Ralph Roister Doister (written c. 1550, published 1567) once had the distinction of being the first comedy in English. Please see this 1911 edition of the play calling it “the first regular English comedy.” I do not know what 19th century critics meant by “regular” but this was a 19th century idea, as scholars began to work seriously on figuring which plays survived from the 16th century, that Ralph Roister Doister was the first English comedy. It is not the first, regular or otherwise. Let’s return to this issue.
A braggart soldier type (“I am sorry God made me so comely,
doubtless,” Act I, Scene ii), the title character, decides, urged on by a
parasite type, Matthew Merrygreek, to woo a widow, who is engaged and not very
interested. The big comic
misunderstanding involves the mispunctuation of a love letter. The result is a battle between the widow and
her maids, armed with their “tools” (for sewing and weaving and so on) versus
Roister Doister, a pail on his head, and his idiot servants. Perhaps there is a goose involved:
Tibet Talkapace: Shall I go fetch our goose?
Dame Custance: What to do?
TT: To yonder captain I will turn her loose:
An she gape and hiss at him, as she doth at me,
I durst jeapord my hand she will make him flee. (IV. viii)
The battle scene is a bit vague, with lots of room for
whatever gags the director can think of.
As you see, the play is written in competent rhyming couplets.
The braggart soldier, and more or less the plot is from Miles
Gloriosus (2nd cent. BCE) by Plautus. The parasite is from English morality
plays. The servants, the goose, the
songs, the names, and the whole tone of the thing are likely from English popular
plays, whatever touring groups were performing at fairs.
The names are wonderful.
Tristram Trusty, Margery Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace. I’ve remembered Ralph Roister Doister’s name
since I first saw it in some potted history of English theater nearly forty
years ago. The first English comedy should
be titled Ralph Roister Doister.
The domestic detail is also a delight. Here are the maids early on, at work:
Margery Mumblecrust: Well, ye will sit down to your work anon, I trust.
Tibet Talkapace: Soft fire maketh sweet malt, good Madge Mumblecrust.
MM: And sweet malt maketh jolly good ale for the nones.
TT: Which will slide down the lane without any bones. [Sings.
Old brown bread-crusts must have much good mumbling,
But good ale down your throat hath good easy tumbling. (I.iii)
The play is slackly paced giving plenty of its time to
watching the maids sew and sing. It is
not exactly digressive, but like a musical.
Let’s stop and have a song or whatever:
With every woman he is in some love’s pang.
Then up to our lute at midnight, twangledom twang;
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,
And the howlet out of an ivy bush should whoop… (II.i)
Nicholas Udall, the likely author, was a schoolmaster. He likely wrote this play for performance by
his schoolboys. Maybe he was the first
schoolmaster to rewrite a Plautus play for his students, although I doubt it. He may have been the first to make his
rewritten Plautus so inventively English.
It could easily be much, much less English. The Englishness is the best part.
The title character is a direct ancestor of Falstaff,
although, remembering the pail on Roister Doister’s head, the Falstaff of Merry
Wives of Windsor, Falstaff in the laundry basket.
The play is also a little step towards the creation of the
professional boy’s companies, the aspect of Elizabethan theater I find hardest
to imagine. Fourteen year-old boys
performing plays at the level of The Alchemist, how did that work? But I can imagine them doing Ralph Roister
Doister.
Next Monday I will write about another early boy’s comedy,
and is it ever, Gammer Gurton’s Needle.
