Nicholas Udall’s (1505-1556) Ralph Roister Doister (1553/4)

Nicholas Udall is also associated chiefly with school-circles: he was born in Southampton, Hampshire in 1505, was educated at Winchester and in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he seems to have become an exponent of Lutheran views. In May, 1533 he composed, in collaboration with John Leland, some verses for the pageant at the coronation of Anne Boleyn (later mother of Elizabeth, beheaded in 1536). Form 1533 to 1537 he was vicar of Braintree, where he may have written a play (Placidas or St. Eustace) which was perhaps performed before Thomas Cromwell (More’s chief opponent) but references are vague. He knew the Roman playwrights well and his compilation from three of Terence’s plays (Andria, Eunuchus and Heautontimoroumenos) called Floures for Latine speykinge selected and gathered oute Terence in 1534/35, with an English translation, designed as a handbook for pupils, was an important step towards making Roman comedy known on the English school-stage. Between 1534 and 41 he was headmaster of Eton, but he lost his office through misconduct, which was stealing some candlesticks and physically (perhaps even sexually) abusing some of his students. He was imprisoned for a short while, then he devoted himself to

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theological work, translating parts of Erasmus’ Paraphrase of the New Testament. He gained favour again during the Protestant reign of Edward VI, yet remained a favourite of Queen Mary as well, exhibiting – as a letter of the Queen states – “Dialogues and Enterludes” before her, holding the revels office for the Christmas entertainment. Form 1554 (or 1553) he became the headmaster of Westminster till his death in 1556.

Ralph Roister Doister is the sole work written by Udall for certain (sometimes an allegorical play called Respublica, composed in 1553 and performed by the children of the Chapel Royal, is also attributed to him). Ralph is very likely to have been written in 1553, and performed already by the Westminster boys, since Thomas Wilson¹⁰⁸, who was Udall’s student at Eaton, uses, in the third edition of his The Rule of Reason from 1533/4, Roister Roister’s mispunctuated love-letter (Act III, Sc. 4) as an illustration. Udall drew his plot and characters mostly from Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus, yet towards the end of the play, some elements of Terence’s Eunuchus can also be found.

The plot – following a five-act structure – is simple but lacks the dramaturgical mistake of the “original” by Plautus: here Ralph is on the stage quite a lot and Matthewe Merrygreek (corresponding to both Artotrogus, the parasite, and to Palaestrio, the skilful and witty servant), is a fully “anglicised” mischief-maker, having a lot from the Medieval Vice-figure as well, yet he bears his victim, Ralph, no real ill will. The plot revolves around Ralph’s desire to woo Dame Christian Custance (and her “thousand pounds or more”); Custance substitutes for the standard courtesan in Plautus in the shape of a virtuous widow and her very name reveals her character just as the other names tell a lot about the types their bearers belong to: she is the paragon of virtue, totally uninterested in the “love-sick” Ralph and gets duly married – after some false accusations – to her true love, Gawyn Goodluck, who is the first “honest, middle-class merchant” on the English comic stage. Yet the names representing types, still having a lot to do with the allegorical heritage form the morality plays, are allegories attached to people rather than the other way round when people were attached to certain allegorical abstractions.

The play evolves in concentric circles around Dame Custance: first Ralph gives a letter to Margaret Mumblecast, Custance’s old nurse, which she delivers to her mistress, yet she is scolded for it, then Dobinet Doughty, Ralph’s servant brings a ring and gives it to Tom Trupenny, a servant, and Tibet Talkapace and Annot Alyface, both maids to Dame Custance, yet the circle of the ring is still too “indirect” and weak, so Merrygreek (though not yet Ralph) comes to talk with Custance, which is followed by a moment when Ralph is also there and he does talk to Custance yet Merrygreek partly interprets and partly “corrects” his words. Here we find the most memorable part of the play, when Merrygreek reads out Ralph’s original love-letter (bringing the play, to some extent, back to its beginning, or to a new beginning) with a punctuation which results in every sentence meaning its opposite. E. g., instead of:

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 on liberty do and say what ye lust [want]. 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.

he reads:

…If ye mind be my wife,

Ye shall be assured for the time of my life [that]

108 Wilson was also the author of the most important rhetorical handbook in English, The Art of English Rhetoric (first edition in 1553, second, expanded one in 1560, and later several reprints, the book becoming standard reading at the universities, mostly at the Inns of Court). Wilson later became secretary to the Privy Council.

