Gammer Gurton's Needle - it would have made thee beshit thee / For laughter

 

Gammer Gurton loses her needle (solution to the mystery: distracted by her cat she forgets it in her servant Hodge’s pants).  A wandering stranger uses the hubbub to sow chaos for some reason, which gives the play a kind of plot, which for something like this is just a way to give the gags some order.  The stranger wants chaos but of course  so do we, the readers, the audience.  That is the point of comedy.

Such is Gammer Gurton’s Needle.  I date it near but somewhat after Ralph Roister Doister, so mid-1550s.  It was possibly printed in 1563 and certainly printed in 1575.  There we go.  The authorship is a total hash.  The author is one or another Cambridge don, writing a holiday entertainment performed by and for an audience of teenage boys.

They presumably found it hilarious.

Tib.  See, Hodge, what’s this may it not be within it?

Hodge. Break it, fool, with thy hand, and see an thou canst find it.

Tib. Nay, break it you, Hodge, according to your word.

Hodge.  Gog’s sides! Fie! It stinks; it is a cat’s turd!  (Act !, Scene v)

As a character says later, “An thadst seen him, Diccon, it would have made thee beshit thee / For laughter” (IV.iii).  Gammer Gurton’s Needle is rather more earthy than the English comedies that would follow it.  The student of Shakespeare soon learns that anything that looks like a dirty joke probably is.  Such is true here, too.

Gammer.  For these and ill luck together, as knoweth Cock, my boy,

Have stuck away my dear neele, and robber me of my joy,

My fair long straight neele, that was mine only treasure;

The first day of my sorrow is, and last end of my pleasure!  (I.iv)

The play has an outstanding cat, Gib, who sadly never appears on stage, such were the limits of mid-16th century theatrical special effects.  In Act III, scene iv, for example, Gib “stands me gasping behind the door, as though her wind hath faileth” – has she swallowed the lost needle!  The characters debate what to do – “Groper her, ich say, methinks ich feel it; does not prick your hand?” – but the cat stays behind the door the whole time.

Whoever the author was, he knew how to have some fun with the language, which is again in rhyming couplets but with more North English rural dialect.

My guts they yawl-crawl, and all my belly rumbleth;

The puddings cannot lie still, each one over other tumbleth.  (II.i.)

Or these two old ladies screaming at each other:

Gammer.          Thou wert as good as kiss my tail!

Thou slut, thou cut, thou rakes, thou jakes! Will not shame make thee hide thee?

Chat.  Thou scald, thou bald, thou rotten, thou glutton!  I will no longer chide thee,

But I will teach thee to keep home.  (III.iii)

And the humor deepens when I remember that these are two teenage boys dressed as old women shouting these lines for an audience of teenage boys.  This is what we call classic humor.

Next week I switch to tragedy, with Gorboduc (1561) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, written and performed for young lawyers and full of important lessons and Classical learning and so on.  It will be a tonal shift.