SOURCE: Plumstead, A. W. “Satirical Parody in Roister Doister: A Reinterpretation.” Studies in Philology 60, no. 2 (April 1963): 141-54.

In the following essay, Plumstead reads Ralph Roister Doister as a parody of medieval chivalric heroes.

I

Professor Ewald Flugel has called Nicholas Udall “the father of English comedy,” and according to Allardyce Nicoll, Ralph Roister Doister is “the first complete English comedy designed for public performance in London.”¹ Critical discussions of the play, however, have been largely concerned with its date, its sources, and its adaptation of the characters and techniques of Plautus and Terence to the English stage.² Because of Udall's blending of Roman and “native” English elements, Roister Doister has now settled into a comfortable niche in surveys of Pre-Shakespearean drama as an important transitional step in the growth and structure of English Renaissance comedy which reached its peak in Shakespeare and Jonson.

There is a dimension of...