SOURCE: Peery, William. “The Prayer for the Queen in Roister Doister.” Studies in English 27 (1948): 222-33.

[In the following essay, Peery considers the prayer at the close of Ralph Roister Doister, arguing that it is addressed to Queen Mary, rather than Queen Elizabeth, as is often assumed. This contention has implications for the dating of the play and the authorship of the prayer.]

The prayer for the queen and estates¹ which brings Ralph Roister Doister to a close raises two problems: for whom was it offered, and who wrote it? Though these are admittedly not major issues, they have been so often clouded that they merit further study. To answer the related questions of application and authorship is the purpose of this paper.

Most scholars—including Cooper, Arber, Hazlitt, Ward, Flügel, Chambers, Farmer, Child, Schweikert, and Greg²—have held the opinion that the prayer was offered for Elizabeth. Two, Lee and Scheurweghs,³ find the prayer applicable to either Mary or Elizabeth. Only a few⁴ have taken the prayer as one for Mary.

Why have almost all students of Udall applied the prayer to Elizabeth? Cooper and Schweikert give no reason beyond their assumption, probably correct, that the text of the play as we have it was printed during Elizabeth's reign.⁵ Arber, Hazlitt, Ward, and Farmer⁶ state no reason though they may be basing their application on the same consideration. Flügel finds evidence for the application of the prayer to Elizabeth in “the words ‘God graunt hir as she doth, the Gospell to protect,’”⁷ evidence which appears to be of weight also to Chambers and Greg though not to Child.⁸

Under examination, however, these reasons for applying the prayer to Elizabeth seem insufficient. The facts of composition and publication of the play, so far as known, hardly warrant such application. Roister Doister seems to have been written, not as scholars long thought,⁹ during Udall's head-mastership of Eton (1534-1541), but, according to others, in 1552¹⁰ or even between August, 1533 and January, 1554.¹¹ Though we can not date the composition of the play precisely, it now seems agreed that the play was written a few months before, at, or a few months after the beginning of Mary's reign.¹² Whether it was published in Mary's reign we do not know, though it may have been.¹³ The play was not entered in the Stationers' Register, however, until “ca. October, 1566.”¹⁴ The unique Eton copy appears to have been printed, possibly consequent upon this entry,¹⁵ in 1566 by Henry Denham for Thomas Hacket.¹⁶ With these facts in mind, one can hardly find convincing the argument that the prayer is for Elizabeth because of the probable date of publication of the Eton copy. If there was an edition between 1553 and 1558, and there may have been such an edition, the queen prayed for must have been Mary. Even if the Eton copy represents the first edition, if the play was written and initially produced in Mary's reign—as modern scholarship thinks it was—the queen prayed for was probably Mary.

Unless we are willing to accept the foregoing conclusion, we must advance some very dubious and complicated hypotheses. One must conjecture—with Arber, Hazlitt, Ward, Chambers, Lee, and Greg¹⁷—that the Eton copy represents a revised text and that the prayer is a later addition. Flügel postulates an “unknown hand that prepared the play for the press under Elizabeth.”¹⁸ Child goes so far as to warn, “Nor must it be forgotten that the play, as we have it, shows obvious marks of revamping to suit current conditions … in this case to make the play fit Elizabeth's reign.”¹⁹

Other than possibly the prayer, what are these “obvious marks of revamping”? To my satisfaction Baldwin and Linthicum dispose of the usury passage²⁰ as evidence of date.²¹ The only other passage which seems to bear on this question is a couplet in Matthew Merygreke's opening soliloquy:

But when Roister Doister is put to his proofe,
To keepe the Quéenes peace is more for his behoofe.(22)

The words “the Quéenes peace” scholars have explained in a manner consonant with their views on the application of the prayer: as an alteration of “the King's peace.”²³ In one passage Scheurweghs rightly states: “It is evident that the metre does not indicate whether Queenes was originally intended or changed from Kinges.”²⁴ In another, he conjectures an involved history of alteration²⁵ which he later regards as established: “the masculine pronouns and the title King were changed, but verses which were peculiar to the reign of Edward VI. could not be altered, and were left in to tell the tale.”²⁶

All of these hypotheses—involving interpolation, deletion, emendation, and restoration—are possible; but none of them is based upon bibliographical or other acceptable internal evidence, and in the light of current belief as to the date of Roister Doister none is necessary to the explanation of the phenomena. If the play dates from the beginning of Mary's reign,²⁷ consistent application of the evidence from date should lead us to the conclusion that the queen prayed for is Mary. Unless the prayer contains material which indicates indisputably that it could not have been offered for Mary, we can only accept its application to her.

