FOOTNOTES:
[285] Wood's Fasti, quoted by Arber. Arber assigns 1504 as the year of Udall's birth, but makes him "æt. 18" in 1524. Cf. Cooper's Extracts from C. C. C. Register.
[286] Cf. Bale, Catal. ed. 1557, Cent. 9, 45 (fol. 717; general statement concerning Udall's Protestantism). Lutheranis disciplinis dum in academia studuit addictus fuit, Tanner after Wood, cf. Cooper, XII. It is remarkable, however, that we do not find Udall in correspondence with the reformers "in exile."
[287] In March, 1521, cf. Ellis, Original Letters, I. i, 239 sqq.
[288] Reprinted from Leland's Collectanea, V. by Cooper, XII. XIV. XXVI.
[289] Cf. the epigram "de liberalitate Nic. Odoualli," quoted by Cooper, XII.
[290] Original among the Royal Mss., 18 A. L. XIV. Cf. Calendars, etc., VI., No. 564; Ib. 565, referring to Latin verses on this coronation by Richard Coxe, Udall's predecessor at Eton (from Harl. Ms. 6148, f. 117). Udall's verses are reprinted by Arber, English Garner, 2, 52; parts of them published by Collier and Fairholt. Cf. Cooper (XIII.), who dates the pageant 1532 (as does Ward, Hist. Dram. Poetry, I. 141). This pageant shows Udall's earliest connection with the revels, and may have given him a name at the side of Heywood.
[291] U. speaks later of the Eton mastership as "that roume which I was neuer desirous to obtain."
[292] Cf. Arber, p. 3.
[293] Cf. Warton, Hist. of English Poetry, 3, 308; Interdum etiam exbibet [sc. ludi magister] Anglico sermone contextas fabulas, si quæ babeant acumen et leporem. Eton was the only place where we know of English plays; but Radulphus Radclif at Hitchin may have performed some of his school comedies in English, as the "plebs" mentioned by Bale would not much have appreciated Latin performances, Catalogus, 8, 98, fol. 700; Herford, Literary Relations, p. 110, citing the occasional admission of English school plays at Eton, says that to "this concession we owe the Ralph Roister Doister." More likely we owe the concession to Roister Doister. Cf. Herford on Udall's De Papatu.
[294] It seems improbable that the R. D. was ever performed at Court; Udall's "interludes and devices" were pageants, as the Loseley Mss. prove; see below.
[295] Tusser's 500 Pointes, ed. Payne & Heritage, p. 205.
[296] Cooper attributes to Udall's severity the running away from school of "divers" Eton boys alluded to by Roger Ascham (Schoolmaster). But this passage refers to 10 Dec. 1563, twenty-two years after Udall had ceased to swing the rod over the Eton boys!
[297] Cf. quotation from Nicolas's Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, 7, 152-53, in Cooper; the date is 14 March 32 Henry VIII. (1541-42) and not 1543, as Arber gives it. Arber dates Udall's letter also wrongly 1543; it is referred to 1541-42 in Ellis's Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men, Camden Soc., 1843, P. 1.
[298] "Accepte this myn honest chaunge from vice to virtue, from prodigalitee to frugall livyng, from negligence of teachyng to assiduitee, from playe to studie, from lightness to gravitee." He speaks about his "offenses," does not wish to excuse himself, but says "humana quidem esse, et emendari posse." He begs for a chance to show his "emendyng and reformac̄on," and quotes instances from ancient history of great men who had indulged in a "veray riottous and dissolute sorte of livyng" in their youth, had been "drowned in voluptuousness" and had lived in "slaundre and infamie," but had reformed. Not a word is said about thefts, "robberies," and such "felonious trespasses." Cf. the whole letter from a new collation in Flügel's Lesebuch, I, 351.
[299] U. does not beg in this letter for his "restitution," as Arber seems to accept.
[300] Cf. Cooper, XXIII.
[301] Mars had "the rule" there October, 1542-July, 1543 (Froude, 3, 525-570), then again August, 1547 (Somerset in Berwick, Froude, 4, 288); the naval expedition of Hertford in May, 1544, being here out of the question (Ib. 4, 32).
[302] This translation (published in September) might also indicate some connection between Udall and Aldrich during the summer of 1542. Aldrich was a great "Erasmian"; he had been the juvenis blandæ eloquentiæ whom Erasmus used as interpreter on that immortal pilgrimage to Walsingham, and he kept up a correspondence with Erasmus.
[303] Udall took as his share St. Luk and the "disposition" of the rest with exception of St. John and St. Mark; perhaps he assisted also in the translation of Matthew and Acts. The Prefaces are dated 1545, 1548. The whole must have been quite a lucrative business-undertaking, because every parish in England had, by law, to buy a copy of this work and "every parson had to have and diligently study the same conferring the one [the New Testament both in Latin and English] with the other [the paraphrase]." Cf. Cranmer's Remains, 155, 156 (1548); the Injunctions of Edward, 1547 (Ib. 499, 501), etc.; cf. also Grindal's Works, 134, 157; Hooper's Works, 2, 139, 143 (Parker Soc.).
[304] Cranmer too wrote "Answers to the Fifteen Articles of the Rebels, Devon, Anno 1549," reprinted in his Remains, 163; and a number of references to the Rebellion may be found in the writings of the Reformers, f. i. Letter of Hooper to Bullinger, 25 June, 1549, of John ab Ulmis to Bullinger, May 28, 1550, of Burcher to Bullinger, 25 August, 1549. But none of these correspondents ever mention Udall.
[305] Cf. Cooper, XXX.
