No great discernment is required to see that, after the appearance of Johan Johan, all that was needed for the complete development of comedy was the invention of a well-contrived plot. For reasons already indicated, Interludes were naturally deficient in this respect. Nor were the Moralities and Bible Miracles much better: their length and comprehensive themes were against them. There were the Saint Plays, of which some still lingered upon the stage; these offered greater possibilities. But here, again, originality was limited; the dénouement was more or less a foregone conclusion. Clearly, one of two things was wanted: either a man of genius to perceive the need and to supply it, or the study of new models outside the field of English drama. The man of genius was not then forthcoming, but by good fortune the models were stumbled upon.
We say stumbled upon, because the absence of tentative predecessors and of anything approaching an eager band of successors, suggests an unpreparedness for the discovery when it came. Thus Calisto and Melibaea (1530), an imitation of a Spanish comedy of the same name, though it contained a definitely evolved plot, sent barely a ripple over the surface of succeeding authorship. It represents the steadfastness of the maiden Melibaea against the entreaties of her lover Calisto and the much more crafty, indeed almost successful, wiles of the procuress, Celestine. True, the play is dull enough. But if dramatists had been awake to their defects, the value of the new importation from a foreign literature would have been noticed. The years passed, however, without producing imitators, until some time in the years between 1544 and 1551 a Latin scholar, reading the plays of Plautus, decided to write a comedy like them. Latin Comedies, both in the original tongue and in translation, had appeared in England in previous years, but only as strayed foreigners. Nicholas Udall, the head master of Eton School, proposed a very different thing, namely, an English comedy which should rival in technique the comedies of the Latins. The result was Ralph Roister Doister. He called it an Interlude. Posterity has given it the title of 'the first regular English comedy'.
Divided into five acts, with subordinate scenes, this play develops its story with deliberate calculated steps. Acts I and II are occupied by Ralph's vain attempts to soften the heart of Dame Christian Custance by gifts and messages. In Act III come complications, double-dealings. Matthew Merrygreek plays Ralph false, tortures his love, misreads—by the simple trick of mispunctuation—his letter to the Dame, and thus, under a mask of friendship, sets him further than ever from success. Still deeper complexities appear with Act IV, for now arrives, with greetings from Gawin Goodluck, long betrothed to Dame Custance, a certain sea-captain, who, misled by Ralph's confident assurance, misunderstands the relations between the Dame and him, suspects disloyalty, and changes from friendliness to cold aloofness. This, by vexing the lady, brings disaster upon Ralph, whose bold attempt, on the suggestion of Merrygreek, to carry his love off by force is repulsed by that Dame's Amazonian band of maid-servants with scuttles and brooms. In this extraordinary conflict Ralph is horribly belaboured by the malicious Matthew under pretence of blows aimed at Dame Custance. Act V, however, brings Goodluck himself and explanations. That worthy man finds his lady true, friendship is established all round, and Ralph and Merrygreek join the happy couple in a closing feast.
This bald outline perhaps makes sufficiently clear the great advance in plot structure. Within the play, however, are many other good things. The character of Ralph Roister Doister, 'a vain-glorious, cowardly blockhead', as the list of dramatis personae has it, is thoroughly well done: his heavy love-sighs, his confident elation, his distrust, his gullibility, his ups and downs and contradictions, are all in the best comic vein. Only second in fullness of portraiture, and truer to Nature, is Dame Custance, who—if we exclude Melibaea as not native to English shores—may be said to bring into English secular drama honourable womanhood. Her amused indifference at first, her sharp reproof of her maids who have allowed themselves to act as Ralph's messengers, her gathering vexation at Ralph's tiresome wooing, her genuine alarm when she sees that his boastful words are accepted by the sea-captain as truth—these are sentiments and emotions copied from a healthy and worthy model. Matthew Merrygreek, an unmistakable 'Vice' ever at Ralph's elbow, is of all Vices the shrewdest striker of laughter out of a block of stupidity: it is from his ingenious brain that almost every absurd scene is evolved for the ridiculing of Ralph. Thoroughly human, and quite assertive, are the lower characters, the maid-servants and men-servants, Madge Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace, Truepenny, Dobinet Doughty and the rest. Need it be added that the battle in Act IV is pure fooling? or that jolly songs enliven the scenes with their rousing choruses (e.g. 'I mun be married a Sunday')? Ralph Roister Doister is an English comedy with English notions of the best way of amusing English folk of the sixteenth century. With all its improvements it has no suggestion of the alien about it, as has the classically-flavoured Thersites (also based, like Udall's play, on Plautus's Miles Gloriosus), or Calisto and Melibaea with its un-English names. Perhaps that is why it had to wait fifteen years for a successor. Quite possibly its spectators regarded it as merely a better Interlude than usual, without recognizing the precise qualities which made it different from Johan Johan.
Two quotations will be sufficient to illustrate the opposing characters.
(1)
Merrygreek (alone). But now of Roister Doister somewhat to express,
That ye may esteem him after his worthiness,
In these twenty towns, and seek them throughout,
Is not the like stock whereon to graff a lout.
All the day long is he facing and craking[49]
Of his great acts in fighting and fray-making;
But when Roister Doister is put to his proof,
To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoof.
If any woman smile, or cast on him an eye,
Up is he to the hard ears in love by and by:
And in all the hot haste must she be his wife,
Else farewell his good days, and farewell his life!
(2)
[Tristram Trusty, a good friend and counsellor to Dame Custance, is consulted by her on the matter of the sea-captain's (Suresby's) misunderstanding of her attitude towards Ralph Roister Doister.]
T. Trusty. Nay, weep not, woman, but tell me what your cause is.
As concerning my friend is anything amiss?