The second reason, as we have seen, why scholars have taken the prayer as one for Elizabeth is that they have thought certain words and phrases in it more appropriate to Elizabeth than to Mary. Let us put the prayer before us.

          The Lord preserue our most noble Quéene of renowne,
And hir vertues rewarde with the heauenly crowne.
          The Lorde strengthen hir most excellent Maiestie,
Long to reigne ouer vs, in all prosperitie.
          That hir godly procéedings the faith to defende,
He may stablish and maintaine through to the ende.
          God graunt hir as she doth, the Gospell to protect,
Learning and vertue to aduaunce, and vice to correct.
          God graunt hir louyng subiects both the minde and grace,
Hir most godly procedyngs worthily to imbrace.
          Hir highnesse most worthy counsellers God prosper,
With honour and loue of all men to minister.
          God graunt the nobilitie hir to serue and loue,
With all the whole commontie as doth them behoue.

AMEN.²⁸

Most of the details in this prayer are so conventional that they might be used in a prayer for any queen. Long rule, for example, is besought for the monarch in Gentleness and Nobility (1527), King John (1536; prayer 1558=), Thersites (1537), Respublica (1553), and Patient and Meek Grissell (1559) as well as other plays. In Like Will to Like (1568) God is asked “To advance virtue and vice to overthrow,”²⁹ though the vice seems to be among the commons rather than the nobility or royalty. In the final prayer of Roister Doister, only those words and phrases which I have italicized, I believe, have seemed to scholars more readily applicable to Elizabeth than to Mary. One of those, moreover, “the faith to defende,” should not have proved a problem. Doubtless deriving from Henry VIII's title, Fidei Defensor, these words were with propriety used of both Mary and Elizabeth.³⁰ Though the others are perhaps more difficult, they are all applicable to Mary. Her godly procedyngs might refer to some of her less bloody religious activities, such as her making ordinances for the government of cathedral and collegiate churches,³¹ or the phrase might have been used in only a very general sense.³² More likely, however, Mary's godly procedyngs to Udall or any other good Catholic in 1553 were her efforts to restore the Roman faith. James Gairdner saw fit to title one of his chapters on such efforts “The Queen's Proceedings.”³³ John Foxe glosses the phrase in the sixteenth century: “The papists call all their trumpery the queen's proceedings.”³⁴ The lawyer Foster used it against Rowland Taylor of Hadley when the latter attempted to interrupt a mass in his church: “Wilt thou traitourlye heretic! make a commotion, and resist violently the queen's proceedings?”³⁵ Mary herself speaks of efforts “to hinder our godly purpose,”³⁶ i.e., to restore Catholicism. Wotton wrote in cipher of Mary's “godly purpose and Catholic doings.”³⁷ The possible importance of the phrase godly procedyngs in Mary's time may be indicated by its having been used in the third of Thomas Cranmer's prepared “recantations.” Cranmer subscribed himself “content to submit myself to the King's and Queen's Majesties … most humbly without murmur or grudging against any of their godly proceedings.”³⁸ From the modern vantage ground godly procedyngs may seem less appropriate to Mary's than to Elizabeth's measures, but in 1553 the term might have come most happily from one in Udall's position. Since he had been an active controversialist against Papists in the time of Edward,³⁹ in the first months of Mary's reign his future must have seemed doubtful. In A Pore Helpe Gardiner is reported as warning

That, if the world shal turn,
A sort of you shal burn.(40)

