HE author and early date of the present Comedy are ascertained by a quotation in Sir Thomas Wilson’s Rule of Reason of Roister Doister’s letter to Dame Custance.
The first edition of the Rule of Reason, 1550-1, is a very scarce work; of which I have been unable to see a copy. The second edition, 1552, 8vo, ‘newely corrected by Thomas Wilson,’ has not the quotation: which apparently first appears in the third edition of 1553, 4to, the title of which runs, “The Rule of Reason, conteinyng the Arte of Logique. Sette furthe in Englishe, and newly corrected by Thomas Wilson. Anno Domini. M.D.LIII. Mense Ianuarij.”
At folio 66 of this edition, Wilson, in treating of The Ambiguitie, adds to his previous examples, Roister Doister’s letter, with the following heading:
¶ 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.
The present comedy was therefore undoubtedly written before the close of the reign of Edward VI., who died 6 July 1553.
If it was then printed, that entire edition has perished. The prayer for the Queen at p. 86, can be for no other than Queen Elizabeth: and therefore, although the title-page is wanting and there is no conclusive allusion in the play, it may confidently be believed that the extant text was printed in Elizabeth’s reign: and that it had possibly in some respects been modified.
There now comes the evidence of the Stationers Co.’s Register, as quoted by Mr. Collier, Extracts, i. 154, Ed. 1848:
Rd of Thomas Hackett, for hys lycense for pryntinge of a play intituled auf Ruyster Duster, &c. iiijd
The missing title-page and the absence of any colophon in the Eton copy, here reprinted, preclude demonstrative proof that it is one of Hackett’s edition. It is however morally certain that it does represent that text.