[In the following essay, Axton examines the drama Thersites and compares Udall's work with earlier versions of the story.]

Thersites [hereafter abbreviated as T] has plenty of action but little plot. The cowardly anti-hero sets off for war with swaggering words and a Herculean club, browbeating Mulciber into forging him some armour. Loftily resisting his Mother's entreaties to stay at home, he shows his valour in combat with a passing snail, but soon takes refuge in Mater's skirts when an honest English soldier appears. A letter comes from Ulysses, delivered by his son, Telemachus, begging his old enemy to intercede with Mater: her aid is sought in curing Telemachus of the worms. Thersites now berates his Mother, knocking her about the stage till her curses change to blessings and she undertakes the successful cure of the well-behaved boy. Ungrateful and preposterous as ever, her own son Thersites launches into a Skeltonic tirade against the old ‘witch’ until he is finally apprehended by the return of the English soldier and runs off leaving his club and sword. Miles points the moral.

SOURCES AND BACKGROUND

To take such an ignominious legendary figure as the subject and make this fragment a full-blown literary entertainment was the sort of challenge to delight a humanist teacher of writing. Leonard Cox (c. 1524) wittily proposes the topic of Thersites:¹

Homere in his Iliade describeth one Theristes / that he was moste foule and evyll favored of all the Grekes that came to the batayle of Troye / for he was both gogle eyed / and lame on the one legge / with croked and penched shuldres / and a longe pyked hede / balde in very many places. And besyde these fautes he was a great folysshe babler / and ryght foule mouthed / and ful of debate and stryfe / jacrynge alwayes agaynste the heddes and wyse men of the armye. Nowe if one wolde take upon hym to make an oracion to the prayse of this losel whiche mater is of little honesty in itselfe / he muste use in stede of a preface an insinuacion.

(fols Bb4v-5r)

The first author to give Thersites a play of his own was a Frenchman, Ravisius Textor (c.1480-1524).² His Thersites is the scholarly parent of the English interlude. The original Latin text, together with my English translation is printed in Appendix I. Textor was a humanist teacher and writer of distinction, master of the Collège de Navarre in Paris and subsequently rector of the University. His dramatic writings, performed by his university students, were collected after his death and published in Paris in 1530. But Textor's reputation beyond Paris had been well-established by his earlier publications. Some idea of his impact in England may be given by a review of the editions now in the University Library in Cambridge. A copy of his Epithetorum (Paris, 1518) bears the name of Thomas Wriothesley, Udall's patron.³ This book, an aid to young Latinists suggests appropriate epithets for famous characters and terms for decorative amplification: ‘Mulciber: flamneus, igneus, fulminosus; Thersites: proteruus, obscoenus’. Textor's Cornucopiae (Paris, 1519) is a kind of dictionary, which Thomas Elyot might have found invaluable in compiling his own (1538). His Epistolae (Paris, 1529) teaches the art of letter writing with 149 sample epistles. These works went into many sixteenth-century editions and the copies securely in college libraries attest the wide diffusion of his work. Textor's plays may even have exceeded the seventeen editions recorded by his biographer Vodoz.⁴ That some of his dialogues were political satires we know from one of his private letters in which he complains of Francis I's repressiveness and his own imprisonment.⁵ There were three Parisian editions of the Dialogues between 1530-36. The first surviving English edition is Bynneman's of 1581. Unlike the great folios of Textor's other works the tiny volume of twenty-four dialogues is rare today. Much handled, these texts probably suffered the vicissitudes of other play scripts. There are none in the Cambridge libraries although we know that Textor was performed there. The Magnum Journale of Queens College Cambridge records on 15 January 1542/3 ‘actio dialogi textoris’ where on 22 February 1542/3 eight-pence was spent ‘pro picto clipeo quo miles gloriosus usus est in comoedia’.⁶ That this refers to Textor's own Latin play we can be sure because English Thersites, an even more incompetent warrior, forgets to ask Mulciber for a shield.