What might save Udall? He had collaborated with Mary as princess on Erasmus' Paraphrase of the New Testament⁴¹ and paid high tribute to her learning in his preface to John.⁴² Perhaps she would remember. Public recognition of her religious measures as godly procedyngs might serve Udall, as it was intended to serve Cranmer later, as a recantation. Offered by Udall for Mary, the prayer may even have been instrumental in saving him from the stake and giving him opportunity to exhibit before his queen the “diligence in settyng forthe of dyalogges & enterludes” which she was soon to commend.⁴³

There remains, then, the troublesome phrase, the Gospell to protect. It may be only a poetic variation on the preceding faith to defende.⁴⁴ I think it unlikely that it has a specialized application to Mary's work on the translation of John though that is not impossible. A general application with reference to Mary's numerous efforts against the “much false and erronious Doctrine” which “hathe bene taught preached and written”⁴⁵ recently is more likely. John Harpsfield in his sermon at the convocation accompanying Mary's first Parliament states: “How many places of Scripture did they corrupt! … The Gospel, which so frequently they had in their mouths, they fought against in an hostile manner by their works and their manner of doctrine.”⁴⁶ In 1552-3, indeed, it must have been hard to know with certainty what the Gospel was. As Mary herself said to Bishop Ridley, “I cannot tell what ye call God's word: that is not God's word now, that was God's word in my father's days.”⁴⁷ Any Catholic in 1553 might have regarded Mary's bans upon preaching and reading the Bible as means of protecting the Gospel. To protect the Gospel from heresies, one attacked the English Bible.⁴⁸

There appears, then, to be nothing in the prayer for the queen which in 1553 might not have been said appropriately by a Catholic about Mary. Had we not been misled by the evidence from date, perhaps we should have avoided applying the prayer, I believe erroneously, to Elizabeth. Baldwin and Linthicum, indeed, take it as for Mary without finding it necessary to refute scholarly opinion opposed to theirs.

The prayer itself indicates that it was composed at the very threshold of a reforming queen's reign, when all the future was decidedly doubtful. … These words have almost unmistakable application to Queen Mary's position the autumn of 1553, though they might by the barest possibility fit the first months of Elizabeth's reign, while their general sentiment, though not their peculiar phraseology, would still have been appropriate even when the play was printed. When we remember that some such prayer⁴⁹ must have been written this autumn 1553, surely we cannot escape the conviction that this is it.⁵⁰

Baldwin and Linthicum, however, did not settle the problems raised herein. Whereas they see in the words of the prayer “unmistakable application” to Mary, Scheurweghs says that the prayer

obviously was written during the reign of Edward VI. The mention of a ‘queen’ and the use of the pronouns she and hir do not make any difficulty, as these words can easily be changed without altering the metre; on the contrary the allusion to the ‘most worthy counsellers’ does not suit at all the reign of Queen Mary, but points to the time of King Edward, her brother, who could not reign by himself during his minority. … Edward VI was also for certain the king who had undertaken ‘the Gospell to protect.’ … No man would ever have written of Queen Mary that she was ‘the protector of the Gospel’ as it would sound like an insult; if it was a question of adapting a text written before to circumstances that had altered, it may have seemed that, after all, Mary did protect the Gospel together with the dogmas and the traditions of the Church. For the sake of changing as little as possible in the metrical text, this ambiguous compliment was left in with the obvious inaccuracy about “Hir highnesse … Counsellers' who are not said to serve her and love her, as do ‘the nobilitie’ but ‘with honour and loue of all men to minister.’ Maybe those verses had been crossed off for representations in Mary's time, and were re-inserted when the manuscript was printed in the reign of Elizabeth to whom they fully applied; for, after all, it seems hardly admissible that they are interpolated.⁵¹

