SOURCE: Nethercot, Arthur H. “Nicholas Udall.” In Elizabethan Plays, edited by Arthur H. Nethercot, Charles R. Baskervil and Virgil B. Heltzel, pp. 1-4. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, Inc., 1971.

In the following essay, Nethercot discusses Udall's career and examines his major work, Ralph Roister Doister.

One day in the early nineteenth century the Reverend Thomas Briggs attended a public auction of books and came away with what has so far turned out to be a unique copy, in black letter, of Roister Doister, which shares with Gammer Gurton's Needle the somewhat misleading designation of “the first regular English comedy.” “Regular” would seem to many historians of English drama to mean that it followed the established classical rules or principles.

Sometime between July 22, 1566, and July 22, 1567, the Register of the stationers, printers, and booksellers of London recorded a fee of fourpence as “Recevyd of Thomas hackett for his lycence...