English adaptations of Textor appeared almost at once: John and William Rastell printed a version of his Pater, Filius et Uxor sometime between 1530 and 1534.⁷ Ralphe Radcliffe, student and then grammar master of Jesus College Cambridge in the same decade, translated three of Textor's dialogues into prose and dedicated the manuscript to Henry VIII.⁸ Radcliffe, who was tutor to the children of the Marquess of Dorset, subsequently ran a school at Hitchin in the buildings of the dissolved Carmelite Friary, where Bale admired his ‘very fine theatre’ made in one of the lower rooms for the use of his boys. There is a world of difference between the earnest, lifeless prose of Radcliffe's worthy efforts and the lilting irreverence of the printed Rastell fragment. This single folio leaf with its easy English idiom and added comic touches is in language and spirit closely akin to our English Thersites.

[UXOR:]
I can have lovers mo then one or two
That shall make my housbande without fayle
To have xx hornes more then a snayle.
PATER:
The devyll cast wylde fyre in thy tayle. …

(1-4)

FILIUS:
… I can understande no laten, I was never at Oxynby
No, nor yet in Cambrydge nor other instevynste.
SERVUS:
Syr ye sholde say universyte, not instevynste.
FILIUS:
I praye you good syr, holde me excused
For to such ropperype termes I am not used.
SERVUS:
Well felow let me thy faggottes bye
And here is for them a peny
FILIUS:
Ye shall have them mayster, with all my harte;
But tell me your name before you departe.
SERVUS:
My name is Robyn ren awaye,
An hosteler that maketh the bottels of hey,
Dwellynge the nexte house to the cocoldes horne
Not farre from the place that your father was borne:
Jynckyn jumbler,
Rafe rumbler,
Philyp flumbler,
Thomkyn tumbler,
Stephyn stumbler,
Henry humbler.

(57-75)

With this alliterative boast, so similar to the romping Skeltonics of Thersites, the fragment ends. Thomas Ingelond's Disobedient Child (printed c. 1570) is another version of Pater, Filius et Uxor and shows the selective respect for relevant classical allusion found in Thersites, sharing with earlier English verse adaptation an exuberance of dramatic language.⁹

Among the non-dramatic ‘portraits’ of Thersites in early Tudor English, the most vivid is that added by Udall to his translation of Erasmus' Apophthegmes. This passage constitutes one of the strongest arguments for Udall's authorship of the play. Its couplets might serve admirably as a prologue to the comedy:

Emong all others, to Troye there came
An eivill favoured geaste, called by name
Thersites a pratleer be ye sure,
Without all facion, ende or measure.
Whatsoever came, in his foolishe brain,
Out it should, wer it never so vain.
In eche mannes bote, would he have an ore,
But no woorde to good purpose, lesse or more:
And without all maner, would he presume
With kynges and princes, to cocke and fume.
In feactes of armes, naught could he dooe,
Nor had no more herte, then a gooce therunto.
All the Grekes did hym deride and mocke
And had hym, as their commen laughying stocke.

(fol.180r-v)

The grotesque description which follows contains many specific details helpful to putting this ancestor of Richard Crookback on stage:

Squynt yied he was, and looked nyne wayes.
Lame of one leg, and hympyng all his dayes.
Croump shouldreed, and shrunken so ungoodly,
As though he had had but halfe a bodye.
An hedde he had (at whiche to jeste and scoffe)
Copped like a tankarde or a sugar lofe.
With a bushe pendente, undernethe his hatte,
Three heares on a side, like a drouned ratte.

