister. Yes, in faith, Kit, I shall thee and thine
so charm,
That all women incarnate by thee may beware.
C. Custance. Nay, as for charming me, come hither
if thou dare,
I shall clout thee till thou stink, both thee and thy
train, 120
And coil thee mine own hands, and send thee home
again.
R. Roister. Yea, sayest thou me that, dame? Dost
thou me threaten?
Go we, I still see whether I shall be beaten!
M. Mcry. Nay, for the pashe of God, let me now
treat peace,
For bloodshed will there be in case this strife in-
crease. 125
Ah, good dame Custance, take better way with you.
C. Custance. Let him do his worst.
M. Mery. Yield in time.
R. Roister. Come hence, thou.
[Exeant Roister et Mery.
126 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
ACTUS IV, SC^NA IV
Christian Clstance. Annot Alyface. Tibet T.
M. MUMBLECKPST.
C. distance. So, sirrah, if I should not with him
take this way,
I should not be rid of him, I think, till doom's
day.
I will call forth my folks, that, without any mocks,
If he come again we may give him raps and knocks.
Madge Mumblecrust, come forth, and Tibet Talk-
apace. 5
Yea, and come forth too, mistress Annot Alyface.
An. Alyface. I come.
Tibet. And I am here.
M. Mumble. And I am here too, at length.
C. distance. Like warriors, if need be, ye must
show your strength.
The man that this day hath thus beguiled you,
Is Ralph Roister Doister, whom ye know well inowe, 10
The most lout and dastard that ever on ground
trod.
Tib. Talk. I see all folk mock him when he goeth
abroad.
C. distance. What, pretty maid, will ye talk when
I speak?
Tib. Talk. No, forsooth, good mistress!
C distance. Will ye my tale break?
He threateneth to come hither with all his force to
fight, 15
I charge you, if he come, on him with all your might.
M. Mumble. I with my distaff will reach him
one rap.
Sc^na V] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 127
Tib. Talk. And I with my new broom will sweep
him one swap,
And then with our great club I will reach him one rap.
An. Alyface. And I with our skimmer will fling
him one flap. 20
Tib. Talk. Then Trupenie's firefork will him
shrewdly fray,
And you with the spit may drive him quite away.
C. distance. Go, make all ready, that it may be
even so.
Tib. Talk. For my part I shrew them that last
about it go. [Exeant.
ACTUS IV, SCLENA V
Christian Custance. Trdpeme. Tristram Trustie.
C. Custance. Trupenie did promise me to run a
great pace,
My friend Tristram Trustie to fet into this place.
Indeed he dwelleth hence a good start, I confess:
But yet a quick messenger might twice since, as I
guess,
Have gone and come again. Ah, yond I spy him now!
Trupenie. Ye are a slow goer, sir, I make God
avow. 6
My mistress Custance will in me put all the blame,
Your legs be longer than mine — come apace for
shame!
C. Custance. I can thee thank, Trupenie, thou
hast clone right well.
Trupenie. Mistress, since I went no grass hath
grown on my heel, 10
But master Tristram Trustie here maketh no speed.
fllA
128 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
C. distance. That he came at all, I thank him in
very deed,
For now have I need of the help of some wise man.
T. Trustie. Then may I be gone again, for none
such I am.
Trupenie. Ye may be by your going — for no
Alderman 15
Can go, I dare say, a sadder pace than ye can.
G. distance. Trupenie, get thee in. Thou shalt
among them know,
How to use thyself like a proper man, I trow.
Trupenie. I go. [Ex.
C' distance. Now, Tristram Trustie, I thank you
right much.
For, at my first sending, to come ye never grutch. 20
T. Trustie. Dame Custance, God ye save, and
while my life shall last,
For my friend Goodluck's sake ye shall not send in
wast.
C Custance. He shall give you thanks.
T. Trustie. I will do much for his sake.
G distance. But alack, I fear, great displeasure
shall be take.
T. Trustie. Wherefore?
C. Custance. For a foolish matter.
T. Trustie. What is your cause? 25
C. Custance. I am ill accombred with a couple of
daws.
T. Trustie. Nay, weep not, woman, but tell me
what your cause is.
As concerning my friend is anything amiss ?
C. Custance. No, not on my part; but here was
Sym Suresby —
T. Trustie. He was with me and told me so.
Soena V] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 129
C. distance. And he stood by 30
While Ralph Roister Doister with help of Mery-
greeke,
For promise of marriage did unto me seek.
T. Trustie. And had ye made any promise before
them twain ?
C. distance. No, I had rather be torn in pieces
and slain,
No man hath my faith and troth, but Gawyn Good-
luck, 35
And that before Suresby did I say, and there stuck,
Bat of certain letters there were such words spoken —
T. Trustie. He told me that too.
C. distance. And of a ring and token, —
That Suresby I spied did more than half suspect,
That I my faith to Gawyn Good luck did reject. 40
T. Trustie. But there was no such matter, dame
distance, indeed?
C. distance. If ever my head thought it, God
send me ill speed !
"Wherefore, I beseech you, with me to be a witness,
That in all my life I never intended thing less,
And what a brainsick fool Ralph Roister Doister is, 45
Yourself know well enough.
T. Trustie. Ye say full true, i-wis.
C. distance. Because to be his wife I ne errant
nor apply,
Hither will he come, he sweareth, by and by,
To kill both me and mine, and beat down my house flat.
Therefore I pray your aid.
T. Trustie. I warrant you that. 50
C. distance. Have I so many years lived a sober
life,
And showed myself honest, maid, widow, and wife,
130 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus I\
And now to be abused in such a vile sort?
Ye see how poor widows live all void of comfort.
T. Trustie. I warrant him do you no harm nor
wrong- at all. 55
C. distance. No, but Mathew Merygreeke doth
me most appall,
That he would join himself with such a wretched
lout.
T. Trustie. He doth it for a jest, I know him out
of doubt,
And here coineth Merygreeke.
C distance. Then shall we hear his mind.
ACTUS IV, SCLENA VI
Merygreeke. Christian Custance. Trist. Trustie.
M. Mery. Custance and Trustie both, I do you
here well find.
C. distance. Ah, Mathew Merygreeke, ye have
used me well.
M. Mery. Now for altogether ye must your answer
tell.
Will ye have this man, woman, or else will ye
not?
Else will he come, never boar so brim nor toast so
hot. 5
Tris. and dis. But why join ye with him ?
T. Trustie. For mirth ?
C. Custance. Or else in sadness ?
M. Mery. The more fond of you both ! Hardily the
matter guess.
T. Trustie. Lo, how say ye, dame?
M. Mery. Why do ye think, dame Custance,
Sc.enaVI] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 131
That in this wooing I have meant ought but past-
ance ?
C. distance. Much things ye spake, I wot, to
maintain his dotage. 10
M. Mery. But well might ye judge I spake it all
in mockage.
For why ? Is Roister Doister a fit husband for you ?
T. Trustie. I daresay ye never thought it.
M. Mery. No, to God I vow.
And did not I know afore of the insurance
Between Gawyn Goodluck and Christian Custance?
And did not I for the nonce, by my conveyance, 16
Read his letter in a wrong sense for dalliance?
That if you could have take it up at the first bound,
We should thereat such a sport and pastime have
found,
That all the whole town should have been the merrier.
C. Custance. Ill ache your heads both ! I was
never wearier, 21
Nor never more vexed since the first day I was born!
T. Trustie. But very well I wist he here did all
in scorn.
C. distance. But I feared thereof to take dis-
honesty.
M. Mery. This should both have made sport and
showed your honesty, 25
And Goodluck, I dare swear, your wit therein would
'low.
T. Trustie. Yea, being no worse than we know it
to be now.
M. Mery. And nothing yet too late; for when I
come to him,
Hither will he repair with a sheep's look full grim,
By plain force and violence to drive you to yield. 30
132
RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
C. distance. If ye two bid me, we will with him
pitch a field,
I and my maids together.
M. Mery. Let us see ! be bold.
C. distance. Ye shall see women's war!
T. Trustie. That fight will I behold !
M. Mery. If occasion serve, taking his part full
brim,
I will strike at you, but the rap shall light on him, 35
When we first appear.
C. distance. Then will I run away
As though I were afeard.
T. Trustie. Do you that part well play
And I will sue for peace.
M. Mery. And I will set him on.
Then will he look as fierce as a Cotsold lion.
T. Trustie. But when goest thou for him ?
M. Mery. That do I very now. 40
C. distance. Ye shall find us here.
M. Mery. Well, God have mercy on you !
T. Trustie. There is no cause of fear ; the least
boy in the street —
C. distance. Nay, the least girl I have, will make
him take his feet.
But hark ! methink they make preparation.
T. Trustie. No force, it will be a good recreation !
C. distance. I will stand within, and step forth
speedily, 46
And so make as though I ran away dreadfully.
SoenaVII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 133
ACTUS IV, SCLENA VII
R. Roister. M. Meryoreeke. C. Cdstance. D. Doughtie.
Harpax. Tristram Trustie.
R. Roister. Now, sirs, keep your ray, and see your
hearts be stout.
But where be these caitiffs? methinkthey dare not rout!
How sayest thou, Merygreeke? — what doth Kit dis-
tance say ?
M. Mery. I am loth to tell you.
R. Roister. Tush, speak, man — yea or nay ?
M. Mery. Forsooth, sir, I have spoken for you all
that I can, 5
But if ye win her, ye must e'en play the man,
E'en to fight it out, ye must a man's heart take.
