Gammer Gurton's Needle

The Museum Dramatists
No. 1

Edited, with an Introduction, Note-Book, and Word-List. By JOHN S. FARMER

In 1782 Isaac Reed attributed Gammer Gurton's Needle to a Dr. John Still, who, in 1563, was raised to the see of Bath and Wells. His reasons for doing this are, on examination, found to be somewhat inconclusive. It seems that he 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—the date of publication—he inferred that it related to the representation of Gammer Gurton's Needle , which in Colwell's title-page (see facsimile on page 1) was stated to have taken place not longe 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's Needle .
Curiously enough, another Church dignitary has shared with Dr. Still the attributed authorship of, as Dr. Bradley expresses it, this very unclerical play —namely, Dr. John Bridges, Dean of Salisbury and Bishop of Oxford. In narrating the personal history of these two churchmen, let us take them in order.
John Still was the only son of William Still, Esq., of Grantham, in Lincolnshire, and was born in or about 1543. In 1559 he matriculated as a pensioner in Christ's College, Cambridge, and his record, according to The National Dictionary of Biography , supplemented by W. C. Hazlitt in Dodsley's Old Plays , appears to have been as follows:—B.A. in 1561-2; M.A. in 1565; D.D., 1575; Fellow, 1562; presented to the rectory of St. Martin Outwich, London, in 1570; collated by Archbishop Parker to the rectory of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, 1571; and appointed, with Dr. Watts, by the primate to whom he was chaplain, Joint-Dean of Bocking, 1572. From the deanery of Bocking he rose to the canonry at Westminster, the mastership of St. John's College, Cambridge, the vice-chancellorship of the university on two occasions, the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, and finally, the bishopric of Bath and Wells, to which last dignity he was named 1592-3. He died at the episcopal palace at Wells, 1607-8, and was buried, on the 4th April following, in the cathedral, where a handsome monument was erected to his memory. He was twice married, and left behind him several children.