What is called the first comedy in the language cannot be expected to show a very decided improvement over the last interludes or moralities, but it bears those distinctive marks which establish its right to the title.

THE FIRST COMEDY.—­This was Ralph Roister Doister, which appeared in the middle of the sixteenth century:  (a printed copy of 1551 was discovered in 1818.) Its author was Nicholas Udall, the master of Eton, a clergyman, but very severe as a pedagogue; an ultra Protestant, who is also accused of having stolen church plate, which may perhaps mean that he took away from the altar what he regarded as popish vessels and ornaments.  He calls the play “a comedy and interlude,” but claims that it is imitated from the Roman drama.  It is regularly divided into acts and scenes, in the form of our modern plays.  The plot is simple:  Ralph, a gay Lothario, courts as gay a widow, and the by-play includes a designing servant and an intriguing lady’s-maid:  these are the stock elements of a hundred comedies since.

Contemporary with this was Gammer Gurton’s Needle, supposed to be written, but not conclusively, by John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells, about 1560.  The story turns upon the loss of a steel needle—­a rare instrument in that day, as it was only introduced into England from Spain during the age of Elizabeth.  This play is a coarser piece than Ralph Roister Doister; the buffoon raises the devil to aid him in finding the lost needle, which is at length found, by very palpable proof, to be sticking in the seat of Goodman Hodge’s breeches.

THE FIRST TRAGEDY.—­Hand in hand with these first comedies came the earliest tragedy, Gorboduc, by Sackville and Norton, known under another name as Ferrex and Porrex; and it is curious to observe that this came in while the moralities still occupied the stage, and before the interludes had disappeared, as it was played before the queen at White Hall, in 1562.  It is also to be noted that it introduced a chorus like that of the old Greek drama.  Ferrex and Porrex are the sons of King Gorboduc:  the former is killed by the latter, who in turn is slain by his own mother.  Of Gorboduc, Lamb says, “The style of this old play is stiff and cumbersome, like the dresses of the times.  There may be flesh and blood underneath, but we cannot get at it.”

With the awakened interest of the people, the drama now made steady progress.  In 1568 the tragedy of Tancred and Gismunda, based upon one of the stories of Boccaccio, was enacted before Elizabeth.

A license for establishing a regular theatre was got out by Burbage in 1574.  Peele and Greene wrote plays in the new manner:  Marlowe, the greatest name in the English drama, except those of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, gave to the world his Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, which many do not hesitate to compare favorably with Goethe’s great drama, and his Rich Jew of Malta, which contains the portraiture of Barabas, second only to the Shylock of Shakspeare.  Of Marlowe a more special mention will be made.