R. Roister. Yes, they shall know, and thou know-
est, I have a stomach.
[M. Mery.~\ " A stomach," quod you, yea, as good
as e'er man had!
R. Roister. I trow they shall find and feel that I
am a lad. 10
M. Mery. By this cross, I have seen you eat your
meat as well
As any that e'er I have seen of or heard tell.
" A stomach," quod you ? He that will that deny,
I know, was never at dinner in your company.
R. Roister. Nay, the stomach of a man it is that I
mean. 15
M. Mery. Nay, the stomach of a horse or a dog,I ween.
R. Roister. Nay, a man's stomach with a weapon,
mean I.
M. Mery. Ten men can scarce match you with a
spoon in a pie.
134 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
R. Roister. Nay, the stomach of a man to try in
strife.
M. Mery. I never saw your stomach cloyed yet in
my life. 20
R. Roister. Tush, I mean in strife or fighting to try.
M. Mery. We shall see how ye will strike now,
being angry.
R. Roister. Have at thy pate then, and save thy
head if thou may.
M. Mery. Nay, then have at your pate again by
this day.
R. Roister. Nay, thou mayst not strike at me again
in no wise. 25
M. Mery. I cannot in fight make to you such
warrantise :
But as for your foes, here let them the bargain bie.
R. Roister. Nay, as for they, shall every mother's
child die.
And in this my fume a little thing might make me
To beat down house and all, and else the devil take
me ! 30
M. Mery. If I were as ye be, by Gog's dear
mother,
I would not leave one stone upon another,
Though she would redeem it with twenty thousand
pounds.
R. Roister. It shall be even so, by His lily wounds.
M. Mery. Be not at one with her upon any
amends. 35
R. Roister. No, though she make to me never so
many friends,
Nor if all the world for her would undertake,
No, not God himself neither, shall not her peace
make,
Scena VII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 135
On, therefore, inarch forward! — Soft, stay a while
yet.
M. Mery. On.
R. Roister. Tarry.
M. Mery. Forth.
R. Roister. Back.
M. Mery On.
R. Roister. Soft ! Now forward set ! 40
C. distance. What business have we here ? Out!
alas, alas !
R. Roister. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha !
Didst thou see that, Merygreeke, how afraid she
was?
Didst thou see how she fled apace out of my sight?
Ah, good sweet Custance, I pity her by this light. 45
M. Mery. That tender heart of yours will mar alto-
gether, —
Thus will ye be turned with wagging of a feather.
R. Roister. On, sirs, keep your ray.
M. Mery. On, forth, while this gear is hot.
R. Roister. Soft, the arms of Caleys, I have one
thing forgot ! 49
M. Mery. What lack we now?
R. Roister. Retire, or else we be all slain !
M. Mery. Back, for the pash of God! back, sirs,
back again !
What is the great matter?
R. Roister. This hasty forthgoing
Had almost brought us all to utter undoing,
It made me forget a thing most necessary.
M. Mery. Well remembered of a captain, by Saint
Mary. 55
R. Roister. It is a thing must be had.
M. Mery. Let us have it then.
136 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
R. Roister. But I wot not where nor how.
M. Mery. Then wot not I when.
But what is it ?
R. Roister. Of a chief thing I am to seek.
M. Mery. Tut, so will ye be, when ye have studied
a week.
But tell me what it is ?
R. Roister. I lack yet an headpiece. 60
M. Mery. The kitchen collocavit, the best hens to
grease,
Run, fet it, Dobinet, and come at once withal,
And bring with thee my pot-gun, hanging by the
wall. [Exit Dobinet.
I have seen your head with it, full many a time,
Covered as safe as it had been with a skrine i_ ' 65
And I warrant it save your head from any stroke,
Except perchance to be amazed with the smoke.
I warrant your head therewith, except for the mist,
As safe as if it were fast locked up in a chest.
And lo, here our Dobinet cometh with it now. 70
[Re-enter Dobinet.
D. Doughtie. It will cover me to the shoulders well
enow.
M. Mery. Let me see it on.
R. Roister. In faith, it doth metely well.
M. Mery. There can be no fitter thing. Now ye
must us tell
What to do.
R. Roister. Now forth in ray, sirs, and stop no
more !
M. Mery. Now, Saint George to borrow, drum dub-
a-dub afore ! 75
T. Trustie. What mean you to do, sir, commit
manslaughter ?
SoenaVII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 137
R. Roister. To kill forty such is a matter of laugh-
ter.
T. Trustie. And who is it, sir, whom ye intend thus
to spill?
R. Holster. Foolish Custance here forceth me
against my will.
T. Trustie. And is there no mean your extreme
wrath to slake ? 80
She shall some amends unto your good maship make.
JR. Roister. I will none amends.
T. Trustie. Is her offence so sore ?
M. Mery. And he were a lout she could have done
no more.
She hath called him fool, and dressed him like a
fool,
Mocked him like a fool, used him like a fool. 85
T. Trustie. Well, yet the sheriff, the justice, or
constable,
Her misdemeanour to punish might be able.
R. Roister. No, sir, I mine own self will, in this
present cause,
Be sheriff, and justice, and whole judge of the laws ;
This matter to amend, all officers be I shall,
Constable, bailiff, sergeant.
M. Mery. And hangman and all. 90
T. Trustie. Yet a noble courage, and the heart of
a man,
Should more honour win by bearing with a woman.
Therefore take the law, and let her answer thereto.
R. Roister. Merygreeke, the best way were even
so to do.
What honour should it be with a woman to fight? 95
M. Mery. And what then, will ye thus forgo and
lese your right ?
138 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
R. Roister. Nay, I will take the law on her with-
outen grace.
T. Trustie. Or, if your maship could pardon this
one trespass,
I pray you forgive her!
R. Roister. Ho !
M. Mery. Tush, tush, sir, do not !
Be good, master, to her.
R. Roister. Hoh !
M. Mery. Tush, I say, do not. 100
And what ! shall your people here return straight
home ?
T. Trustie. Yea, levy the camp, sirs, and hence
again each one.
R. Roister. But be still in readiness, if I hap to
call.
I cannot tell what sudden chance may befall.
M. Mery. Do not off your harness, sirs, I you ad-
vise, 105
At the least for this fortnight in no manner wise.
Perchance in an hour, when all ye think least,
Our master's appetite to fight will be best.
But soft, ere ye go, have one at distance' house.
R. Roister. Soft, what wilt thou do ?
M. Mery. Once discharge my harquebouse,
And, for my heart's ease, have once more with my
potgun. Ill
R. Roister. Hold thy hands, else is all our purpose
clean fordone.
M. Mery. And it cost me my life.
R. Roister. I say, thou shalt not.
M. Mery. By the Matte, but I will. Have once more
with hail shot.
I will have some pennyworth, I will not lese all. 115
Scena VIII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 139
ACTUS IV, S03ENA VIII
M. Merygreeke. C. Custance. K. Roister. Tib. Talk. An.
Alyface. M. Mumblecrust. Trupenie. Dobinet Dough-
tie. Harpax. Two drums with their ensigns.
C. Custance. What caitiffs are those that so shake
my house wall ?
M. Mery. Ah, sirrah ! now, Custance, if ye had so
much wit,
I would see you ask pardon, and yourselves submit.
C. Custance. Have I still this ado with a couple of
fools?
M. Mery. Hear ye what she saith ?
C. Custance. Maidens come forth with your tools ! 5
R. Roister. In array !
J\L Mery. Dubbadub, sirrah!
R. Roister. In array !
They come suddenly on us.
M. Mery. Dubbadub !
R. Roister. In array J
That ever I was born, we are taken tardy.
M. Mery. Now, sirs, quit ourselves like tall men
and hardy !
C. Custance. On afore, Trupenie ! Hold thine own,
■ Annot! 10
On toward them, Tibet ! for 'scape us they cannot !
Come forth, Madge Mumblecrust, to stand fast to-
gether !
M. Mery. God send us a fair day !
R. Roister. See, they march on hither !
Tib. Talk. But, mistress
C. distance. What sayest thon ?
Tib. Talk. Shall I go fet our goose ?
140 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
C. distance. What to do ?
Tib. Talk. To yonder captain I will turn her loose,
And she gape and hiss at him, as she doth at me, 16
I durst jeopard my hand she will make him flee.
C. distance. On forward !
R. Roister. They come !
M. Mery. Stand !
R. Roister. Hold !
M. Mery. Keep !
R. Roister. There !
M. Mery. Strike !
R. Roister. Take heed !
C. distance. Well said, Trupenie !
Trapenie. Ah, whoresons !
C. distance. Well done, indeed.
M. Mery. Hold thine own, Harpax ! down with
them, Dobinet ! 20
C. distance. Now Madge, there Annot ! now stick
them, Tibet !
Tib. Talk. All my chief quarrel is to this same
little knave,
That beguiled me last day — nothing shall him save.
D. Dovghtie. Down with this little quean, that hath
at me such spite !
Save you from her, master — it is a very sprite ! 25
C. distance. I myself will Mounsire Grand Cap-
tain undertake.
R. Roister. They win ground!
M. Mery. Save yourself, sir, for God's sake!
R. Roister. Out, alas! I am slain ! Help!
M. Mery. Save yourself !
R. Roister. Alas !
M. Mery. Nay, then, have at you, mistress !
R. Roister. Thou hittest me, alas!
Scena VIII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 141
31. Mary. I will strike at distance here.
R. Roister. Thou hittest me !
M. Mery. So I will ! 30
Nay, mistress Custance !
