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"The principal of a public school dancing on the Sabbath. Suppose one of my friends should see us there." "Your friends," he replied with a fine contempt, "do not dance in the Plaza Grill. I'm the only roisterer you know." "All right," she conceded grudgingly, "I'll roister. Come and get me. But I'd much prefer when the play is done to come home and have milk and crackers here."
Methinks he is a ruffian in his style, Withouten bands or garters' ornament: He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's Helicon, Then roister doister in his oily terms, Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoever he meets... Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms, Cleanly to gird our looser libertines?... Ay, there is one, that backs a paper steed, And manageth a penknife gallantly, Strikes his poinardo at a button's breadth, Brings the great battering-ram of terms to towns; And, at first volley of his cannon-shot, Batters the walls of the old fusty world.
I am at your commandment, body and goods, tripes and bowels. In the meantime the lady was not very well content with the want of her paternosters, for they were one of her implements to keep her countenance by in the church; then thought with herself, This bold flouting roister is some giddy, fantastical, light-headed fool of a strange country. I shall never recover my paternosters again.
The scollop and oyster Their two shells did roister, Like castanets flitting; While limpets moved clearly, And rocks very nearly With laughter were splitting. Never was such a hullabullo in this world, before or since; 'twas as if heaven and earth were coming together; and all out of Maurice Connor's wonderful tune!
For instance, Nicholas Udal, in the ingenious letter in Ralph Roister Doister, which is either loving or insulting according to the position of a few commas or periods, must have meant to enforce the doctrine of Chaucer's couplet: "He that pointeth ill, A good sentence may oft spill."
During the whole time that we continued singing, they stood as if they durst not venture to disturb us; but when the psalm was finished, their sergeant, a lewd roister, swore at them, and called on them to do their duty.
But with their appearance began the Elizabethan drama. The few plays which have reached us of an earlier date are either cold imitations of the classical and Italian comedy, or rude farces like "Ralph Roister Doister," or tragedies such as "Gorbudoc" where, poetic as occasional passages may be, there is little promise of dramatic developement.
The Interlude, that was the progenitor of English Comedy, next arrived. The origin of the Interlude is credited to John Heywood. It is interesting to note that a play, entitled, "Gammer Gurton's Needle," is credited with being our first English Comedy, though its humour and wit, it is stated, is of a low and sordid kind. Others make claim for the comedy, "Ralph Roister Doister."
As he has a great notion, however, of being considered a roister, he chucked her under the chin, played her off with rather broad jokes, and put on something of the rake-helly air, that we see now and then assumed on the stage by the sad-boy gentlemen of the old school.
The Interludes came next, after the Moralities, with a little more human interest and a little more fun, and from them it was easy to pass to real comedies. *Coleridge. A play named Ralph Roister Doister is generally looked upon as the first real English comedy. It was written by Nicholas Udall, headmaster first of Eton and then of Westminster, for the boys of one or other school.
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