=Date of the Play and its Authorship.=--The title-page of the earliest
known edition of _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_, printed by Thomas Colwell in
1575, states that this "right pithy, pleasaunt, and merie comedie" was
"played on stage, not longe ago, in Christes Colledge in Cambridge,"
and that it was "made by Mr. S., Mr. of Art." There is here no
intimation that any former edition had appeared. But the register
of the Company of Stationers shows that in the year ending 22 July,
1563, Colwell paid 4d. for licence to print a play entitled _Dyccon
of Bedlam, etc._; and as "_Diccon the Bedlam_" is a most important
character in _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ (his name, by good right, standing
first in the list of _dramatis personæ_), there is a fair presumption
that the piece for which Colwell obtained a licence in 1562-3 was
in substance identical with that which he actually printed in 1575
under another title.[644] Whether _Dyccon_ was really published in
or soon after 1563, or whether Colwell for some reason or other
allowed twelve years to elapse before carrying out his intention of
publishing the play, cannot now be determined with certainty; the
balance of probability seems, however, to be in favour of the latter
supposition.[645]
The identity of "Mr. S., Master of Art," to whom the authorship of the
comedy is ascribed on the title-page, appears to be discoverable by
means of certain evidence contained in the bursar's books of Christ's
College, for the knowledge of which the present editor is indebted to
the kindness of the Master of that college, Dr. Peile. If we are right
in identifying _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ with the play which was licenced
to the printer in the year ending 22 July, 1563, the performance at
Christ's College must have taken place before that date, for it was not
the custom to send a play to the press before it had been acted. Now,
in the academic year ending Michaelmas, 1563, there is no record of
any dramatic representation having been given in the college. In the
preceding year, 1561-62, the accounts mention certain sums "spent at
Mr. Chatherton's playe." The person referred to is William Chaderton,
then Fellow of Christ's; but, as his name does not begin with S, this
entry does not concern our inquiry. In 1560-61 there is no mention of
any play; but in 1559-60 we find the two following items:--
"To the viales at Mr. Chatherton's plaie, 2_s._ 6_d._"
"Spent at Mr. Stevenson's plaie, 5_s._"
As no evidence to the contrary has been found, it appears highly
probable that the "Mr. S." of _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ was William
Stevenson, Fellow of Christ's College from 1559 to 1561. It is further
probable that he is identical with the person of the same name who was
Fellow of the college from 1551 to 1554,[646] and who appears in the
bursar's accounts as the author of a play acted in the year 1553-54.
It may be presumed that he was deprived of his fellowship under Queen
Mary, and was reinstated under Elizabeth. Whether Stevenson's play
of 1559-60 was the same which had been given six years before, or
whether it was a new one, there is no evidence to show. The former
supposition, however, derives some plausibility from the fact that,
as several critics have pointed out, the allusions to church matters
in _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ seem to indicate a pre-Elizabethan date for
its composition.[647] At all events it seems likely that the play
of 1553-54 was in English, for the accounts speak of a Latin play
(managed by another Fellow, named Persevall) as having been performed
in the same year.
Of Stevenson's history nothing is known, beyond the bare facts that he
was born at Hunwick in Durham, matriculated as a sizar in November,
1546, became B.A. in 1549-50, M.A. in 1553, and B.D. in 1560. He was
ordained deacon in London in 1552, appointed prebendary of Durham in
January, 1560-61, and died in 1575, the year in which _Gammer Gurton_
was printed.
It may at first sight appear to be a formidable objection to
Stevenson's authorship of the play, that the title-page of the edition
of 1575 speaks of the representation at Cambridge as having taken
place "not longe ago." But Colwell had had the MS. in his possession
ever since 1563; and there is nothing unlikely in the supposition that
the wording of the original title-page was retained without any other
alteration than the change in the name of the piece. The title-page,
it may be remarked, is undated, the tablet at the foot, which is
apparently intended to receive the date, being left blank. This fact
may possibly indicate that when the printing of the volume was begun it
was anticipated that its publication might have to be delayed for some
time.[648] The appearance of the title-page suggests the possibility
that it may have been altered after being set up: "_Gammer gur_-| _tons
Nedle_" in small italic may have been substituted for =Diccon of= |
=Bedlam= in type as large as that of the other words in the same lines.
In Colwell's edition of Ingelend's _Disobedient Child_ (printed 1560)
the title-page has the same woodcut border, but the name of the piece
is in type of the same size as that of the preceding and following
words. As this woodcut does not occur in any other of Colwell's
publications now extant, it seems reasonable to infer that _Gammer
Gurton_ was printed long before 1575.