R. Roister. Alas! thou hittest me still.
Hold.
31. Mery. Save yourself, sir.
R. Roister. Help ! Out, alas ! I am slain !
31. 3Iery. Truce, hold your hands, truce for a piss-
ing while or twain !
Nay, how say you, Custance, for saving of your life,
Will ye yield and grant to be this gentman's wife? 35
C. Custance. Ye told me he loved me — call ye this
love?
31. 3Iery. He loved a while even like a turtle-
dove.
C. Custance. Gay love, God save it ! — so soon hot,
so soon cold.
31. Mery. I am sorry for you — he could love you
yet, so he could.
R. Roister. Nay, by Cock's precious, she shall be
none of mine ! 40
31. Mery. Why so?
R. Roister. Come away! by the Matte, she is nian-
kine.
I durst adventure the loss of my right hand,
If she did not slee her other husband, —
And see if she prepare not again to fight !
M. Mery. What then ? Saint George to borrow, our
ladies' knight ! 45
R. Roister. Slee else whom she will, by Gog, she
shall not slee me !
M. 3Iery. How then ?
R. Roister. Rather than to be slain, 1 will flee.
142 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus IV
C. distance. To it again, my knightesses! Down
with them all !
R. Holster. Away, away, away ! she will else kill
us all.
M. Mery. Nay, stick to it, like an hardy man and
a tall. 50
R. Roister. Oh bones, thou hittest me ! Away, or
else die we shall.
M. Mery. Away, for the pashe of our sweet Lord
Jesus Christ.
C. distance. Away, lout and lubber, or I shall be
thy priest. [Exeant om.
So this field is ours, we have driven them all away.
Tib. Talk. Thanks to God, mistress, ye have had a
fair day. 55
C. distance. Well, now go ye in, and make your-
self some good cheer.
Omnes painter.1 We go.
T. Trustie. Ah, sir, what a field we have had here!
C. distance. Friend Tristram, I pray you be a
witness with me.
T. Trustie. Dame Custance, I shall depose for
your honesty,
And now fare ye well, except something else ye
would. 60
C distance. Not now, but when I need to send I
will be bold. [Exeat.
I thank you for these pains. And now I will get me
in.
Now Roister Doister will no more wooing begin. [Ex.
1 All with one accord.
Soena I] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 143
ACTUS V, SCLENA I
Gawyn Goodluck. Sym Sukesby.
G. Good. Sym Suresby, my trusty man, now advise
thee well,
And see that no false surmises thou me tell.
Was there snch ado about Custance of a truth?
Sym Sure. To report that I heard and saw, to me
is ruth,
But both my duty and name and property 5
Warneth me to you to show fidelity.
It may be well enough, and I wish it so to be ;
She may herself discharge, and try her honesty —
Yet their claim to her methought was very large,
For with letters, rings and tokens, they did her
charge, 10
Which when I heard and saw I would none to you
bring.
G. Good. No, by Saint Marie, I allow thee in that
thing.
Ah, sirrah, now I see truth in the proverb old,
All things that shineth is not by and by pure gold !
If any do live a woman of honesty, 15
I would have sworn Christian Custance had been she.
Sym Sure. Sir, though I to you be a servant true
and just,
Yet do not ye therefore your faithful spouse mistrust.
But examine the matter, and if ye shall it find
To be all well, be not ye for my words unkind. 20
G. Good. I shall do that is right, and as I see
cause why —
But here cometh Custance forth, we shall know by
and by.
144 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus V
ACTUS V, SCiENA II
C. Custance. Gawyn Goodluck. Sym Suresby.
C. Custance. I come forth to see and hearken for
news good,
For about this hour is the time of likelihood,
That Gawyn Goodluck by the sayings of Suresby
Would be at home, and lo, yond I see him, I !
What ! Gawyn Goodluck, the only hope of my life ! 5
Welcome home, and kiss me, your true espoused wife.
G. Good. Nay, soft, dame Custance ; I must first,
by your licence,
See whether all things be clear in your conscience.
I hear of your doings to me very strange.
C. Custance. What ! fear ye that my faith towards
you should change ? 10
G. Good. I must needs mistrust ye be elsewhere
entangled,
For I hear that certain men with you have wrangled
About the promise of marriage by you to them made.
C. Custance. Could any man's report your mind
therein persuade ?
G. Good. Well, ye must therein declare yourself
to stand clear, 15
Else I and you, dame Custance, may not join this
year.
C. Custance. Then would I were dead, and fair
laid in my grave !
Ah, Suresby, is this the honesty that ye have,
To hurt me with your report, not knowing the thing?
Sym Sure. If ye be honest, my words can hurt
you nothing, 20
But what I heard and saw, I might not but report.
SoenaIII] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 145
C. distance. Ah, Lord, help poor widows, desti-
tute of comfort !
Truly, most dear spouse, nought was done but for
pastance.
G. Good. But such kind of sporting is homely
dalliance.
C. Custance. If ye knew the truth, ye would take
all in good part. 25
G. Good. By your leave, I am not half well
skilled in that art.
C distance. It was none but Roister Doister,
that foolish mome.
G. Good. Yea, Custance, better, they say, a bad
'scuse than none.
C. distance. Why, Tristram Trustie, sir, your
true and faithful friend,
Was privy both to the beginning and the end. 30
Let him be the judge, and for me testify.
G. Good. I will the more credit that he shall verify.
And because I will the truth know e'en as it is,
I will to him myself, and know all without miss.
Come on, Sym Suresby, that before my friend thou
may 35
Avouch the same words, which thou didst to me say.
[Exeant.
ACTUS V, SOENA III
Christian Custance.
C. distance. O Lord ! now necessary it is now of
days
That each body live uprightly all manner ways,
For let never so little a gap be open,
And be sure of this, the worst shall be spoken.
146 RALPH ROISTER DOJSTER [Actus V
How innocent stand I in this for deed or thought, 5
And yet see what mistrust towards me it hath wrought !
But thou, Lord, knowest all folks' thoughts and eke
intents,
And thou art the deliverer of all innocents.
Thou didst help the advoutress, that she might be
amended, 9
Much more then help, Lord, that never ill intended.
Thou didst help Susanna, wrongfully accused,
And no less dost thou see, Lord, how I am now
abused.
Thou didst help Hester, when she should have died,
Help also, good Lord, that my truth may be tried.
Yet if Gawyn Goodluck with Tristram Trustie
speak, 15
I trust of ill report the force shall be but weak.
And lo, yond they come, sadly talking together,
I will abide, and not shrink for their coming hither.
ACTUS V, SC.ENA IV
Gawyn Goodluck. Tristram Trustie. C. Custance. Stm
Sueesby.
G. Good. And was it none other than ye to me
report ?
Tristram. No, and here were ye wished to have
seen the sport.
G. Good. Would I had, rather than half of that
in my purse !
Sym Swre. And I do much rejoice the matter was
no worse,
And like as to open it I was to you faithful, 5
So of dame Custance' honest truth I am joyful,
ScenaIV] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 147
For God forferid that I should hurt her by false re-
port.
G. Good. Well, I will no longer hold her in dis-
comfort.
C. distance. Now come they hitherward, I trust
all shall be well.
G. Good. Sweet distance, neither heart can think
nor tongue tell, 10
How much I joy in your constant fidelity!
Come now, kiss me, the pearl of perfect honesty.
C. distance. God let me no longer to continue in
life,
Than I shall towards you continue a true wife.
G. Good. Well, now to make you for this some
part of amends, 15
I shall desire first you, and then such of our friends
As shall to you seem best, to sup at home with
me,
Where at your fought field we shall laugh and merry
be.
Sym Sure. And mistress, I beseech you, take with
me no grief ;
I did a true man's part, not wishing you reprief. 20
C. distance. Though hasty reports, through sur-
mises growing,
May of poor innocents be utter overthrowing,
Yet because to thy master thou hast a true heart,
And I know mine own truth, I forgive thee for my
part.
G. Good. Go we all to my house, and of this gear
no more. 25
Go, prepare all things, Sym Suresby ; hence, run
afore.
Sym Sure. I go. [Ex.
148 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus V
G. Good. But who cometh yond, — M. Mery-
greeke ?
C. distance. Roister Doister's champion, I shrew
his best cheek !
T. Triistie. Roister Doister self, your wooer, is
with him too.
Surely some thing there is with us they have to do. 30
ACTUS V, SCiENA V
M. Merygreeke. Ralph "Roister. Gawyn Goodluck:.
Tristram Trustie. C. Cu stance.
M. Mery. Yond I see Gawyn Goodluck, to whom
lieth my message ;
I will first salute him after his long voyage,
And then make all thing well concerning your behalf.
R. Roister. Yea, for the pash of God.
M. Mery. Hence out of sight, ye calf,
Till I have spoke with them, and then I will j^ou fet. 5
R. Roister. In God's name ! [Exit R. Roister.
M. Mery. What, master Gawyn Goodluck, well
met !
And from your long voyage I bid you right welcome
home.
G. Good. I thank you.
M. Mery. I come to you from an honest mome.
G. Good. Who is that ?
M. Mery. Roister Doister, that doughty kite.
C. distance. Fie ! I can scarce abide ye should his
name recite. 10
M. Mery. Ye must take him to favour, and pardon
all past ;
He heareth of your return, and is full ill aghast.