(fol.180v)

Udall tells the story of Thersites' life in a few lines of prose:

And not long after his arrivall to Troye, for that he was so buisie of his toungue, so full of chattyng and pratleyng with every kynge and noble manne of the Grekes, Achilles beeyng moved with his saucynes and ymportunitee, up and gave hym suche a cuff on the eare, that he slewe hym out of hande, with a blowe of his fist

(fol.180v)

The high point of Textor's comedy is the snail combat. This amplification of the theme of cowardice draws upon a proverb native to both France and England.¹⁰ A whimsical tradition of marginal manuscript illustration can be traced from the end of the thirteenth century in northern France and subsequently in Belgian and English manuscripts.¹¹ Apart from its timid self the snail has been made to signify a variety of things. Tardif, the snail in the Roman de Renart is attacked with sticks, maces, flails, axes, swords and forks and is shown sympathetically speaking in its own defence. The opponent of the snail in marginal warfare is identified as early as the twelfth century as a Lombard, a prototype of bourgeois or anti-chivalrous man; they were commonly known as usurers and as Papal collecting agents.¹² The revival of interest in the snail combat at the end of the fifteenth century in France and therefore its inclusion in Le Compost et Kalendrier des Bergers is said to have been due to a desire to ridicule the recently established peasant militia. Undoubtedly the best known version of the encounter is in Le Compost and its many English offspring.¹³ The woodcut used by Guy Marchant suggests a possible staging. The snail dialogue continued to appear in English versions of the Calendar throughout the sixteenth century. The following version was translated from Marchant's by Robert Copland. It makes a charming little ‘play’, complete with stage directions:¹⁴

The woman speketh with an hardy courage.
          Go out of this place / thou right ugly beest
          Whiche of the vynes / the burgenynges dothe ete
          And buddes of trees / bothe more and leest
          In dewy mornynges / agaynste the wete.
          Oute of this place / or I shall the sore bete
          With my distaffe / bytwene thy hornes twayne
          That to departe thou shalt be fayne.
The men of armes with theyr fyers countenaunce.
          Horryble snayle / lightly thy hornes downe lay
          And frome this place / out faste loke that thou ryn
          Or with oure sharpe wepons / we shall the fray
          And take the castell / that thou lyest in.
          We shall the flee / out of thy foule skyn
          And in a dysshe with onyons and peper
          We shall the dresse / and with stronge vyneger.
          There was never venycyen nor lumbarde
          That dyd the ete / in suche maner of wyse
          And breke we shall thy house [stronge] and harde.
          Wherefore gette the hense by oure advyse
          Out of this place / of so ryche edyfyse
          We the requyre / yf it be thy wyll
          And lette us have this towre / that we come untyll.
The Snayle speketh.
          I am a beest / of ryght greate marvayle
          Upon my backe / my house reysed I bere.
          I am nother flesshe ne bone to avayle,
          Aswell as a grete oxe / two hornes I were.
          Yf that these armed men / approache me nere
          I shall them soone vaynquesshe everychone,
          But they dare not / for feare of me alone.

(sig. T 8)

The interlude Thersites expands Textor's 267-line dialogue to 915 lines. In this amplification Thersites and Mater are recreated as an English ‘ruffler’ and a folk-play ‘dame’ or ‘witch’.¹⁵ Newly invented are Thersites' opening monologue (T 1-21), Ulysses' letter (T 534-80), and Telemachus' worm cure (T 595-764); they are conceived entirely within the native comic tradition, though they allude albeit mock-heroically to episodes in the Iliad.¹⁶ To judge from Textor's dialogue and Epithetorum, he did not consider either Ulysses or Telemachus as ripe for comic deflation. In the English interlude this effect is achieved by a lowering of literary reference in the manner of Chaucer's Sir Thopas: Thersites threatens to quell Guy of Warwick and Sir Libeus Disconius and, when he has finished emptying out this rag-bag of classical and popular romance heroes, he proposes to harrow hell, purge purgatory and filch St Peter's keys. Whether this satire stays genially within the safe traditions which More and Heywood enjoyed is a moot point. Mater seems a sweet, foolish old thing: she mumbles her charms only under duress. But they are clearly more heathen than Christian. The relics she uses, absurd as they strike us, can be found catalogued in the Vatican Palace itself.¹⁷ Her practises undoubtedly breach the statute against witchcraft, promulgated in 1542, which states that only Biblical phrases may safely be used to effect a cure.¹⁸