Scheurweghs is here arguing several ways at once, and we would do better to follow one line of reasoning at a time. The distinction, first, between what an author would have written and what he would have allowed to stand if written earlier seems tenuous, especially since we have no bibliographical or other concrete evidence that any alteration has occurred. There seems to be a contradiction, moreover, between the assertion that “no man would ever have written of Queen Mary that she was “the protector of the Gospel’” and the assertion, “it may have seemed that, after all, Mary did protect the Gospel together with the dogmas and the traditions of the Church.” We have insufficient reason for believing that any verses were “crossed off for representations in Mary's time” or “re-inserted” in that of Elizabeth. Scheurweghs is quite right in doubting that the lines about counsellors are interpolations. He is correct, moreover, in reminding, with Child,⁵² that King could be changed to Queen, he to she, his to her, without altering metrics. Since our text, however, has Queen, she, and her, we should not apply the prayer to Edward unless we have good reason for suspecting alteration. The evidence from date makes the application to Edward, though possible, unlikely; and so long as the prayer contains no words and phrases which could not have been used of Mary—and we have already seen that it contains none—we should certainly follow the evidence from date to its logical conclusion, that the prayer is for Mary.

Further investigation might have kept Scheurweghs from making his point about the petition for counsellors. He fails to take into consideration that final prayers in the early drama are usually prayers not for the sovereign alone but for the several estates: the clergy, the counsellors, the nobility, and the commons.⁵³ Prayer for counsellors, indeed, is especially frequent. In a search that was not intended to be exhaustive I note seven final prayers in sixteenth-century drama that include petitions on behalf of the nobility;⁵⁴ nine that include petitions on behalf of the commonalty;⁵⁵ but fourteen that include petitions on behalf of counsellors.⁵⁶ The petition for the counsellors distinguishes the closing prayer in Roister Doister from other prayers even less effectively—if this sample is random—than the petitions for the nobility and commonalty. Mary's counsellors are prayed for in the closing prayer of at least two other plays of her period.⁵⁷ Elizabeth's counsellors are prayed for in at least nine plays.⁵⁸ Therefore it is simply not true that “the allusion to the ‘most worthy counsellers’ does not suit at all the reign of Queen Mary, but points to the time of King Edward,” or that these verses are “peculiar to the reign of Edward VI.”⁵⁹

The second problem raised by the closing prayer of Roister Doister, that of authorship, should now be comparatively easy to solve. Though they take the prayer as one for Mary, Baldwin and Linthicum do not commit themselves as to who wrote it.⁶⁰ Believing that the prayer is for Mary and that the text has undergone revisions, Williams and Robin almost alone among modern scholars attribute the prayer to Udall.⁶¹ Since they thought that the prayer was for Elizabeth, and since Udall died before she became queen, most scholars have assigned the prayer, with varying degrees of confidence, to another hand than Udall's.⁶² Their conclusion is logically drawn, but there is insufficient reason for accepting their premise.

The dating of Roister Doister near the beginning of Mary's reign removes the chief difficulties of interpretation which have led students to hypothesize an interfering hand, a meddling printer, a revision or revisions, or an early lost version. Nothing in the prayer itself definitely identifies the queen; but, contrary to what scholars generally have concluded, the words of the prayer seem to have special fitness if applied to Mary by one in Udall's position. The evidence advanced herein not only strengthens the conclusions of Baldwin and Linthicum as to date and application but also permits the conclusion that the prayer was most probably written by Udall himself.

Notes

1. G. Scheurweghs, ed., Nicholas Udall's Roister Doister (Louvain, 1939), ll. 2020-34. My quotations from the play are from this edition.

2. W. D. Cooper, ed. (London, 1847), pp. 3, 86; Edward Arber, ed. (London, 1869), p. 5; W. C. Hazlitt, ed., Dodsley's Select Collection of Old English Plays (4th ed.; London, 1874), III, 157; A. W. Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature (2d ed.; London, 1889), I, 258; Ewald Flügel, ed., in C. M. Gayley's Representative English Comedies (New York, 1903), I, 193; E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage (Oxford, 1903), II, 452; John S. Farmer, ed. (London, 1906), p. 142; C. G. Child, ed. (Boston, 1912), p. 166; H. C. Schweikert, ed., Early English Plays (New York, 1928), p. 246; and W. W. Greg, ed. (London, 1935), viii.

3. Sidney Lee, DNB, LVIII, 9; Scheurweghs, op. cit., lix. Scheurweghs, however, has another candidate, Edward VI, an application I discuss below.