SoenaVI] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 149
G. Good. I am right well content he have with us
some cheer.
C. distance. Fie upon him, beast! then will not
I be there.
G. Good. Why, distance, do ye hate him more
than ye love me ? 15
O. distance. But for your mind, sir, where he
were would I not be.
T. Trustie. He would make us all laugh.
31. Mcry. Ye ne'er had better sport.
G. Good. I pray you, sweet distance, let him to
us resort.
C. distance. To your will I assent.
M. Mery. Why, such a fool it is,
As no man for good pastime would forgo or miss. 20
G. Good. Fet him to go with us.
M. Mery. He will be a glad man. [Ex.
T. Trustie. We must to make us mirth, maintain
him all we can.
And lo, yond he cometh, and Merygreeke with him.
C. distance. At his first entrance ye shall see I
will him trim.
But first let us hearken the gentleman's wise talk. 25
T. Trustie. I pray you, mark, if ever ye saw crane
so stalk.
ACTUS V, SdENA VI
R. Roister. M. Merygreeke. C Custance. G. Goodluck.
T. Trustie. D. Doughtie. Harpax.
R. Roister. May I then be bold ?
M. Mery. I warrant you, on my word,
They say they shall be sick, but ye be at their board.
R. Roister. They were not angry, then ?
150 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus V
M. Mery. Yes, at first, and made strange,
But when I said your anger to favour should change,
And therewith had commended you accordingly, 5
They were all in love with your maship by and by,
And cried you mercy that they had done you wrong.
R. Roister. For why no man, woman, nor child
can hate me long.
M. Mery. " We fear," quod they, " he will be
avenged one day,
Then for a penny give all our lives we may." 10
R. Roister. Said they so indeed ?
M. Mery. Did they ? yea, even with one voice —
"He will forgive all," quod I. Oh, how they did re-
joice !
R. Roister. Ha, ha, ha!
M. Mery. " Go fet him," say they, " while he is in
good mood,
For have his anger who lust, we will not, by the
Rood."
R. Roister. I pray God that it be all true, that
thou hast me told, 15
And that she fight no more.
M. Mery. I warrant you, be bold.
To them, and salute them !
R. Roister. Sirs, I greet you all well !
Omnes. Your mastership is welcome.
C. distance. Saving my quarrel —
For sure I will put you up into the Exchequer.
M. Mery. Why so? better nay — wherefore?
C. Cvstance. For an usurer. 20
R. Roister. I am no usurer, good mistress, by His
arms !
M. Mery. When took he gain of money to any
man's harms?
Sc.ena VI] RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 151
C. distance. Yes, a foul usurer he is, ye shall see
else.
R. Roister. Didst not thou promise she would pick
no mo quarrels ?
C. distance. He will lend no blows, but he have
in recompense 25
Fifteen for one, which is too much of conscience.
R. Roister. Ah, dame, by the ancient law of arms,
a man
Hath no honour to foil his hands on a woman.
C. distance. And where other usurers take their
gains yearly,
This man is angry but he have his by and by. 30
G. Good. Sir, do not for her sake bear me your
displeasure.
M. Mery. Well, he shall with you talk thereof more
at leisure.
Upon your good usage, he will now shake your hand.
R. Roister. And much heartily welcome from a
strange land.
M. Mery. Be not afeard, Gawyn, to let him shake
your fist. 35
G. Good. Oh, the most honest gentleman that e'er
I wist.
I beseech your maship to take pain to sup with us.
M. Mery. He shall not say you nay, and I too, by
Jesus,
Because ye shall be friends, and let all quarrels pass.
R. Roister. I will be as good friends with them as
ere I was. 40
M. Mery. Then let me fet your quire that we may
have a song.
R. Roister. Go. [Exit M. Mery.
G. Good. I have heard no melody all this year long.
152 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER [Actus V
Re-enter M. Meet.
M. Mery. Come on, sirs, quickly.
R. Roister. Sing on, sirs, for my friends' sake.
D. Dough. Call ye these your friends ?
R. Roister. Sing on, and no mo words make.
[Here they sing.
G. Good. The Lord preserve our most noble Queen
of renown, 45
And her virtues reward with the heavenly crown.
C distance. The Lord strengthen her most excel-
lent Majesty,
Long to reign over us in all prosperity.
T. Trustie. That her godly proceedings the faith
to defend,
He may 'stablish and maintain through to the end. 50
M. Mery. God grant her, as she doth, the Gospel
to protect,
Learning and virtue to advance, and vice to correct.
R. Roister. God grant her loving subjects both
the mind and grace,
Her most godly proceedings worthily to embrace.
Harpax. Her highness' most worthy counsellors,
God prosper 55
With honour and love of all men to minister.
Omnes. God grant the nobility her to serve and
love,
With all the whole commonty as doth them behove.
Amen
RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 153
CERTAIN SONGS TO BE SUNG BY THOSE WHICH
SHALL USE THIS COMEDY OR INTERLUDE.
The Second Song.
Whoso to marry a minion wife,
Hath had good chance and hap,
Must love her and cherish her all his life,
And dandle her in his lap.
If she will fare well, if she will go gay, 5
A irood husband ever still,
Whatever she lust to do, or to say,
Must let her have her own will.
About what affairs soever he go,
He must show her all his mind. 10
None of his counsel she may be kept fro.
Else is he a man unkind.
The Fourth Song.
I mun be married a Sunday,
I mun be married a Sunday,
Whosoever shall come that way,
I mun be married a Sunday.
Roister Doister is my name, 5
Roister Doister is my name,
A lusty brute I am the same,
I mun be married a Sunday.
Christian distance have I found,
Christian distance have I found, 10
A widow worth a thousand pound,
I mun be married a Sunday.
154 RALPH ROISTER DOISTER
distance is as sweet as honey,
distance is as sweet as honey,
I her lamb and she my coney, 15
I mun be married a Sunday.
When we shall make our wedding feast,
When we shall make our wedding feast,
There shall be cheer for man and beast,
I mun be married a Sunday. 20
I mun be married a Sunday, etc.
The Psalmody.
Placebo dilexi,
Master Roister Doister will straight go home and die,
Our Lord Jesus Christ his soul have mercy upon!
Thus you see to-day a man, to-morrow John.
Yet saving for a woman's extreme cruelty,
He might have lived yet a month or two or three, 5
But in spite of distance which hath him wearied,
His maship shall be worshipfully buried.
And while some piece of his soul is yet him within,
Some part of his funerals let us here begin.
Dirige. He will go darkling to his grave. 10
JYeque lux, neque crux, nisi solum clink,
Never gentman so went toward heaven, I think.
Yet, sirs, as ye will the bliss of heaven win,
When he cometh to the grave lay him softly in,
And all men take heed by this one gentleman, 15
How you set your love upon an unkind woman:
For these women be all such mad peevish elves,
They will not be won except it please themselves.
But in faith, distance, if ever ye come in hell,
Master Roister Doister shall serve you as well. 20
RALPH ROISTER DOISTER 155
Good night, Roger old knave; farewell, Roger old
knave.
Good night, Roger old knave, knave, knap.
Nequando. Audivi vocem. Requiem ceternam.
THE PEAL OF BELLS RUNG BY THE PARISH
CLERK AND ROISTER DOISTERS FOUR MEN.
Tlie first Bell a Triple. When died he? When died
he?
The second. We have him, we have him.
The third. Roister Doister, Roister Doister.
The fourth Bell. He cometh, he cometh.
The great Bell. Our own, our own.
NOTES
Dramatis Personae : For the use of allusive names, see the
note on i. 1. 17-26. The name Harpax is taken from the
Pseudolus. Alyface, according to Flugel, indicates the color of
Annot's nose and the desire of her heart. But she is undoubtedly
intended to be young and good-looking, at least enough to win
Ralph's approval.
Prologue, 4 f. Perhaps imitated from the prologue of the
Captivi.
8 ff . A commonplace in early works on medicine.
15 ff. The doctrine, repeatedly affirmed by classical authors,
that it is the mission of the poet to teach and to please, was
seized upon, reinforced, and reiterated by Renaissance writers —
in England, for example, by Stephen Hawes and in various
works expounding or defending the art of poetry. The theme is
treated (at greater length) in the Prologue to Jack Juggler, but
the fact argues no basis for argument regarding indebtedness or
priority.
20 : bears the bell. Act as bell-wethers or leaders of the
flock. For the vogue of Plautus and Terence at the time of the
play, see the Introduction. The form of the verb, with s though
plural, frequently found in Standard English in the sixteenth
century, is either Northern or a levelling from the singular.
22. Note the pairing of the familiar term interlude with the
less familiar comedy.
i. 1 ff. Cf. Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, v. 31 ff., Terence, Eunuchus,
n, ii. 252 ff. [Flugel].
i. 1. 15 ff. The parasite in the Asinaria (v. 3) is quoted as hav-
ing a long line of patrons with whom he may dine out.
i. 1. 17-20. Allusive names appear frequently in English works
from the fourteenth century. Udall's use of them in his play
may have been suggested by their general use in classical comedy.