The idiom of English Thersites is full of interest, allied, as has already been suggested, to the helter-skelter, would-be ‘popular’ verse of Skelton and to the school of early humanists, including Udall, who despised inkhorn terms and sought out native expression that was lively and colloquial. Textor's more recondite allusions—as study of the Notes will show—have been dropped by the English playwright or rendered homely: aerias ornus ‘lofty mountain ash’ (taken from Valerius Flaccus Argonautica) is changed to the local ‘oke’ (T 226); ‘Libyan lion’ becomes ‘raumpinge lyon’ (T 85); Mount Olympus shrinks to ‘Malverne hylles’ (T 114); ‘flints of Pyrrhus and lances of Hercules’ make way for ‘Bevis of Hampton, Colburne and Guy’ (T 116). These changes make the play immediately accessible to all, while enough allusion is added to delight those familiar with the story in the Iliad. Thersites' few Latin phrases are not actually literal importations from Textor: condatur mihi galea (T 31-32) has been rephrased; and ‘on thy hedibus’ (T 133) is the comic dog-Latin current in plays since Mankind. Detailed discussion of words and phrases may be pursued in the Notes. Worth mention in this context are ‘persecute’ for follow—a rare Latinism, and the nonce-word ‘intellimente’ (T 641) a Latinist's version of the more usual ‘intendiment’. More appetising to the non-specialist are the first recorded usages of ‘solybubbe’ (T 656), the creamy dessert which is to be served by Penelope at a party, and ‘Nevermas’ (T 826) for a holiday that never comes.

Neither the language nor verse of Thersites show much polish. Many lines seem more like rhymed prose than recognizable verse. Formal rhyme royal stanzas are used for the first 21 lines but eight-ninths of the play is couplets, triplets and monorhymed quatrains. Line length varies greatly. In the longer lines there may be from seven to fifteen syllables; iambic pentameters are rare and seem accidental:

Yf Malverne hylles shoulde on thy shoulders light

(T 114)

and lines can have four, five or six stresses. Triplets and monorhymed quatrains are frequent (23 and 17 respectively). Skelton's influence (Philip Sparrow) is heard particularly in Thersites' double-rhymed complaint of his Mother, with its good-natured and facile disgust:

About the house she hoppeth
And hyr nose ofte droppeth
When the wortes she choppeth.

(T 798-800)

Five quatrains with alternating rhyme are used. Three passages of tail-rhyme, cast in six-line stanzas are reminiscent of medieval verse romances (as in Thersites' heroic boast T 326-37).

The syntax is marked by the simple inversions and humble fillers necessary to achieve rhyme: ‘at a woorde’, ‘greate and small’. It is sometimes stiffened up by its Latin.

But I woulde have some helpe of Lemnos and Ilva
That of theyr stele, by thy crafte, condatur mihi galea

(T 30-31)

though there is no attempt (as there is in the later Horestes) at syntactical complexity.

Thersites, the miles gloriosus, is not really a Vice figure, but his off-colour sallies with the audience come from that stable:

Fye! blushe not, woman, I wyll do you no harme …
I praye you, shew how longe it is sence ye were a mayd.
Tell me in myne eare. Syrs, she hathe me tolde
That gone was her mydenhead at thrustene yeare olde.
Byr ladye! she was lothe to kepe it to longe.
‘And I were a mayde agayne’ nowe maye be here songe.

(T 254-60)

Here, (as at T 638) the punning is stressed and related to a familiar topos of popular song.¹⁹ Mater commends the importance of good education by means of homely proverbs:

A chylde is better unborne then untaughte.

(T 771)

It is good to set a candell before the devyll.

(T 777)

The play's wisdom is simple and formulaic, even in the mouth of the hardy soldier from Calais, the only serious character:

Be ye merye and joyfull at borde and at bede.
Imagin no traitourye againste youre prince and heade.