4. e. g., W. H. Williams and P. A. Robin, edd. (London, 1911), xii.

5. Op. cit., pp. 3, 86; op. cit., p. 246.

6. Op. cit., 5; op. cit., III, 157; op. cit., I, 258; op. cit., p. 142. Here Arber seems guilty of inverse logic: the prayer “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” (op. cit., p. 5).

7. Op. cit., I, 193f.

8. Medieval Stage, II, 452; op. cit., viii; op. cit., p. 166.

9. e. g., Cooper xv-xvi; Arber, p. 6; Flügel, I, 95-7; Child, pp. 31-42; J. Q. Adams, ed., Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas (Boston, 1924), p. 423; and Schweikert, p. 42.

10. J. W. Hales, “The Date of the First English Comedy,” Englische Studien, XVIII (1893), 408-421; Williams and Robin, v-vii; and Greg, vii. Scheurweghs (lv-lx) does not attempt to place the play between what he considers terminal dates, 1545-1552.

11. A. W. Reed [“Nicholas Udall and Thomas Wilson,” RES, I (1925), 275-283] and F. S. Boas [An Introduction to Tudor Drama (Oxford, 1933), p. 24 and Five Pre-Shakespearean Comedies (London, 1934), xiii] favor 1553. T. W. Baldwin and M. Channing Linthicum [“The Date of Ralph Roister Doister,” PQ, VI (1927), 379-395] would confine the date of composition to the latter half of 1553. In “A Pore Helpe and Its Printers” [The Library, n. s. IX (1929), 169-183] Miss Linthicum redates the tract by means of which Baldwin arrives at his date. Her research makes possible but does not necessitate a somewhat earlier date for the composition of Roister Doister. Alfred Harbage gives the terminal dates, “1550-1553” but treats the play under 1553 [Annals of English Drama (Philadelphia, 1940), pp. 32-33]. Unless otherwise indicated, in the remainder of this paper dates in parentheses following the titles of plays are Harbage's dates of initial production.

12. Cf. T. H. Vail Motter, The School Drama in England (London, 1929), pp. 63f.

13. Greg states that the play “had possibly been printed by 1553, when Thomas Wilson, in the third edition of his Rule of Reason, quoted a passage from it [A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama (London, 1939), I, 125. Cf. Arber, op. cit., p. 5; Flügel, op. cit., I, 195; and Farmer, op. cit., p. 144.

14. A Transcript of the Register of Stationers of London, ed. Arber (London, 1875), I, 331.

15. Greg, Bibliography, I, 125. Harbage [op. cit., p. 33] dates the edition “ca. 1567.”

16. Apparently no replies were elicited by Frank Sullivan's query [Notes and Queries, CLXXVIII (1940), 263] about a reported second copy of Roister Doister.

17. Op. cit., p. 5; op. cit., III, 157; op. cit., (1st ed.), I, 142 and (2d ed.), I, 258; Medieval Stage, II, 452; DNB, LVIII, 9; and Greg's ed., vii-viii.

18. Op. cit., I, 194.

19. Op. cit., p. 42.

20. Ll. 1994-2004.

21. PQ, VI (1927), 391-393. But see Scheurweghs, op. cit., lvi-lvii.

22. Ll. 69-70.

23. Cooper, pp. 3, 86; Hazlitt, III, 58; Flügel, I, 109; Farmer, p. 142; Williams and Robin, xii; Child, p. 158; J. Q. Adams, p. 425.

24. Op. cit., p. 91.

25. Scheurweghs argues that the lines of the prayer were written for Edward VI (op. cit., lviii), deleted for performances under Mary, and “re-inserted when the manuscript was printed in the reign of Elizabeth to whom they fully applied; for, after all, it seems hardly admissible that they are interpolated” (ibid., lix).

26. Op. cit., p. 108.

27. If the play was written in the last months of Edward and if the prayer was originally offered for that monarch and later amended to apply to a queen, other things being equal, that queen would naturally be Mary.