Loytrer has the obsolete sense of " time-waster, idler." Titivile,
originally the name of an inferior devil of the miracle plays, had
become a typical name for a worthless hanger-on. Pye suggested
a chattering gossip, also a shrewd and cunning person ; Blinkin-
158 NOTES [Actus I
soppe, one who spends his time blinking into his glass ; Hoddy-
dodie, various contemptuous meanings including one squat and
dumpy, a simpleton and a cuckold.
i. 1. 38 : Queen's peace. Presumably changed from King's
when the play was printed in Elizabeth's time. Cf. v. 6. 45 ff.
i. 1. 56. A proverbial expression for undertaking a risky
Venture.
i. 1. 66 : for twenty pound. "I would wager twenty pound
on it."
i. 2. 2 : you. Merygreeke generally uses ye, you in ironical
deference, Roister Doister the thou, thee, marking familiarity
or social superiority to the person addressed.
i. 2. 14 : thee. Manly 's emendation for the.
i. 2. 28-32. Cf. Terence, Phormio, i. 4. 210 f.
i. 2. 39. Cf. Miles Gloriosus, v. 1063.
i. 2. 41 : But . . . matter. Not assigned to Roister Doister in
original text.
i. 2. 47 : ye emended from he.
i. 2 : a. Manly prints " (a !) " as if an interjection. Fliigel
explains the a as a preposition, the unstressed form of ou. The
preferable view is that the line is a quotation from some old
song, and the a merely expletive — as more often found at the
end of the line, e.g., " your sad tires iu a mile-a."
i. 2. 59. Apparently quoting Roister Doister as phrasing his
feeling.
i. 2. 80. " Nay, ' unwise ' [you may be] perhaps, but I warrant
you against 'mad.'" For, in the sense of "against" appears
with nouns, " for sight," "for drowning," "shelter for sun and
wind " (see N. E. D.). Merygreeke's attention is fastened on
the word Roister Doister uses.
i. 2. 97. A current proverbial saying; Hey wood includes it in
his Proverbs.
i. 2. 106-146. A similar list of heroic comparisons closely re-
sembling Udall'a occurs in the little school-dialogue of Thersites
and has even caused the sunfjjestion to be made that Udall was
the author. The passage is modelled on the Miles Gloriosus,
i. 1. 55-71. The only heroic comparison in the Latin comedy is
contained in the words " ' Is Achilles here ? ' says one to me.
'No,' says I, ' his brother is."" But the passage concerning the
admiration of the ladies for Udall is plainly a reminiscence of
the Latin play.
Sca:na IV] NOTES 159
i. 2. 118-129. Lancelot du Lake, Guy of Warwick, and Col-
brande with whom Guy fought, are famous personages in well-
known romances. The phrase " thirteenth Hercules brother "
apparently means " the thirteenth brother of Hercules " (hence
the apostrophe after Hercules in the text) in allusion to Hercules
as one of the twelve children of Jupiter, though their number
is sometimes stated as thirteen. " A brute of the Alie Land,"
that is " hero of the Holy Land," identifies Roister Doister with
the many valiant warriors who fought against the Saracens in
historic tradition and romance. The "nine worthies," as usually
reckoned, include Hector, Alexander, and Csesar from among
" Paynims " ; the Jewish heroes, Joshua, David, and Judas
Maccabeus ; and the Christian heroes, Arthur, Charlemagne,
and Godfrey of Boulogne. The phrase " third Cato," in praise
of Roister Doister's wisdom, in allusion to Cato the Censor and
Cato of Utica, may have been suggested by the line of Juvenal
(5a/. 2. 40) " Tertius e cselo cecidit Cato."
i. 2. 120. Cf. Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, Gl : " hicine Achilles
est ? inquit mihi. Immo eius frater inquam."
i. 2. 135. Cf. Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, 65.
i. 2. 173 : here added by Cooper.
i. 3. 51 : Pipe, merry Annot! etc. Not an allusion to a
song or its refrain as supposed by Fliigel, followed by Williams
and Robin, who refer to the mention of a song with this begin-
ning or refrain in a poem A Poore Helpe (Hazlitt, Early Popular
Poclrij, 3. 260). Manly's view seems preferable that the etc.
indicates that the line is to be filled out with a repetition except
for substitution of the names of the two others — not, however,
as he gives it " Pipe, Tibet ; pipe, Margerie," but in full "Pipe,
merry Tibet ! pipe, merry Margerie." This and similar lines be-
low seem to indicate that the song was sung as a catch or round.
i. 3. 71. " I c;ire not if I let all alone." This use persisted into
the seventeenth century.
i. 3. 116. Tibet does not finish her proverb, which is well
known to her hearers.
i. 4. 12. " With his doting 'dear one, dainty one, take pity on
me ' " Nobs and nicebecetur are sixteenth-century slang.
Both are obscure in origin. Udall used the Intter in his transla-
tion of the Apoplithegms of Erasmus, 120 f. (cited by N. E. /).),
" In suche did . . . the other nycibecetours or denty dames cus-
tomably use ... to bee carryed about."
160
NOTES
[Actus I
i. 4. 13. Fliigel regards this episode as the reverse of Plautus,
Miles Gloriosus, v. 1000 ff., where there is great difficulty in
keeping the hraggart captain from falling in love with a servant.
i. 4. 15. " I perceive now ye have chosen (made your choice)
out of (from) devotion."
i. 4. 19. " I will not take charge of such a fair piece's keep-
ing."
i. 4. 32. " Is not ? Why then he it unsaid again ! " See no in
the Glossary.
i. 4. 45. The stage-directions which Manly inserts probably
represent the incidental action correctly. Ralph's men crowd in
to hear, and Merygreeke pushes them against him under pretence
of getting them away, while Ralph pushes them back, producing
an admirable confusion.
i. 4. 64-82. Merygreeke's description of the fictitious exploits
of Roister Doister is modelled upon similar passages in the
Latin comedies in which the parasite exalts the bravery of the
braggart captain. Udall, as usual, gives an original form to what
he borrows. Whether the exploits he particularizes are original
inventions or borrowings from folk tales, it is difficult to say.
Williams and Robin in their edition refer the killing of the blue
spider in Blanchepowder land to Tom Thumb — ou what au-
thority is not specified ; the term blanchepowder, applied to
a mixture of spices used as a condiment or dessert dressing, makes
plain the burlesque nature of the reference. The phrase " king
of crickets " occurs elsewhere, but both it and the reference to
Mumfision and the gosling in 11. 77, 78, are not yet explained.
The conquest of the elephant is borrowed from the Miles Glori-
osus, i. 1. 26 : —
Pyrgopolinices. Where are you?
Artolrogus. Lo ! here am I. I' troth in what a fashion it was you broke the fore-
leg of even an elephant, in India, with your fist.
Pyrgop. How '! — the fore-leg.
Arlo. I mean to say this — the thigh.
Pyrgop. I struck the blow without an effort.
Arlo. Troth, if, indeed, you had put forth your strength, your arm would have
passed right through the hide, the entrails, and the frontispiece of the elephant.
The passage in general imitates, but with entire change of
allusions, except for the elephant, the Miles Gloriosus, i. 1. 13-31,
42-54.
i. 4. 65. Probably the earliest extant use of dialect for humor-
ous effect.
Scena IV] NOTES 161
i. 4, 93. Tlie same phrase as our " bee iu one's bonnet" ; that
is a fixed idea, craze.
i. 4. 95-102. As the men kneel before him and Roister Doister
is preoccupied with his grievance against them, Merygreeke,
under pretence of zealous concern, brushes off the imaginary
" fowl's feather," gnat, and hair, with decidedly unnecessary
violence.
i. 4. 96 : fowl's. A pun on fool is intended, the two words
being then pronounced alike : cf. 1. 98. The same pun may per-
haps be suggested in 1. 900. Possibly also, as suggested by W. H.
Williams, in 1. 102, Merygreeke pretends to say " loose " to
Ralph, but changes it to " lousy " for the audience.
i. 4. 103 : famuli, emended from famulae.
i. 4. 112. The song here is presumably the "second song"
appended to the play at the end.
i. 4. 127. Manly notes that the line might read, " But are you
sure that your letter will win her," to provide a rime for dinner.
ii. 1. 28 : Jack Raker. A current name (perhaps derived by
Udall from Skelton) for a bad rimester.
ii. 1. 30. Referring to the contest of Marsyas with Apollo.
ii. 2. 22. References to Lombard bankers, money-changers,
and pawn-brokers, their similarity to Jews in their business deal-
ings, and their habit of keeping to themselves, are frequent. A
massacre of Lombard merchants was an incident of Jack Straw's
rebellion. The " touch " or trait of the Lombards here referred
to is persistency in getting the thing desired in any way right or
wrong.
ii. 3. 8. The proverbial saying "in dock, out nettle," which
originated in a charm to cure nettle-stings by dock-leaves, came
to refer to changeableness and inconstancy (see the N. E. D.).
ii. 3. 47. As noted by Williams and Robin, dogs were fre-
quently taught to dance.
ii. 3. 51. The Third Shepherd in the Second Shepherds' Play
similarly refers to his decent parentage in claiming considera-
tion, 11. 260 f.
ii. 3. 77. " No good turns, meant well, take in ill fashion."
ii. 3. 85—87. A conventional refrain (used also in Thersites).
The A^. E. D. explains berry as meaning a hillock or barrow ; cf.
William Browne, Brit. Past. I, ii. (1772), "Piping on thine oaten
reede, upon this little berry (some ycleep A hillocke)."
ii. 4. 14 : No ? emended from No did, to correct the rime.
