One of the earliest English comedies written by Nicholas Udall, and found entered in the books of the Stationers’ Company in the year, 1566, is Royster Doister.

  “Which against the vayne glorious doth invey
   Whose humour the roysting sort continually doth feede.”

The play turns on Ralph Royster Doister—­a conceited fool—­thinking every woman must fall in love with him.  Much of the humour is acoustic, and depends on repetitions—­

  “Then twang with our sonnets, and twang with our dumps,
   And hey hough for our heart, as heavie as lead lumps. 
   Then to our recorder with toodle doodle poope,
   As the howlet out of an yvie bushe should hoope
   Anon to our gitterne, thrumpledum, thrumpledrum thrum,
   Thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrum.”

Royster is duped into sending Custance a love-letter, telling her that he seeks only her fortune, and that he will annoy her in every way after marriage.  On discovering the deception, he determines to take vengeance on the scribbler who wrote the love-letter for him:—­

  “Yes, for although he had as many lives
   As a thousande widowes and a thousande wives,
   As a thousande lyons and a thousande rattes,
   A thousande wolves and a thousande cattes,
   A thousande bulles, and a thousande calves
   And a thousande legions divided in halves,
   He shall never ’scape death on my sworde’s point
   Though I shoulde be torne therefore joynt by joynt.”

Where he prepares to punish Custance and her friends for refusing him, there is a play on the word “stomacke”—­used for courage: 

  Ralph Royster. Yea, they shall know, and thou knowest I have a
  stomacke.

  M.M. A stomacke (quod you) you, as good as ere man had.

  R.  Royster. I trowe they shall finde and feele that I am a lad.

  M.M. By this crosse I have seene you eate your meat as well.

  As any that ere I have seene of, or heard tell,
  A stomacke quod you? he that will that denie,
  I know was never at dynner in your companie.

  R.  Royster. Nay, the stomacke of a man it is that I meane.

  M.M. Nay, the stomacke of a horse or a dogge I weene.

  R.  Royster. Nay, a man’s stomacke with a weapon mean I.

  M.M. Ten men can scarce match you with a spoon in a pie.

“Gammer Gurton’s Needle” was acted in 1552.  It bears marks of an early time in its words being coarsely indelicate, but not amatory.  The humour is that of blows and insults and we may observe the great value then attached to needles.  It is “a right pithy, pleasant and merry comedy”—­a country story of an old dame who loses her needle when sewing a patch on the seat of her servant Hodge’s breeches.  The cat’s misdoings interrupt her, and her needle is lost.  The hunt for the needle is amusing, and Gammer Gurton and Dame Chat, whom she suspects of having stolen it, abuse and call each other witches.  Hodge, the man with the patched breeches encourages Gammer Gurton, who seems little to require it.