"Gammer Gurton's Needle was the first to gather the threads of farce ... interlude, and ... school play into a well-sustained comedy of rustic life [with] the rollicking humour of the ... Bedlem; the pithy and saline interchange of feminine amenities; the ... Chaucerian, laughter,—not sensual but animal; the delight in physical incongruity; the mediæval fondness for the grotesque. If the situations are farcical, they ... hold together; each scene tends towards the climax of the act, and each act towards the dénouement. The characters are both typical and individual; and ... the execution is an advance because it smacks less of the academic. Gammer Gurton carries forward the comedy of mirth."—C. Mills Gayley, Litt.D., LL.D., Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University of California.
INTRODUCTION
In 1782 Isaac Reed attributed Gammer Gurton's Needle to a Dr. John Still, who, in 1563, was raised to the see of Bath and Wells. His reasons for doing this are, on examination, found to be somewhat inconclusive. It seems that he discovered in the accounts of Christ's College an entry referring to a play acted at Christmas, 1567 (not 1566, as he states), and, as this is the latest entry of the kind occurring before 1575—the date of publication—he inferred that it related to the representation of Gammer Gurton's Needle, which in Colwell's title-page (see facsimile on page 1) was stated to have taken place "not longe ago." The only Master of Arts of the college then living whose surname began with S, that he was able to find, was John Still, whom he therefore confidently identified with the "Mr. S." who is said to have written Gammer Gurton's Needle.
Curiously enough, another Church dignitary has shared with Dr. Still the attributed authorship of, as Dr. Bradley expresses it, "this very unclerical play"—namely, Dr. John Bridges, Dean of Salisbury and Bishop of Oxford. In narrating the personal history of these two churchmen, let us take them in order.
John Still was the only son of William Still, Esq., of Grantham, in Lincolnshire, and was born in or about 1543. In 1559 he matriculated as a pensioner in Christ's College, Cambridge, and his record, according to The National Dictionary of Biography, supplemented by W. C. Hazlitt in Dodsley's Old Plays, appears to have been as follows:—B.A. in 1561-2; M.A. in 1565; D.D., 1575; Fellow, 1562; presented to the rectory of St. Martin Outwich, London, in 1570; collated by Archbishop Parker to the rectory of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, 1571; and appointed, with Dr. Watts, by the primate to whom he was chaplain, Joint-Dean of Bocking, 1572. From the deanery of Bocking he rose to the canonry at Westminster, the mastership of St. John's College, Cambridge, the vice-chancellorship of the university on two occasions, the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, and finally, the bishopric of Bath and Wells, to which last dignity he was named 1592-3. He died at the episcopal palace at Wells, 1607-8, and was buried, on the 4th April following, in the cathedral, where a handsome monument was erected to his memory. He was twice married, and left behind him several children.
John Bridges was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, his record being:—B.A., 1556; M.A., 1560; Fellow, 1556; D.D. from Canterbury, 1575. He spent some years in Italy, and translated three books of Machiavelli into English, which, however, were not printed. This was followed by a translation of Walther's 175 Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and The Supremacy of Christian Princes over all Persons throughout their Dominions. He became Dean of Salisbury in 1577, and was one of the divines appointed to reply to Edmund Campion's Ten Reasons. His most celebrated work was A Defence of the Government established in the Church of England for Ecclesiastical Matters—a monumental work of some 1,412 pp., published in 1587, and which derives its chief interest from the fact that it was the immediate cause of the famous Martin Marprelate controversy. Dr. Bridges also took part in the Hampton Court Conference in 1603, and on February 12, 1603-4, was consecrated Bishop of Oxford at Lambeth by Archbishop Whitgift. He officiated at the funeral of Henry Prince of Wales in 1612, and died at a great age in 1618.
The question of authorship has, indeed, always been, more or less, a moot point; the same uncertainty applies also to the question of the date of publication; and, notwithstanding recent research and criticism, these questions cannot even yet be said to be settled beyond a doubt.