162 NOTES [Actus III
iii. 2. 53. "I speed quite as much as though I did so — this
time it shall not be necessary."
iii. 2. 90. A proverbial phrase included by Heywood in his
Proverbs. The graphic image imagines a mischief-maker like the
devil getting into a clock and playing the mischief with its deli-
cate mechanism.
iii. 3. 8. Merygreeke pretends not to see him and runs into him
violently.
iii. 3. 49. Merygreeke addresses Roister Doisteras if he were
a criminal about to die, and offers him the customary drink be-
fore execution (1. 51).
iii. 3. 52. " How feel ye your soul to God ? " — that is, " What
are you conscious of as to your soul in its relation to God ? "
Compare the phrase "How. feel you yourself?" cited by
Williams and Robin from Lyly's Endimion (ed. Fairholt, 71).
The question, according to Fliigel, is modelled upon the inquiry
to the sick person in the office for the Visitation of the Sick.
iii. 3. 53 ff. : ut infra, "as below," refers to the Psalmody
printed, together with the incidental songs of the play, at its
close. The Psalmody is sometimes spoken of as if merely a vari-
ant or alternative version of the mock burial-service in the dia-
logue. This it is not ; it is intended to indicate the portions to
be chanted or intoned, and for that reason the direction ut infra
is twice inserted — here and at 1. 80 when Merygreeke calls forth
the parish clerk who with the servants of Roister Doister sing
the round of the Peal of Bells following the Psalmody.
In one passage, that beginning Placebo dilexi, the full text is
given in the Psalmody, and the two lines in text of the play are
a cue. The passage beginning Dirige is out of its proper order
in the Psalmody. Verbal variations from the main text in this
passage and in 11. 4-9, 13-20, are simply due to failure to insert
corrections made in one into the other. Clear proof that the
Psalmody indicates what is to be sung or intoned is afforded by
the addition at its close of the single words and phrases from
the requiem office scattered through the dialogue. Merygreeke
chants these, breaking off to address Roister Doister. The por-
tions in English were presumably intoned nasally in parody of
the longer portions of the burial-service, whereas the Latin
words were in plain song. The humorous effect of the inter-
mingled chant and dialogue must have been very great.
Fliigel notes in his appendix on this scene that this is one of
Scena III] NOTES 163
the latest instances of parodies of church services. These were
very common in the Middle Ages ; see Chambers, The Mediceval
Stage. A number of mock requiems are extant in English.
Fliigel suggests that Udall's amusing scene may have been sug-
gested by the Placebo Dilexi in Skelton's Philip Sparrow. For
the passages from the Ritual used by Merygreeke in his medley,
Fliigel may be consulted. They are not necessary for an under-
standing of the scene.
iii. 3. 59. The candle and crucifix used in extreme unction, and
the passing bell.
iii. 3. 64. In allusion to the distribution of doles, or alms, at
funerals.
iii. 3. 79 f. These lines, from some song, are sung as the
Psalmody shows. The word knap is in imitation of a sharp blow
and here represents presumably the nailing of the coffin. After
Merygreeke's speech, the " Peal of Bells," given at the close of
the play, is sung as a round.
iii. 3. 117 ff. Merygreeke talks to Roister Doister as he would
to a horse. Note the word jet, 1. 121, used of the prancing gait of
a lively horse, and the carrying out of the image in 11. 123, 124.
iii. 3. 128 : All, wholly, used as an intensive was often pre-
fixed to verbs having the intensive prefix to ; hence was developed
a compound intensive ail-too prefixed to verbs which did not
have to, especially those with the intensive prefix be. The sense
of the line seems to be this : Merygreeke ironically answers Ralph
in the line preceding, and then says aside, " May the Lord some
day besmear or befoul you all over with deferential attention! "
iii. 3. 129. Merygreeke in the following passage takes occa-
sion again to treat Ralph roughly under pretence of preserving
his dignity.
iii. 3. 133. "To have an M. under one's girdle" was a pro-
verbial phrase to express giving another the proper title de-
manded by civility or the respect due superior rank. Mery-
greeke omitted the title " Master," and Roister Doister reproves
him. Hence, Merygreeke's speech which follows.
iii. 3. 135. " You would be snapped up for hawks' meat." So
Williams and Robin who cite Cambyses (Hazlitt-Dodsley, iv,
232), "That husband for hawks' meat of them is up snatched."
iii. 3. 142 : trey ace, three-one, in counting at dice, etc.
iii. 3. 150 : Cantent. Probably the " Fourth Song " at the
close of the play.
164 NOTES [Actus IV
iii. 4. 36. It was this famous letter — which can he made to
read two ways with opposite sense (see the next scene, 11. 49 ft'.) —
that led to the discovery of Udall's authorship through its use hy
Wilson as an example of ambiguity (see the Introduction, pp.
31 ff.). The punctuation here used is designed as a help in reading
it aloud. Fliigel cites parallels of poems intended to be read two
ways, one of which is reprinted in his Lesebuch, p. 39, and the
other in Ebert's Jahrbuch, 14. 214.
iii. 4. 72: By the arms of Calais. The oath here used, and
used also in act iv. 7. 48, may possibly have been derived by
Udall from Skelton (Magnificence, 685, Bowge of Court, 398). It
has never been satisfactorily explained. Caleys is almost cer-
tainly Calais in France, but the explanation that the "arms"
referred to were the arms and ordnance kept there by England
and lost when Calais was lost in 1558 is impossible in view of
Skelton's use of the oath. The explanation suggested in Hales's
article, already treated in the Introduction, is also impossible.
iii. 4. 99. Merygreeke's articulation is affected by his emotion.
Lub, however, is a regular variant of love.
iii. 4. 119-124. Cf. Miles Gloriosus, 4. 5. 1233-1238 ; also Ter-
ence, Eunuchus, iv. 7. 41-43. And compare above in Udall, 11. 93 f.
iii. 5. 7. "I wishyouhad,too, but it was not necessary, that time."
iii. 5. 29. The Scrivener shows a proper spirit and strikes
Ralph, who instantly betrays his cowardice.
iii. 5. 43. Apparently, as Fliigel notes, Ralph had gotten back
his letter from distance.
iv. 2. 14. distance's elaborate oath looks very strange to
modern eyes. To understand it, one must first recall the com-
mon medieval practice of particularizing parts of the body, —
head, limbs, teeth, beard, lips, hips, etc. — in oaths and assev-
erations. " To curse (one's) cheeks " is reinforced by " best "
(compare v. 4. 28), becoming "to curse (one's) best cheeks,"
and here this already formidable execration is still further
strengthened by adding "Christmas" to " best," as if "their
best, even their Christmas, cheeks."
iv. 3. 12 f. This repetition of 11. 6, 7, can hardly be intentional.
Probably a printer's error.
iv. 3. 14-23. Cf. Miles Gloriosus, i. 1. 1-9 (Riley's translation):
" Take ye care that the lustre of my shield is more bright than
the rays of the sun are wont to be at the time when the sky is
clear; that when occasion comes, the battle being joined, 'mid
Sc.ena VII] NOTES 165
the fierce ranks right opposite it may dazzle the eyesight of the
enemy. But I wish to console this sabre of mine that it may not
lament nor be down cast in spirits, because I have thus long
been wearing it keeping holiday, which so longs right dreadfully
to be making havoc of the enemy."
iv. 3. 40. distance is unluckily equivocal — she means " no-
thing less likely."
iv. 3. 59. Note that as distance grows more angry she uses
thee and thou to indicate her anger and contempt.
iv. 3. 89. Roister Doister begins to threaten.
iv.3. 100: fire. See Glossary. This use of " fire " is periodically
discovered as an early instance of the American slang use. The
line is defective as regards rime.
iv. 3. 117. Ralph, as he grows angry, turns to thee and thou.
iv. 3. 121. "And thrash thee (with) mine own hands."
iv. 3. 123. " I still have a perfectly clear notion whether I
shall be beaten." The phrase seems blind to-day because of the
use of see, in the sense " perceive, see as a mental conclusion,"
which is still in use, but in a more restricted application (" to
see the point," " I don't see it"). Ralph is really shaken by
distance's valorous threats, hence the word still.
iv. 3. 127. A fight between distance and Ralph evidently
takes place, in which Ralph is worsted and retreats.
iv. 6. 10 f. The speakers' names are erroneously reversed in
the original text (Fliigel).
iv. 6. 39: Cotswold lion. A humorous term for a sheep; so
also " Essex lion," " Lammermoor lion." See above, 1. 29.
iv. 7. GO: collocavit is apparently a burlesque term for some
kitchen utensil (it is apparently a nonce-word; see N. E. D.),
but just what utensil can only be conjectured. If Williams and
Robin are right in assuming a verb grease, to fatten, and the
rest of the line, as seems likely, means " [used] the best hens to
fatten" (not as W. and R. suggest "the best thing to fatten
hens "), the Collocavit might be the garbage-pail (i.e., a collock,
or large pail, the word being punningly identified with the per-
fect of collocare, as a collecting-place), into which scraps were
thrown to be given to the hens set apart as best for fattening
(cf. the phrase " hen of grease," a fat hen : see N. E. D., s. v.
hen). The reference to hens and to fattening would, as Williams
and Robin point out, be peculiarly applicable to Roister Doister,
owing to the proverbial application of the word hen to a coward,
166 NOTES [Actus V
and as suggesting Roister Doister's love of eating referred to
just above. The suggestion that the latter half of the line might
mean " the best hence to Greece," a phrase found in variant form
elsewhere, is not impossible, but the interpretation just given
seems preferable.
