GAMMER GURTON'SNEEDLE
The Museum Dramatists
No. 1
The Museum Dramatists
GAMMER GURTON'SNEEDLE
Edited, with an Introduction, Note-Book, and Word-List.
By JOHN S. FARMER[iii]
"THE PITH AND POINT OFTHE PLAY, SIR!"
"Gammer Gurton's Needle was the first to gather thethreads of farce ... interlude, and ... school play intoa well-sustained comedy of rustic life [with] the rollickinghumour of the ... Bedlem; the pithy and salineinterchange of feminine amenities; the ... Chaucerian,laughter,—not sensual but animal; the delight in physicalincongruity; the mediæval fondness for the grotesque.If the situations are farcical, they ... hold together;each scene tends towards the climax of the act, and eachact towards the dénouement. The characters are bothtypical and individual; and ... the execution is anadvance because it smacks less of the academic. GammerGurton carries forward the comedy of mirth."—C.Mills Gayley, Litt.D., LL.D., Professor of the English[iv]Language and Literature in the University of California.
INTRODUCTION
In 1782 Isaac Reed attributed GammerGurton's Needle to a Dr. John Still, who, in1563, was raised to the see of Bath and Wells.His reasons for doing this are, on examination,found to be somewhat inconclusive. Itseems that he discovered in the accounts ofChrist's College an entry referring to a playacted at Christmas, 1567 (not 1566, as hestates), and, as this is the latest entry of thekind occurring before 1575—the date of publication—heinferred that it related to therepresentation of Gammer Gurton's Needle,which in Colwell's title-page (see facsimile onpage 1) was stated to have taken place "notlonge ago." The only Master of Arts of thecollege then living whose surname began withS, that he was able to find, was John Still,whom he therefore confidently identified withthe "Mr. S." who is said to have writtenGammer Gurton's Needle.
Curiously enough, another Church dignitaryhas shared with Dr. Still the attributed authorshipof, as Dr. Bradley expresses it, "this veryunclerical play"—namely, Dr. John Bridges,Dean of Salisbury and Bishop of Oxford. In[vi]narrating the personal history of these twochurchmen, let us take them in order.
John Still was the only son of William Still,Esq., of Grantham, in Lincolnshire, and wasborn in or about 1543. In 1559 he matriculatedas a pensioner in Christ's College, Cambridge,and his record, according to The National Dictionaryof Biography, supplemented by W. C.Hazlitt in Dodsley's Old Plays, appears to havebeen as follows:—B.A. in 1561-2; M.A. in1565; D.D., 157