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;

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,

Dame Custance leaves in disgust; Merrygreek has to fetch the Scrivener who composed the letter; it is from that letter that Ralph copied his version. The Scrivener reads the letter out correctly and says something which is a significant warning to all actors of plays in the future:

“Then was the fault in reading, and not in writing / – No, nor I dare say, in the form of editing.” Act III ends with Ralph and Merrygreek getting into a brawl but instead of fighting they sadly go home. In Act IV it is high time we saw something of the “true lover”, Gawyn Goodluck, yet it is – in line with the rest of the play – only his servant, Sim Suresby, whom we encounter, reporting to Dame Custance that his master is coming. The scene is disturbed by the reappearance of Ralph and Merrygreek, who address Custance as if she were Ralph’s wife and Suresby runs away to report the mischief to his master. Yet Ralph is now threatening Custance both verbally and physically, yet Custance sends for Tristam Trusty, a friend of Goodluck’s, to defend her, as well as alarming her household to do the same. Trusty first persuades Merrygreek to leave Ralph, and Merrygreek, indeed will become their ally; he leads Ralph and his men to the house, where they receives a good beating form the whole household, including now Merrygreek, who pretends to hit Custance but always hits Ralph, so Ralph and his men flee in disgrace. Act V is parody of mistrust (suspicion, scepticism) and trust regained: Goodluck arrives but he is not convinced that Suresby's report was false (or exaggerated) until Trusty guarantees the honesty of Custance. But Goodluck is so much overjoyed by Custance’s faithfulness that he forgives Ralph and even invites him and Merrygreek – in spite of Custance’s protest – to dine with them. Ralph promises to reform and so the play ends.

6. 3. Renaissance theatrical conventions

Though morality plays like Everyman continued to be popular even in Shakespeare’s lifetime (Shakespeare may well have seen some in Stratford), the new drama we today call

‘Elizabethan’ and ‘Jacobean’ (taking the respective reigns of (Tudor) Elizabeth I [1558-1603]

and (Stuart) James I [1603-1625] as landmarks) is an independent and genuinely secular development, initiated and first cultivated by young intellectuals, mainly in and around Cambridge. Following Latin examples both in comedy (Plautus and Terence, cf. 3.1.2) and in tragedy (Seneca, cf. 5.3.), some students and graduates wrote plays and gave performances (first in Latin, later in English) at their universities, joined by some semi-professional or professional players, in inns and, finally, in permanent ‘playhouses’ (theatres) in London, while also touring in the country, and some companies even playing in the Royal Court. The first English tragedy in blank verse, Gorboduc or the Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, written by two lawyers, Thomas Sackville (1536-1608) and Thomas Norton (1532-1584), was first produced at the Inner Temple (the ‘law school’ or ‘university’) in 1561. The fusion of the learned and the popular tradition was, indeed, the achievement of the ‘University Wits’: John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe (cf. 5.6.), Thomas Kyd also belonging here, though – like Shakespeare – he had no academic background (cf. 5.5.). The permanent playhouses (the ‘public theatres’) were erected one after the other: “The Red Lion” in 1567; “The Theatre” in 1576; the “Curtain” c. in 1577; the

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“Rose” c. in 1587; the “Swan” in 1595; etc..; and, most importantly for us, the “Globe” in 1599, burnt down in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, where Shakespeare’s plays were performed.

Writing plays and acting became a sometimes quite rewarding enterprise, and certain more or less permanent companies, under the patronage of an aristocrat or the member of the Royal Family, lending his or her name to the theatrical group, became associated with them.

Examples include the Lord Admiral’s Men¹⁰⁹, with Marlowe, playing in the “Rose”, managed by Philip Henslowe¹¹⁰; or the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later King’s Men, playing in the

“Globe”, managed by the Burbage family, and including William Shakespeare as well.

The public theatres could house c. 2000-3000 spectators (sic!), the building was unroofed, oval or octagonal in shape, with an ‘apron’ stage jutting into the yard, surrounded, on three sides, by the standing spectators, the so-called ‘groundlings’, paying a penny as entrance-fee, while for another penny the more well-to-do could occupy covered seats in three rising tiers around the yard. Thus, visibility was ensured around and even from above the stage; the contemporary audience still got a ‘three-dimensional view’ of the performance, as opposed to today’s ‘two-dimensional’ one. The stage had a ‘tiring house’¹¹¹ in the back, with a right and left entrance on its respective sides, used for coming and going by the actors, and its flat top was the place of the musicians, or serving as the ‘balcony’ in Romeo and Juliet, or in Othello (for Brabantio), or as the ‘battlement castle’ in Hamlet, etc. The stage did have a roof, which was extending well beyond the tiring house, to protect the musicians and the rich and expensive costumes of the actors¹¹², while there were hardly any stage-props – hence the detailed explanations at the beginning of scenes to tell us where we are or what the weather is like. The roof above the stage, also called ‘Heaven’, was storing some stage machinery, such as pulleys and ropes to lower ‘gods’ or ‘goddesses’ (e.g. Jupiter or Juno¹¹³) from above.

Somewhere in the middle of the stage there was a trap-door called ‘Hell’, serving e.g. as a path for Old Hamlet’s Ghost to come up from the ‘underworld’ or as Ophelia’ grave.