=Former Attributions of Authorship=.--It is necessary to say something
about the two persons to whom the authorship of _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_
has hitherto been attributed--Dr. John Bridges, who was in succession
Dean of Salisbury and Bishop of Oxford, and Dr. John Still, who was
made Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1593. It is curious that both the
distinguished churchmen who have been credited with the composition of
this very unclerical play received the degree of D.D. in the same year
in which it was published.
The evidence on which it has been attempted to assign the play to John
Bridges is contained in certain passages of the "Martin Marprelate"
tracts. In the first of these, the _Epistle_, published in 1588, the
author addresses Bridges in the following terms:--
"You have bin a worthy writer, as they say, of a long time; your
first book was a proper enterlude, called _Gammar Gurtons Needle_.
But I think that this trifle, which sheweth the author to have had
some witte and invention in him, was none of your doing, because
your books seeme to proceede from the braynes of a woodcocke, as
having neither wit nor learning."
In his second pamphlet, the _Epitome_, "Martin Marprelate" twice
alludes to the dean's supposed authorship of the play, in a manner
which conveys the impression that he really believed in it. None
of "Martin's" adversaries seem to have contradicted his statement
on this point, though Cooper in particular was at great pains to
refute the pamphleteer's "slanders" on other dignitaries. It must
be admitted that everything that is known of Bridges is decidedly
favourable to the supposition that he might have written comedy in
his youth. His voluminous _Defence of the Government of the Church
of England_ abounds in sprightly quips, often far from dignified in
tone; and his controversial opponents complained, with some justice,
of his "buffoonery." He is recorded by Harrington to have been a
prolific writer of verse; and that his interests were not exclusively
theological appears from the fact that he is said to have translated,
in 1558, three of Machiavelli's _Discourses_, having previously
resided in Italy. The only reason for rejecting "Martin Marprelate's"
attribution of _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ to him is that he was not "Mr.
S.," and that he belonged not to Christ's College, but to Pembroke.
But as he was resident at Cambridge in 1560 (having taken the degree
of A.M. in that year), it is quite possible that he may have assisted
William Stevenson in the composition or revision of the play.
The name of Bishop Still is so familiar as that of the reputed author
of _Gammer Gurton_, that many readers will be surprised to learn
that this attribution was first proposed in 1782 by Isaac Reed in
his enlarged edition of Baker's _Biographia Dramatica_.[649] Reed
discovered in the accounts of Christ's College an entry referring to
a play acted at Christmas, 1567 (not 1566, as he states); and as this
is the latest entry of the kind occurring before 1575, he plausibly
inferred that it related to the representation of _Gammer Gurtons
Nedle_, which in Colwell's title-page was stated to have taken place
"not long ago." The only Master of Arts of the college then living,
whose surname began with S, that he was able to find, was John Still,
whom he therefore confidently identified with the "Mr. S." who is
said to have written _Gammer Gurton_. If our arguments in favour of
Stevenson's authorship be accepted, Reed's conclusion of course falls
to the ground; and the character of Bishop Still, as it is known from
the testimony of several of his personal friends, renders it incredible
that he can ever have distinguished himself as a comic writer. The
characteristic quality by which he seems chiefly to have impressed his
contemporaries was his extraordinary seriousness. Archbishop Parker, in
1573, speaks of him as "a young man," but "better mortified than some
other forty or fifty years of age"; and another eulogist commends "his
staidness and gravity." If Still's seriousness had been, like that of
many grave and dignified persons, in any eminent degree qualified by
wit, there would surely have been some indication of the fact in the
vivaciously written account of him given by Harrington. But neither
there nor elsewhere is there any evidence that he ever made a joke,
that he ever wrote a line of verse, or that he had any interests other
than those connected with his sacred calling. A fact which has often
been remarked upon as strange by those who have accepted the current
theory of Still's authorship of _Gammer Gurton_ is that in 1592, when
he was vice-chancellor of Cambridge, his signature, followed by those
of other heads of houses, was appended to a memorial praying that the
queen would allow a Latin play to be substituted for the English play
which she had commanded to be represented by the university actors on
the occasion of her approaching visit. The memorialists urged that the
performance of English plays had not been customary in the university,
being thought "nothing beseminge our students." It is not necessary
to attribute much importance to this incident, but, so far as it has
any bearing on the question at all, it goes to support the conclusion,
already certain on other grounds, that the author of _Gammer Gurtons
Nedle_ cannot have been John Still.[650]
=Place in the History of Comedy.=--In attempting to assign the place
of _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ in the history of the English drama,
we should remember that it is the sole surviving example of the
vernacular college comedies--probably more numerous than is commonly
suspected--produced during the sixteenth century, and that most of
the features which appear to us novel were doubtless the result of a
gradual development. So far as our knowledge goes, however, it is the
second English comedy conforming to the structural type which modern
Europe has learned from the example of the Roman playwrights. The
choice of the old "septenary" measure, in which most of the dialogue
is written, may have been due to recollection of the Terentian iambic
tetrameter catalectic, just as the rugged Alexandrines of _Ralph
Roister Doister_ were probably suggested by the Latin comic senarius.
