Udall

Udall, NICHOLAS, author of Ralph Roister Doister, the earliest English comedy, was born in Hampshire about 1506, was admitted a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, took his B.A. degree in 1524, and became the stern master of Eton and of Westminster, and canon of Windsor. He died in December 1556. Neither his translations from Erasmus and P. Martyr, his Flowers for Latin Spekyng (from Terence), nor his Latin plays (De Papatu, Ezekias) would have preserved his name without his Ralph Roister Doister, a merry comedy in the manner of Plautus, licensed and believed to have been printed in 1566, but almost certainly written twenty-five years before. The plot turns on the gull and coxcomb Ralph Roister Doister's ridiculous and unsuccessful courtship of the comely widow Dame Christian Custance, the intrigues of his parasite Matthew Merrygreek, and the final triumph of the successful suitor, Gawin Goodluck, after his return from sea. Editions are by Dnrant Cooper for the Shakespeare Society (1847) and Mr Arber (1869).