So here is the contemporary theatre, e.g. Shakespeare’s, between ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’

and called the ‘Globe’ — all these names and places still carrying rich symbolic-emblematic significance The special feature of these huge, wooden theatres was that (except for the Royal Court, who ordered private performances), all layers of contemporary society were represented, from the law-students through the merchants on market-days to the pickpockets and prostitutes. The audience were far from ‘disciplined’: they were eating, drinking, talking, laughing around the stage and if the play was poor they went next door to enjoy the ‘bear-biting’, where some hungry dogs were set on a hungry bear, chained to a pole. A performance then was something between today’s rock-concert, a religious gathering and public performance, all in broad daylight, usually between 2 and 4-5 in the afternoon. There were also the so-called ‘private theatres’, for an aristocratic or upper-middle class, more refined or intellectual audience; the building was completely roofed and was much smaller in size, seating c. 300 people, and torches and candles were used to give light. For instance, there is the theatre called the Blackfriars, in which the King’s Men played, besides the Globe, from 1608 onwards (e.g. The Tempest was written also with that theatre in mind).

109 Later called Prince Henry’s Men

110 Henslowe’s Diary, recording the performance of the plays and keeping accounts, is one of our main sources of information on the drama of the age.

111 The word ‘tiring’ is a derivation from the word ‘attire’, since the tiring house was used for changing clothes and sometimes even serving as an enclosed, private section of the stage, e.g. Prospero’s cell, or Romeo and Juliet’s tomb.

112 A costume then cost more than the manuscript of a whole play.

113 Cf., e.g., Act IV of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

6. 4. Seneca in Renaissance England

Our contemporary fascination with Seneca is primarily because he was so extremely influential in Renaissance England; his plays, which had been available in aristocratic circles even in the Middle Ages (Andreas Gallicus printed them in Ferrara in 1474), were adapted, translated and imitated by many, including Marlowe (e.g. The Jew of Malta) or Shakespeare (especially Titus Andronicus, the parody in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth etc.). The first recorded performance of Seneca (Troades) is from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1551.

There are verbatim ‘quotations’ from Seneca’s tragedies in, for example, R. Edwards’ Damon and Pythias (acted in 1564), from Octavia, which today is not attributed to Seneca, Robert Greene’s The First Part of the Tragicall Raigne of King Selimus (published in 1594, from Thyestes), in the Anonymous but famous Arden of Feversham (published in 1592, from Thyestes), in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus, His Fall (acted in 1603, from Thyestes and Phaedra) and in Jonson’s Catiline (acted in 1611, from Thyestes and Phaedra again), but there are echoes in Marston’s The Malcontent (1604), Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and Massinger’s The Duke of Milan (1620), just to mention a few examples. As far as translations into English are concerned, Thomas Newton carefully edited and published them in London in 1581 under the title Seneca: The Tenne Tragedies¹¹⁴, including Jasper Heywood’s translation of Troas, Thyestes and Hercules Furens (1559-1561), Alexander Nevyle’s (or: Neville’s) translation of Oedipus (1563), John Studley’s translations of Agamemnon, Medea, Hercules Oetaeus and Hyppolitus (~1567), Thomas Nuce’s Octavia and his own translation of Thebais (1581, translated for his edition of the plays).¹¹⁵ The translators were scholars, not men of the theatre and they used the ‘fourteener’, lines of fourteen syllables, often elaborating descriptive passages and even adding to one play from another (e.g. from Phaedra to Troades).

What Elizabethans liked in Seneca is easy to see: he represents not only pagan, and thus, subversive mythological tales in rivalry with a Christian order but epitomises everything that was feared in England after the civil war of the Roses (the Houses of Lancaster and York):

chaos, disorder, perverse cruelty for its own sake, butchery, and, most importantly, the ritualistic dissection and dismembering of the body (perhaps the body politic), the power of evil to destroy good without considering the possibilities of a conflict between ‘good’ and

‘good’ (perhaps more apt for tragedy), a disastrous event foretold and anticipated from the start (in Thyestes by the Ghost of Tantalus and Fury) – all these horrors coming from an ethical thinker and a serious politician and statesman. Seneca’s philosophical authority legitimised the blood and violence on the stage. The Elizabethans did not have dramatic access to these stories through other sources than Seneca, they did not know the ‘original’

Oedipus (even in Roman times they used Euripides as a model) and the stories – we should not forget – are fascinating in themselves. They liked Seneca’s bombastic language – which served for Marlowe as a model to compose the ‘mighty line’ –, his technique of creating dramatic tension with the minimum of visual aid, his suspending the action for long monologues, or furthering the plot by stichomythia, a line-for-line ‘fencing match’ (quick exchange) between two opponents and the five-act-division. It was the power of the spoken word that was truly great in Seneca: note that horrors in Thyestes – the actual killing of Atreus’s children – is not acted out but recounted by a messenger.¹¹⁶

114 The modern edition of Newton’s book is by T. S Eliot in 1927, reprinted in 1964.

115 Today Thebais is recorded under the name Phoenissae, Hyppolitus under the name of Phaedra, and Hercules Oetaeus and Octavia are said to be non-Senecan.

116 Cf. E. F. Walting, op. cit., p. 27, and pp. 306-312

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