But while in Udall's play the matter as well as the form is largely of
classical origin, the plot and the characters of _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_
are purely native. Its material is drawn at first hand from observation
of English life; its literary ancestry, so far as it has any, is
mainly to be traced through John Heywood's interludes to the farces
of the fifteenth-century mysteries, of which one brilliant example is
preserved in the _Secunda Pastorum_ of the Towneley cycle.
The artistic merit of the piece has often been unduly depreciated, from
causes which it is not difficult to understand. The very rudimentary
kind of humour which turns on physically disgusting suggestions is
no longer amusing to educated people, and there is so much of this
poor stuff in the play that the real wit of some scenes, and the
clever portraiture of character throughout, have not received their
fair share of acknowledgment. Most people who have lived long in an
English village will recognise Gammer Gurton and Dame Chat as capital
studies from life, though their modern representatives are not quite so
foul-mouthed in their wrath as the gossips of the sixteenth century;
and Hodge, whose name has become the conventional designation of the
English farm labourer, is an equally lifelike figure. The brightly
drawn character of Diccon represents a type which the working of the
poor laws, and many social changes, have banished from our villages.
But old people who were living down to the middle of this century had
many stories to tell of the crazy wanderer, who was recognised as too
feather-brained to be set to any useful work, but who was a welcome
guest in cottage homes, and whose pranks were looked on with kindly
toleration by well-disposed people, even when they led to inconvenient
consequences.[651] The game of cross-purposes brought about by Diccon's
machinations, which forms the plot, is humorously imagined, and worked
out with some skill. It does not, of course, rise above the level of
farce; but there is real comedy, not quite of the lowest order, in
the scene where the fussy self-importance of Dr. Rat, bursting with
impotent rage at his well-merited discomfiture, is confronted with the
calm impartiality of "Master Baily"--the steward of the lord of the
manor, apparently, and the representative of temporal authority in the
village. The common verdict that _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ is a work of
lower rank than _Ralph Roister Doister_ is perhaps on the whole not
unjust; but the later play has some merits of its own, and, as the
first known attempt to present a picture of contemporary rustic life
in the form of a regular comedy, it may be admitted to represent a
distinct advance in the development of English dramatic art.
=Dialect.=--The treatment of dialect in the play demands a word of
notice. All the characters, except the curate and the baily, who belong
to the educated class, and Diccon, who may be presumed to have come
down from a better social station than that of the village people, use
a kind of speech which is clearly intended to represent the dialect of
the southwestern counties. It is not always very correct; the writer,
for instance, seems to have thought that _cham_ stood for "am" as well
as "I am," so that he makes Hodge say "cham I not." Stevenson, as we
have seen, was of northern birth; and, as a line or two in the same
dialect is found in _Ralph Roister Doister_, there is some reason for
believing that the dialect of the stage rustic was already a matter of
established convention.[652] The word _pes_, a hassock, which occurs in
the play, is peculiar, so far as is known, to the East Anglian dialect,
and may have been picked up by the author in his walks about Cambridge.
Whether derived from _Gammer Gurton_ or from plays of earlier date,
the conventional dialect of the stage rustic kept its place throughout
the Elizabethan period. Shakspere's rustics, as is well known, mostly
use the southwestern forms, not those current in the poet's native
Warwickshire.
=The Present Text.=--The text of the present edition is taken from the
copy of Colwell's edition (1575) in the Bodleian Library. The original
spelling has been preserved, except that _j_ and _v_ are substituted
for _i_ and _u_ when used as consonants, and _u_ for _v_ when used as a
vowel. Obvious misprints have been corrected, but are mentioned in the
footnotes (except in the case of mere errors of word-division, which it
seemed unnecessary to notice). The punctuation, and the use of initial
capitals, have been conformed to modern practice. Another copy of
Colwell's edition is in the British Museum. The play was reprinted in
1661, and, with modernised spelling, in Dodsley's _Old Plays_, and in
the new edition of Dodsley by W. C. Hazlitt. An excellent edition, with
the original spelling, was published in 1897 by Professor J. M. Manly,
in vol. ii. of his _Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama_. Several of
the readings which are given in Professor Manly's text or footnotes as
those of Colwell's edition do not agree with those either of the London
or the Oxford copy. In the footnotes to the present edition reference
to Colwell's, Hazlitt's, and Manly's editions are indicated by Ed.
1575, H. and M., respectively.