(T 906-07)

AUSPICES AND STAGING

The single edition of Thersites is not dated. There is no entry for the play in the Stationers' Register. Its Lombard Street colophon places it in the period 1561-63.²⁰ No other play texts printed by John Tysdale have survived and none is registered. His lack of experience in printing plays (and in the editorial adjustments often made for print) may account for his fortunate retention of the prayer for Henry VIII, Edward and Queen Jane, or he may have wished in retaining it to give some indication of the period in which the interlude was performed.

Love God, and feare him, and after him youre kinge
Whiche is as victorious as anye is lyvinge.
Praye for His Grace, with hartes that dothe not fayne,
That longe he maye rule us withoute grefe or paine.
Beseche ye also that God maye save his quene,
Lovely Ladie Jane, and the prince that he hath send them betwen
To augment their joy and the comons felicitie.
Fare ye wel, swete audience, God grant you al prosperite. Amen.

This concluding prayer for Henry VIII and for young Prince Edward and his mother (one of the first prayers for the sovereign in English drama), pins at least one performance of Thersites to a period of days between 12 October 1537 and 24 October when Jane Seymour was alive. Performance need not have been at court, although a payment to Udall by Cromwell in February 1537/38 has been taken as evidence.²¹ The cluster of allusions to Oxford and environs suggests that the interlude was first intended for performance there (‘proctoure and his men’ T 154; ‘Broken Heys’ T 155; ‘Cumner’ T 660; ‘Gyb of Hynxey’ T 745). Reference to winter (‘all the herbes are dead’ T 37, ‘I wyll geve the somewhat for the gifte of the newe yeare’ T 478) support the traditional dramatic season, the Christmas holidays, but may be conventional. An Oxford origin seems most likely, with student actors (‘little Telemachus’ T 324) taunting the proctors and threatening to break term to ‘stalk’ the streets of London.²² There were women in the audience (‘Fye! blusshe not, woman, I wyll do you no harme’ T 254); this is not inconsistent with information available about audiences at Christmas performances at colleges or Inns of Court.²³

The stage directions are in English and give unusual help with the actors' gestures. Staging in a college hall seems appropriate. The playing place must be large enough for skirmish and chase, and sallies into the audience. Mulciber has a shop ‘made in the place’.²⁴ He must be able to disappear entirely into it and its contents are kept hidden. It might be carried in or be in place when the play begins. A humble setting is part of the mock-heroic fun; Mulciber is more smith than god and, despite contemporary iconography which puts him in a cave, probably should have a craftsman's stall or booth.

The snail combat may be staged by reference to the Guy Marchant woodcut illustration in this edition. The isolated pillar about four feet high is quite big enough to conceal a person. The snail may appear slowly ascending from the back, animated as a large glove puppet, its horns moved by two fingers or, alternatively, inflated as children's curled party blowers are; both methods make the final retraction of horns an easy matter. Alternatively a small person may creep in wearing a shell in the manner of Sir Politic-Would-be.

Mater has ‘a place which is prepareth for her’ (T 380). It should be some distance from the central playing place to allow a good chase and time for Thersites to hide. There is nothing to suggest it is a house, but it may be provided with equipment used in her charming. At T 839 Thersites refers to her falling from a ‘forme’; if her place were provided with a bench this might be used in the mime and would give more space for Thersites to hide under the spread of her skirts as she sits. After his fright Thersites returns to the neutral ‘place’ where he receives the letter when Telemachus ‘cometh in’. They journey to Mater's place (T 584+) where the expulsion of worms is effected. Telemachus might lie on the bench, making the conjuration more visible to the audience. He ‘must lay hym down with his bely upward and she muste blesse hym frome above to beneath’ (T 696); this is easier to do if he is raised off the ground.

Entries are all made through the audience. Miles may disappear into the audience at T 507+ or leave the hall to await re-entry at T 875+. Telemachus (T 764), Mater (T 781+) and finally Thersites (T 885+) leave the hall. The triumphant English soldier remains, master of the place.

