Swore it was the relick of a saint.
The mere lovers of antiquity endured the raillery of the wits for the puerility of the plot, the vulgar humour, and the homeliness of the style. One had asserted that “Still had displayed the true genius of comedy, and the choice of his subject only was to be regretted;” another declared that “the vein of familiar humour and a kind of grotesque imagery are not unlike some parts of Aristophanes, but without the graces of language.” Thus one admirer gives up the subject, and another the style! Even Warton fondly lingered in an apology for the grossness of the “Gammer.”—“In a polished age that writer would have chosen, nor would he perhaps have disgraced, a better subject. It has been thought surprising that a learned audience could have endured some of the indelicate scenes. But the established festivities of scholars were gross, and agreeable to their general habits.” This apology has turned out to be more plausible than true.
This ancient comedy is the work of a truly comic genius, who knew not how to choose his subject, and indulged a taste repulsive to those who only admit of delicate, and not familiar humour. Its grossness, however, did not necessarily result from the prevalent grossness of the times; since a recent discovery, with which Warton was unacquainted, has shown the world that an English comedy which preceded the hitherto supposed first comedy in our language, is remarkable for its chasteness—the propriety of its great variety of characters, the truth of the manners in a wide circle of society, and the uninterrupted gaiety pervading the whole airy composition.
So recently as in 1818 an ancient printed drama, styled Ralph Roister Doister, was discovered;[5] a legitimate comedy of five acts in rhyme, and, as the writer himself professes, modelled on the dramas of Plautus and Terence. He claims for it the honour of the highest class—that of “Comedy,” but this term was then so indistinct that the poet adds the more usual one of “Enterlude.”
Gammer Gurton is a representation of sordid rusticity. Roister Doister opens the moveable scenery of domestic life in the metropolis—touched with care, and warm with reality. The plot, without involution, progresses through the acts. An egotistical and affectedly amorous hair-brain, ever lamenting the dangerous beauty of his ridiculous self, fancies to marry a fair dame. He is hit off as
| So fervent hot wooing, and so far from wiving, I trow, never was any creature living. |
He is the whetstone of a sharp parasite, whose opening monologue exhibits his full portrait—
| But, know ye, that for all this merry note of mine, He might oppose me now that should ask where I dine. |
He runs over a nomenclature of a most variegated acquaintance, with some fugitive strictures exquisitely personal. We find ourselves in a more advanced stage in society than we expected in the reigns of our last Henry or Edward. Such personages abounded in the twenty years of peace and luxury under James the First, when the obsequious hanger-on flourished among the town-heroes of “The Gull’s Horn-book.” This parasite is also one of those domestic dependents whose shrewdness and artifices supply a perpetual source of comic invention; such as those found among the Latin dramatists, whose scenes and incidents are Grecian, and from whom this “Matthew Merry-greek” by his name seems happily transplanted. This poet delights by scenes coloured with the truth of nature, and by the clear conception of his domestic personages. There is a group of domestics—the ancient housekeeper spinning on her distaff amidst her maidens, some sowing, some knitting, all in free chat; these might have formed a study for the vivid Teniers, and even for Shakspeare in his happiest vein. They are not the domestics of Swift and of Mandeville—the spoilers of the establishment; not that they are without the common feelings of the servants’ hall, for they have at heart the merry prosperity of their commonwealth. After their “drudgerie,” to dissipate their “weariness” was the fundamental principle of the freedom of servitude. Their chorus is “lovingly to agree.” A pleasant song, on occasion of the reception of “a new-come man” in the family, reveals the “mystery” of their ancient craft.[6]