28. Ll. 2020-2034. Italics mine.

29. The Dramatic Works of Ulpian Fulwell, ed. Farmer (London, 1906), p. 53.

30. Mary is called “Fidei Defensoris” in a number of documents; cf., e. g., The Statutes of the Realm (London, 1819), IV, 197, 199, 221.

31. Ibid., IV, 233.

32. NED, s. Proceeding, vbl. sb. 2 b: “Doings, actions, transactions;” cf. Shakespeare, I Henry IV: IV, 1, 65. The words godly proceedings appear in Edward VI's letter of rebuke to Gardiner [John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822), II, Pt. I, 373]; in the closing prayer of Lusty Juventus (1550); and the patent giving Udall right to print and sell the works of Peter Martyr [Calendar of Patent Rolls, Ed. VI, III, 315]. To a firm believer in Divine Right, moreover, all royal acts are properly called godly proceedings.

33. Chapter III, Book VIII, Lollardy and the Reformation in England (London, 1913), IV, 268-277.

34. Josiah Pratt, ed., The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe (3d ed.; London, 1870), VI, 679, n. l.

35. Ibid., p. 679.

36. Strype, op. cit., III, Pt. I, 245.

37. J. A. Froude, History of England (New York, 1881), VI, 195.

38. Strype, op. cit., III, Pt. I, 393.

39. cf. Cooper xxix-xxxi; Scheurweghs, xxxv-xlviii. Udall's translations from Peter Martyr were among the Protestant books soon to be prohibited by name [Strype, op. cit., III, Pt. I, 417f.].

40. Quoted from Strype, op. cit., II, Pt. II, 334. Miss Linthicum, however, states that the author of A Pore Help “only pretends to be writing in favour of the Gardiner party” [The Library, n. s. IX (1929), 183.

41. Strype, op. cit., II, Pt. I, 45f.; Scheurweghs, xxxv.

42. Quoted in Cooper, xxviii-xxix.

43. Documents Relating to the Revels at Court, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Louvain, 1914), p. 291.

44. cf. Child, p. 166.

45. Statutes of the Realm, IV, 246.

46. Strype, op. cit., III, Pt. I, 63.

47. Foxe, op. cit., VI, 354.

48. cf. Standish, A Discourse, quoted in Strype, op. cit., III, Pt. I, 270-271.

49. i. e., some prayer for Mary?

50. Op. cit., p. 390.

51. Op. cit., lviii-lix.

52. Op. cit., p. 42.

53. On the convention of closing plays with prayer see n. on Epilogue to 2 Henry IV in Reed's Shakespeare (London, 1785), V, 650-652 and W. Creizenach, The English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (New York, 1916), p. 277. Before its final moralizing stanzas, not a prayer, The Trial of Treasure (1567) contains the direction, “Pray for all Estates” (Dodsley's Select Collection, III, 300).

54. Lusty Juventus and Nice Wanton (1550), Jacob and Esau (1554), The Disobedient Child (1560), Appius and Virginia (1564), Like Will to Like (1568), and Mucedorus (1590).

55. Nice Wanton, Jacob and Esau, Wealth and Health (1554), The Disobedient Child, New Custom (1563), Appius and Virginia, Like Will to Like, Common Conditions (1576), and Mucedorus.

56. King John (1536), Wit and Science (1539); Lusty Juventus, Nice Wanton, Respublica (1553), Jacob and Esau, Wealth and Health, Patient and Meek Grissell (1559), The Disobedient Child, Cambises (1561), New Custom, Like Will to Like, Common Conditions, and Mucedorus.

57. Respublica and Jacob and Esau. The extant edition of the latter is dated 1568, but the play had been licensed in 1557.

58. King John, Wealth and Health, Patient and Meek Grissell, The Disobedient Child, Cambises, New Custom, Like Will to Like, Common Conditions, and Mucedorus.

59. Scheurweghs, op. cit., lviii, 108.

60. “Too, since Udall was dead before Elizabeth came to the throne, if these words are his, we may be certain they were written the autumn of 1553” [op. cit., p. 390].

61. Op. cit., xii.

62. e. g., Flügel, I, 194; Child, p. 166; Greg's ed., viii.