Suggestions for costume occur in the dialogue and may be eked out by reference to iconographic descriptions in Tudor writing. Thersites enters with a tall story about losing his ‘harnes’ (armour and arms) in a fire at the siege of Troy (T 9). Those in the audience who have read ‘In Homer of my actes’ (T 5) will suspect he has been beaten and stripped of his clothing by Ulysses (Iliad II.243-77). He might therefore enter almost naked with his club over his shoulder or, more preposterously, wearing the lion skin of Hercules to match the club.

Udall's translation of Erasmus describes a coward thus:

To a felow that took hymself for no small foole, because he jetted about the stretes with a lyons skynne on his backe, Diogenes said, ‘Thou feloe, wilt thou never leave puttyng the mantell or gaberdyne of manhhood and prowesse to shame?’

and comments:

He thought it a ful uncomely thing, that a persone effeminate (and suche a sheepe that durst not shewe his face emong menne, but was more like to crepe into a bench hole [my italics] then dooe any manly acte), would usurpe the wearyng of the wede of Hercules. The selfe same maye bee saied of those persones that with monstreous disguysyng of their vesture professen holinesse.

Thersites has a large, stiff black beard. Further details may be taken from Udall's description. Such armour as he receives from Vulcan should probably belong to an English foot soldier of the 1530s. Miles should have the same sort but should carry a shield and give the appearance of a ‘regular’ (see Note to T 411).

Mater needs a copious garment in which her son might hide and out of which she could take some of the more absurd ingredients for her charm. Telemachus would be dressed as the son of a nobleman; a short academic gown might suggest his exemplary nature.

Mulciber might be costumed according to Stephen Bateman's instructions: ‘Vulcan is figured lympinge, wyth a blew hat on his head, a hammer in his hand, prepared to the forge lyke a smyth.’

Notes

1. The arte or crafte of rhethoryke [London, 1524]. Describing Thersites Cox paraphrases The Iliad, II. 216-19.

2. The permutations of his name make Textor a catalogue nightmare; he was born Jean Tixier, seigneur de Ravisi but can be listed as Joannes Ravisius or Ravisius Textor.

3. On Udall's patrons see Scheurweghs RRD, p. xxv and Edgerton Udall, p. 116.

4. J. Vodoz, Le Théatre Latin de Ravisius Textor.

5. Quoted by M. E. Cougny in Etudes historique et littéraires … des representations dramatiques … de la comédie politique dans les collèges (Lyons, 1868), pp. 43-44.

6. Master Perne is paid two shillings and seven pence for expenses ‘circa actione dialogi textoris’ (Queens College, Magnum Journale III, fols 99r, 100v).

7. Collections I.i, ed. W. W. Greg, MSR (Oxford, 1907). The folio leaf was used as end papers in a binding of Claudii Altissiodorensis Epistolam ad Galatas enarratio (Paris, 1542).

8. University of Wales MS Brogyntyn 24 contains The Good Man and the Church, The Poor Man and Fortune and Death and the Goer by the Way translated by Radcliffe.

9. Continuing esteem for Textor's Dialogues is suggested by the inclusion of his Earth and Age in Thomas Heywood's Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas (1637).

10. ‘They resemble hym that dare not entre in to the path or waye for fere of the snayle that sheweth his hornes’ Caxton, Royal Book (London, 1484), fol.D5v.

11. Lilian M. C. Randall, ‘The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare’, Speculum (1962), pp. 358-67. See also Folklore Studies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Venetia J. Newall, (Ipswich, 1980).

12. Randall, ‘The Snail’, p. 366.

13. First printed by Guy Marchant in Paris in 1491; Vérard printed a Scottish translation (Paris, 1503); publication in England spanned the period 1506-1631; see STC 22407-22423.

