Udall, Nicholas | Howard B. Norland (essay date 1985)
Howard B. Norland (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: Norland, Howard B. “Roister Doister and the ‘Regularizing’ of English Comedy.” Genre 18, no. 4 (1985): 323-34.
[In the following essay, Norland examines Ralph Roister Doister in light of its innovation and mode of story telling.]
Roister Doister is traditionally considered to be “the first regular English comedy.”1 This designation seems to result primarily from the play's observance of the five-act structure and its perceived imitation of Latin comedy. It is not, of course, the first English comedy; England's first extant secular play, Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres, performed more than fifty years earlier, has a better claim to that title. And it is not the first play in England to use the five-act structure; Grimald's Archipropheta, composed in 1546-47, adopted it. It may also not be the first English play to imitate Latin comedy;...
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