iv. 7. 86: her misdemeanour. The use of libelous language.
iv. 7. 102. In the original text this line is assigned to Ralph,
and the next speech to Trustie (Fliigel).
iv. 8. 1 ff. This scene was formerly said to be a close imitation
of the Miles Gloriosus, v. 1. Maulsby shows that the two scenes
are essentially different, and that much closer parallels are af-
forded by lindens, 3. 5., when two women defend themselves
with cudgels from being carried away, and the Eunuchus of
Terence, where the boastful captain of the play, Thraso, attempts
to carrj' off Pamphila. In fact, Udall is not imitating any special
scene, but working freely on a complex suggestion.
iv. 8. 14: thou. Emended from you, a misprint or with y
for th.
iv. 8. 40. Cf. iii. 4. 127. The oath may be variously completed.
iv. 8. 45: our ladies' knight, a title of St. George, probably
in reference to his being the patron saint of Chivalry.
iv. 8. 53: be thy priest, that is, " slay you as a sacrifice, be
thy death."
v. 1. 10. Cf. Miles Gloriosus, 957.
v. 5. 1 ff. Compare Terence, Eunuchus, last scene.
v. 6. 44. Fliigel is doubtless right in believing that the song
is not given, and that the remainder of the play is the conven-
tional prayer said kneeling for the sovereign's majesty and the
estates of the realm, found in numerous other plays. It cannot
be certain, though it is highly probable, that the Queen referred
to is Elizabeth and that the prayer was added during her reign,
perhaps by the printer. Fliigel regards this as certain because
of 1. 52, but this line without much straining might apply to
Mary as " Defender of the Faith," or Udall might even have had
in mind Mary's collaboration on the translation of the Comment-
ary. But it is much more probable that Elizabeth is intended.
The Second Song. This belongs presumably at i. 4. 112.
The Fourth Song. This belongs presumably at iii. 3. 150.
The Psalmody. See iii. 3. 53, note.
The Peal of Bells. This belongs at iii. 3. 84.
GLOSSARY
a, on, Fourth Song, 1.
a-good, in good fashion, thoroughly, iii. 4. 149.
abye, suffer (for it), ii. 4. 21.
a-crook, awry, iv. 3. 31.
advoutress, adulteress, v. 3. S.
again, furthermore, iii. 2. 48.
Alie, Holy (with pun on ale?), i. 2. 124.
allow, approve, v. 1. 12.
ail-too, altogether, entirely; see Note, iii. 3. 128.
altogether, for, for finally, for good, iv. 6. 3.
and, if, passim.
apply, take into consideration, iv. 6. 47.
appose, pose, make it difficult for (a person) to find a reply,
i. 1. 14.
argent, silver, i. 4. 48.
arms, by His, i.e., by God's arms, that is, by God's might: one
of many oaths of similar type, i. 2. 51.
assays, at all, at every test, hence at every time; here, with
ellipsis, ready for anything, ii. 3. 55.
avow, solemn promise, avowal, i. 2. 98.
B
backare (Qy. " back there," or baclcer, quasi-comp. of back;
see N. E. D.), back! stand back.
bare, scanty, poorly provided, i. 4. 50.
baware, almost certainly a misprint for beware, iii. 3. 21.
begrime, see Note, iii. 3. 126.
berry, see Note, ii. 3. 87.
beshrew, invoke curses on, i. 3. 4.
bet, beat (preterit), i. 4. 73.
bie, pay for, expiate, iv. 7. 27.
biliment (abbreviated form of habiliment), a jewelled front
worn on ladies' head-dresses in the 16th century (so worn
with the French hoods referred to in 1. 41), ii. 3. 43.
bold, sure, i. 4. 80.
bord, jest, i. 4. 8.
168 GLOSSARY
borrow, pledge; used in asseverations as here, " St. George
be my pledge," iv. 7. 74.
bow, yield, iii. 3. 98.
brag, arrogant and ostentatious demeanor, iii. 3. 113.
brim, fierce, iv. 6. 5.
burbolt, bird-bolt, a blunt-headed bolt or arrow for shooting
small birds, iii. 2. 88.
busk, bush, clump, i. 4. 67.
but, unless, ii. 2. 19; however, i. 3. 11.
but and, but if, except, i. 3. 119.
by and by, forthwith, at once, i. 3. 48.
Caleys, see Note, iii. 4. 72.
can, knows, i. 3. 85.
carriage, burden, iii. 2. 36.
cassock, a long loose outer-coat, ii. 3. 42.
cast, think, i. 2. 167; planned, iii. 3. 86.
cast, show a, show an example, " give a taste," of (your qual-
ity), i. 2. 181.
chad, Southern abbreviation of ich had, I had, i. 3. 99.
change, of, for change, provided to use in alternation, ii. 3. 44.
charm, fig. a spell (against doing the like again), ii. 2. 4.
charm, put under a spell; fig. overpower, subdue, iv. 3. 117.
chieve, succeed; ill chieve it, ill may it fare (with her), bad luck
to her, i. 3. 98.
choploge, chop-logic, one who splits hairs or quibbles; hence,
a great talker, iii. 2. 82.
chwas, Southern abbreviation of ich was, I was, i. 3. 100.
chwine, Southern abbreviation of ich ween, I ween, i. 3. 100.
clink, ringing sound (here of the bell rung before the funeral
train), iii. 3. 59.
clout, rag: used contemptuously.
clout, rag, ii. 1. 43.
Cock, minced form of the name of the Deity used in oaths,
i. 2. 160.
coil, thrash, iv. 3. 121.
collocavit, see Note, iv. 7. 60.
command, commend, i. 3. 126.
commonty, commonalty, v. 6. 58.
contented, willing, satisfied, iii. 2. 45.
cote, colt, iii. 3. 117.
cough me a mome, make a fool of, prove (one) a fool, iii.
2.86.
GLOSSARY 1G9
cousin, kinsman; also used in addressing or referring to one
not a kinsman, like our " friend," iii. 1, 4.
craking, boasting, i. 1. 35.
cust, kissed, i. 3. 98.
custreling, diminutive of custrel, groom, knave, i. 4. 77.
D
defaut, fault, iii. 5. 84.
despite, contempt, scorn, iii. 4. 75.
device, in my, in my hands to devise what I will, in my con-
trol, iii. 3. 1.
doing, to, for doing, to do, iii. 1. 1.
doing, action, i. 5. 3.
' dole, alms (here, as given at funerals), iii. 3. 64.
dotage, doting; uncontrolled or foolish love, iii. 2. 38.
dreadfully, as one full of dread, iv. 6. 47.
drink, fig. drink of sorrow, suffer pain or punishment (cf.
" taste of sorrow "), i. 3. 27.
dump, a sad or plaintive song, ii. 1. 21.
E
entwite, reproach, comment angrily on, ii. 3. 77.
F
facing, playing the braggart and bully, i. 1. 35.
fact, notable deed, exploit, i. 2. 144.
fain, gladly, eagerly, iv. 3. 93.
ferdegew, farthingale or hooped petticoat to extend the skirt,
ii. 3. 43.
fet, fetch, iii. 3. 92.
fickle, treacherous, unreliable, iii. 5. 4.
fire, to drive (out) by use of fire; fig. to eject by violence, iv.
3. 10.
fire-fork, a fork used for tending the fire, iv. 4. 21.
fit, strain of music, " bar or two," ii. 3. 54.
fling, go with haste or violence; here, go about with heedless
haste, ii. 3. 27.
flock, flout, mock, iii. 3. 33.
foil, defile, v. 6. 28.
fond, foolish, i. 1. 51; foolishly affectionate, doting, i. 4. 12.
force, no, no matter, iv. 3. 96.
for why, because, v. 6. 8.
170 GLOSSARY
found, met with, iv. 3. 3.
frame, make progress, get on, i. 2. 186.
fur, furrow, i. 3. 12.
G
gauding, merrymaking, iii. 4. 1.
gear, matter, concern, i. 3. 21.
gill, wench, iii. 4. 105.
gittern, an instrument like a guitar, ii. 1. 25.
gloming, gloomy looks, i. 1. 66.
Gogs arms, a minced form of the oath " God's arms," i. 4. 28.
Goss, minced name of the Deity used in oaths, iii. 4. 91.
graff, graft, i. 1. 34.
gramercies, pi. of gramercy, thanks, i. 2. 27.
grant, agree, iv. 6. 47.
gristle, a young girl in contrast with a matron, i. 4. 24.
grutch, complain, iv. 5. 20.
H
hand, for my, for my own part, for myself, iii. 2. 71.
hard, very: used intensively in a sense akin to the adverb in
" hard at it" ; so similarly " hard heels," i. 1. 40.
hardily, boldly, openly, iv. 3. 41; assuredly, iii. 4. 149
hardly, surely, forsooth, i, 2. 175.
harquebouse, arquebus, iv. 7. 110.
ha'ze, have us, iii. 4. 7.
heal, health, iii. 3. 84.
heat, fig. angry passion; in that heat, in such a rage, i. 2. 50.
hereaway, hereabouts, i. 3. 88.
hoball, stupid fool, iii. 3. 18.
homely, rough, rude, unbefitting, v. 2. 24.
honesty, honor, respect, iv. 3. 63.
hood, French, a hood worn in the 16th and 17th centuries
" having the front band depressed over the forehead and
raised in folds or loops over the temples " ( N. E. D.), ii. 3.41.
hoop, whoop, ii. 1. 24.
horologe, clock, iii. 2. 90.
howlet, owlet, ii. 1. 24.
husband, manager, i. 3. 91.