[306] An interesting letter of Udall's, dated August, 1552, referring to his place at Windsor, was printed in Archæologia, 1869, Vol. XLII. 91, but has not hitherto been utilized for Udall's Biography. The preface to a translation of T. Geminie's Anatomy by Udall is dated 20 July, 1552; cf. Cooper, XXXI.; Udall's Epistolæ et Carmina ad Gul. Hormannum et ad Jo. Lelandum, are quoted by Bale, etc., and given under this year by Cooper (who reads: Hermannum). Hormann died 1535, as vice-provost of Eton.
[307] This warrant was communicated to the Archæological Society, December 9, 1824, by Mr. Bray (Archæologia, 21, 551), but not printed until 1836 in the Loseley Mss., now first edited by A. J. Kempe; No. 31, p. 63.
[308] See below, under Date of the Early Edition of R. D. Another early allusion to Udall as a playwright is that from Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, 3, 177, according to which "an English play called Ezekias, made by Mr. Udall and handled by King's College men only," was performed before Elizabeth August 8, 1564, at Cambridge; see Cooper's Preface, xxxiii. Bale, who does not mention Udall as a playwright in the edition 1548 of his Catalogus (he mentions only [Ochino's?] Tragoedia de papatu), says in the edition September, 1557, that Udall wrote "comœdias plures." There is nothing on Udall in his Supplement of 1559.
[309] It is remarkable that these documents should never have been utilized for Udall's biography. Cf. the "Miscellaneous Extracts from Various Accounts relating to the Office of the Revels," printed among the Loseley Mss., p. 90. The Muniment Room of James More Molyneux at Loseley House, Surrey, would furnish these and perhaps other documents most valuable for Udall's History and that of the Early Drama.
The "scheme for an interlude, in which the persons of the drama were to be a King, a Knight, a Judge, a Preacher, a Scholar, a Serving-man," which Hazlitt (Handbook, 622) carelessly attributes to Udall, is not connected with his name; cf. Loseley Mss., p. 64.
[310] These may refer to another pageant, l.c.
[311] No exact date given by Cooper, XXXIV. Hales gives good reasons for the probability that Udall's mastership commenced in 1553; cf. Englische Studien, 18, 421; cf. ib., a very interesting note on the Terentian Plays, annually performed at the Westminster School. It seems almost as if here, as well as at Eton, Udall's headmastership had some significance for the history of the English school comedy.
[312] Funerall Monuments, ed. 1631, fol. 497.
[313] See above, p. [90], and notes.
[314] The Date of the First English Comedy, in Englische Studien, 18, 408-421.
[315] Professor Hales, in his essay on the date of Roister (Englische Studien, 18, 419) quotes for these usury laws the incomplete account of them in Craik's History of British Commerce, 1, 22, 231.
The law of 1545 (so dated by Ruffhead; and not 1546) is far more important on account of its clause about the "yearly interest" than of that about the ten per cent.
[316] To Collier has been given the credit of first ("soon after 1820") connecting Udall's name with Roister Doister, the unique copy of which had been published by the finder, the Revd. Thos. Briggs, in 1818. But, in the first place, Collier could not have identified the "ambiguous" letter in "Wilson's Art of Logic, printed by Richard Grafton, 1551," as he says he did, since "The rule of Reason, contei || nyng the Arte of || Logique, set forth || in Englishe, || by Thomas || Vuilson. || An. M. D. LI. does not contain the quotation from Roister Doister (copy in the Bodleian kindly examined for me by Professor Gayley), neither does the edition of 1552 (cf. Arber). On folio 66 of the third edition (1553) appears for the first time: "An example of soche doubtful writing whiche by reason of poincting maie haue double sense, and contrarie meaning, taken out of an entrelude made by Nicolas Vdal." And, in the second place, Collier had been anticipated, in part, for as early as 1748 reference had been made to the passage from Wilson by Tanner, who writes (Bibliotheca, 8. n.): In Thos. Wilson's Logica, p. 69 [it is leaf 67 of edition 1567 in my possession] sunt quidem versus ambigui sensus ex Comœdia quadam huius Nic. Udalli desumpti.
[317] With this opinion, and that of p. 90, n. 4, contrast Fleay's argument, Hist. Stage, pp. 59, 60. Gen. Ed.
[318] Ward in Dict. Nat. Biog. 26, 332. Ward says that in Heywood's Plays the "bridge had been built" to English Comedy. I think rather that this bridge was a temporary structure, waiting to be replaced by the more solidly planned work of a higher architect.
[319] These traits as well as the practical jokes would, of course, be especially enjoyed by the Eton players and their youthful audience.
[320] Ward, Hist. Dram. Lit., 1, 157 (Lond.: 1899).
[321] Cf. the splendid essay on the Roman Colax and Parasite in O. Ribbeck's Hist. of Roman Lit. (Stuttgart, 1887), 1, 83 sqq.
[322] "These lies are like their father—gross as a mountain, open, palpable."—Shak., 1 Hen. IV. 2, 4.
[323] Ward, l.c., calls Roister "a vain-glorious, cowardly blockhead, of whom the Pyrgopolinices of Plautus is the precise prototype." That his character has some fine points, modelled after the Terentian Thraso, is shown in the notes (cf. especially the last scene). Roister's character, indeed, is the least original of the play, but he is not Udall's favourite figure. Udall did not spend as much labour on him as on Merygreeke.
[324] This possible complication, which would have yielded a fine scene, seems not to have occurred to Udall.
[325] In this respect even Jack Juggler deserves credit. I find no trace of Plautus and Terence in Heywood's plays.