With the Holy Ghost, in one degre or estate
Of the hygh godhed, to make the Father coequall,
And thys my Sonne was with me one God essencyall,
Without separacyon at any tyme from me,
True God he is of equall dignytè.
The feet, it will be seen, are here of two or three syllables indifferently; and the same is the case in the couplets which occur also in these plays.
About the same time Nicholas Udall wrote his comedy of Ralph Roister Doister—not printed till 1566—in which we have the earliest specimen of the verse afterwards chiefly used for comedy, namely, one of four feet, the foot of two, three, and even four syllables. It commences thus:—
As long lyveth the mery man (they say)
As doth the sory man, and longer by a day,
Yet the Grassehopper for all his Sommer pipyng