fooling? or that jolly songs enliven the scenes with their rousing
choruses (e.g. 'I mun be married a Sunday')? _Ralph Roister Doister_ is
an English comedy with English notions of the best way of amusing
English folk of the sixteenth century. With all its improvements it has
no suggestion of the alien about it, as has the classically-flavoured
_Thersites_ (also based, like Udall's play, on Plautus's _Miles
Gloriosus_), or _Calisto and Melibaea_ with its un-English names.
Perhaps that is why it had to wait fifteen years for a successor. Quite
possibly its spectators regarded it as merely a better Interlude than
usual, without recognizing the precise qualities which made it different
from _Johan Johan_.

Two quotations will be sufficient to illustrate the opposing characters.

(1)

_Merrygreek_ (_alone_). But now of Roister Doister somewhat to express,
That ye may esteem him after his worthiness,
In these twenty towns, and seek them throughout,
Is not the like stock whereon to graff a lout.
All the day long is he facing and craking[49]
Of his great acts in fighting and fray-making;
But when Roister Doister is put to his proof,
To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoof.
If any woman smile, or cast on him an eye,
Up is he to the hard ears in love by and by:
And in all the hot haste must she be his wife,
Else farewell his good days, and farewell his life!