14. STC 22411 was printed about 1528 and is ascribed to Wynkyn de Worde.

15. See R. Axton, ‘Folk play in Tudor interludes’ in English Drama: forms and development, ed. M. Axton and R. Williams (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 11-12.

16. In the Iliad II. 224-42, Thersites reviles Agamemnon for his treasure and women; in response Ulysses vows to strip and beat Thersites. Latin translations of both the Iliad and the Odyssey were made in the first century a. d. by Attius Labeo. A Latin translation of the Iliad was printed in Rome in 1497. The Ilias Latina, a paraphrase by an unknown author, was printed in Venice in 1476 as De bello Troiano. Before 1450 nine manuscripts of Homer in Greek can be traced in Italy (R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage, pp. 458, 499-500). The first Greek edition of the Iliad was printed in January 1488/9 in Florence. The first English translation of the Iliad was made from French; ten books were printed in 1581.

17. See Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage (London, 1975), pp. 222-23.

18. Statute 33 Henry VIII:viii was repealed in 1547 under Edward VI and repromulgated by Elizabeth (5 Elizabeth I:xvi). To distinguish a good charm from a wicked one there must be: No suggestion or words of any pact with the devil; no unknown names; nothing untrue; only ritual signs of the cross; no credence in the manner of writing the charm or wearing it; Biblical phrases might be used only in their original context; there must be assurance that efficacy depended on the Will of God; for safety only standard prayers should be used. Keith Thomas distinguishes between the traditional Catholic denunciations of magic and idolatry and the Protestant desire to abolish magical rituals and sacred objects from ecclesiastical use (Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 305; see also pp. 78, 213-14).

19. The music for this song is transcribed in J. E. Stevens, Music at the Court of Henry VIII (London, 1962), pp. 78-79.

20. John Tysdale was printing between 1558 and 1563; ten of the surviving twenty-four books bearing his colophon have no date of publication. He used the Lombard St. address from 1561 onwards. Thersites is conjecturally dated 1562 by the editors of STC.

21. PRO E/36/256 fol.119v. I think it perhaps more likely from the large sum of money that the performance might have been the lost Ezechias. Whereas Lord Cobham's players were given 20 shillings in that same season, Udall was given £5. ‘Woodall the scolem[aster] of Eton: The seconde of February gyven to hym by my Lorde comaundement for pleying by fore hym v. li.’ For further information about Udall's lost play Ezechias which was performed for Queen Elizabeth in 1564 by the students of King's College Cambridge see John Nichols The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (London, 1823) I, 186, and ‘Regina Literata’ by Abraham Hartwell (I, 18-19) in Progresses, 2 vols (London, 1788) and Scheurweghs, RRD, pp. xxxv-xxxviii.

22. Boas, (University Drama in the Tudor Age, p. 20) suggests that choirboys might have performed it.

23. Nelson, The Plays of Henry Medwall (Cambridge, 1980), p. 6. M. Axton, ‘Robert Dudley and the Inner Temple Revels’, Historical Journal XIII, 3 (1970), pp. 373-74.

24. For other staging ideas see R. Southern, The Staging of Plays before Shakespeare, pp. 209-304.

Bibliography

Axton, Richard, ‘Folk play in Tudor Interludes’, English Drama: forms & development, ed. M. Axton & R. Williams, Cambridge, 1977.

Boas, F. S., University drama in the Tudor age, Oxford, 1914.

Bolgar, R. R., The Classical Heritage, New York, 1954.

Edgerton, William, Nicholas Udall, New York, 1965.

Southern, Richard, The Staging of Plays before Shakespeare, London, 1973.

Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic, London, 1971.

Vodoz, J., Le Théatre Latin de Ravisius Textor, Winterthur, 1898.

List of Abbreviations

RRD: Nicholas Udall's Roister Doister, ed. G. Scheurweghs, Louvain, 1939.

STC: A Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland 1475–1640, ed. A. W. Pollard 1926; 2nd edn. revised and enlarged by W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, K. F. Pantzer, vol. 2, I-Z, London, 1976.