I
ichotte, Southern abbreviation of ich vot, I know, i. 3. 99.
imagination, mental conception on judgment from the facts,
inference, iii. 2. 74.
GLOSSARY 171
in, on, i. 3. 57.
insurance, betrothal, iv. 6. 14.
jet, strut, prance, iii. 3. 121.
joyly, of happy disposition, gay and gallant, i. 5, 10.
just, decided, settled (of a fact asserted as true), iii. 4. 60.
jut, jolt, shock, iii. 3. 8.
K
ka (abbreviation of quotha, " quoth he"), indeed: used in
sarcasm or contempt, i. 2. 111.
kite, the name of the bird used as a term of reproach, v. 5. 9.
knacking, " thumping," downright, iii. 2. 58.
knot, group of persons, ii. 3. 53.
know, become acquainted, ii. 3. 35.
ko, quoth, iii. 3. 21.
L
lade, burden, oppress, iii. 2. 36.
land, estate, iii. 4. 115.
last day, yesterday, i. 3. 129.
law, an interjection expressing surprise or amazement, i. 4. 65.
lese, lose, i. 1. 53.
lewd, ignorant, low, base, iv. 3. 1.
light, by this, a common oath, iii. 4. 76.
lilburn, lubber, iii. 3. 18.
lily, fair as a lily, iv. 7. 34.
lobcock, oaf, lout, iii. 3. 18.
losel, profligate, scoundrel, iv. 3. 90.
lout, flout, jeer at, iii. 3. 25.
lout, fraud, i. 1. 34.
lover, would-be gallant (with evil implication), iii. 3. 27.
low, allow, iii. 3. 143.
lub, variant of love, i. 2. 146.
lust, list, please, i. 1. 55.
M
M., for " Master," iii. 3. 133.
maistry, for the, as if for the mastery, to your utmost best,
i. 3. 68.
make, prepare as food, cook, i. 4. 82.
Malkin, a diminutive of Malde (whence Maude), nickname of
Matilda; here used as an oath or asseveration, perhaps be-
cause associated with Mary, as if Molkin, i. 2. 114.
172 GLOSSARY
mankine, of savage temper; uncontrollably fierce or mad,
iv. 8. 41.
marybones, marrowbones, i. 4. 90.
maship, abbreviation of mastership corresponding to mas for
master, i. 2. 100.
Matte, minced form of Mass used in oaths, iv. 7. 114.
meddle you, busy yourself, i. 3. 10.
meetly, properly, or, perhaps, fairly, tolerably, iii. 4. 21.
mind, but for your, except for your wish or judgment, unless
it is your wish or decision, v. 5. 16.
minion, darling; also, as adj., dainty, Second Song, 1.
minion, paramour (like " lover " above), iii. 3. 30.
mo, more, iii. 2. 7.
mock, speech or action expressing scorn or derision, ii. 1. 42.
mock, make, i. 4. 18.
mome, blockhead, fool (see cough), iii. 2. 86.
more and less, high and low, Prol. 11.
moss, humorous for " turf " or "earth," ii. 3. 45.
mote, may, iii. 2. 78.
Mounsire, Anglicized form of Monsieur, iv. 8. 26.
mystery, hidden meaning, Prol. 18.
N
ne, nor, i. 4. 30.
near, nearer, i. 2. 88.
nicebecetur (a humorous quasi-Latinized form of nicebice
(cf. Locrine,S. 3 as pointed out by W. H. Williams) of same
sense), " dainty dame," fine lady, i. 4. 12.
no (Southern form of O. E. na, not), not: in " No is! " " No
did! " (so similarly " No will! " etc.) expressing surprise
at a statement made, where the modern idiom is " Is not!",
" Did not! ", etc., i. 4. 31.
nobs, dear, darling, i. 4. 12.
nones, for the, for one, or for a, particular occasion, i. 3. 15.
nouns, a minced or humorous variation of " wounds " used in
oaths, i. 4. 23.
nown, own, i. 1. 49.
P
parage, lineage, i. 2. 37.
pashe, assumed to be an abbreviation of passion; used in oaths,
iv. 3. 124.
pastance, pastime, ii. 1. 42.
pattens, thick-soled shoes worn to increase the height; run
on pattens, make a great clatter, i. 3. 24.
GLOSSARY 173
pick, " take " (" take yourself off "), iv. 3. 90.
pigsney (by derivation piggcs ncye, pig's eye, used with refer-
ence to its small size, like pinke-nye, tiny eye, as a term of
endearment: see N. E. D.), darling, pet, i. 4. 42.
place, in, on the spot, at hand, i. 4. 72.
plain, surely, iii. 3. 90.
plight, plighted, iii. 1. 10.
portly, stately, iii. 3. 113.
potgun, properly a gun with a large bore, a mortar, also a pop-
gun; also applied humorously, as here, with reference to
any gun, iv. 7. 62.
powder, preserve (meat) by sprinkling it with salt or spices;
cure; here, " salt medium," ii. 4. 22.
pranky, full of pranks, frisky, iii. 3. 117.
prick-me-dainty, one who gives much attention to dress, one
who dresses elaborately, ii. 3. 48.
Q
quite, quits, ii. 3. 79.
R
rag, fig. bit, scrap, with contemptuous implication, iv. 3. 81.
rate, manner (so similarly " at one rate," " in like manner "),
iii. 2. 34.
ray, array, iv. 7. 1.
recorder, an instrument resembling a flute or flageolet, ii. 1. 23.
renne, run, i. 3. 24.
reprief, reproof, v. 4. 20.
resort, go or come (to a place or person) : here absol. for " come
to her," ii. 3. 37.
Rig, a name frequently given dogs, ii. 3. 47.
roil, gad about, ii. 3. 29.
roisting, playing the roisterer, Prol. 25.
roose, extol, flatter, i. 1. 50.
round, whisper, i. 4. 11.
rout, form in a company, gather, iv. 7. 2.
sadness, seriousness, iv. 3. 5.
said saw, saying that has verbal currency, proverb, i. 1. 5.
say, essay, try, iii. 1. 1.
sectour, executor, iii. 3. 61.
see, guard, protect, ii. 2. 5.
174 GLOSSARY
seek to, " make up to," i. 5. 3.
sence, since, since then, already, iii. 5. 5.
shent, injured, disgraced, i. 2. 46.
shoke up, found fault with, sharply rebuked, ii. 2. 1.
shoot-anchor, sheet-anchor, the largest anchor and hence, fig.
main or final reliance, i. 1 . 28. '
shrew, curse, i. 3. 48.
skill, get along (with), succeed or manage (with), ii. 3. 7.
skrine, shrine, chest, box, iv. 7. 64.
slacked, proved remiss, ii. 1. 14.
sonnet, here, a poem to a lady set for singing, ii. 1. 21.
sooth, give assent to, corroborate with flattering intent, i. 1.9.
sore, fearsome, i. 4. 75.
sound, swoon, iii. 3. 93.
sprite, spirit, demon, iv. 8. 25.
stale, matured, seasoned, i. 3. 2.
start, started, i. 4. 64.
stop, obstacle, hindrance, i. 3. 64.
stound, time, occasion, iii. 5. 7.
such other, others like them, Prol. 21.
swing, used of restless and heedless movement, ii. 3. 28.
swinge, beat soundly, ii. 4. 27.
T
take, give in charge, entrust, i. 5. 1.
target, a light round shield, iv. 3. 14.
tender, cherish, iv. 1. 18.
think long, await, or look for, eagerly, iv. 1. 20.
took, gave, i. 5. 1.
touch, trait, quality, ii. 2. 22.
trace, track, iii. 1. 1.
trey-ace, see Note, iii. 3. 142.
trick, neat, trim, ii. 3. 43.
trust, expect, ii. 1. 6.
try, give trial of, v. 1. 8.
tut-a-whistle, how now, what do you mean, nonsense; so, simi-
larly, " tut-a-fig's end." i. 4. 23.
tway, two, iv. 22.
U
uneth, hardly, iii. 5. 4.
V
very now, right now, at once, iv. 6. 40.
GLOSSARY 175
W
wagpasty, idle scamp, iii. 2. 10.
wark, work, iii. 1. 6.
warrantise, guarantee, iv. 7. 26.
wast, waste; in wast, in vain, iv. 5. 22.
week, in by the, launched in his foolish fancies for an indefi-
nite time, i. 1. 24.
whan, a little, iii. 3. 117.
whippet, make haste, i. 3. 68.
whirl, a disk of some weight attached to the spindle to make it
spin with greater force and steadiness, i. 3. 10.
white son, favored dependent, parasite (cf. white, v. to wheedle,
flatter, and white boy in similar use), i. 1. 49.
whur, haste, hurry, i. 3. 11.
wide, wide of the mark, i. 4. 28.
wise, in any, in any case, i. 2. 61.
worm, lover, iii. 2. 48.
write, writ, writing, ii. 3. 74.
yelde, reward, i. 3. 99.
yield, requite, iii. 2. 51.
zembletee, dialectal corruption of semblant, semblaunty, seem-
ing; by zembletee, in seeming, so it would seem (cf. O.F. par
semblant), i. 4. 75.
PR 3176 .U3R3 1912
smc
Udal 1 , Nicholas,
1505-1556.
Ralph Roister Doister /
ABW-9294 (sk)
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