anatical Mary. One of his best
sayings was addressed to her. When the Queen told Heywood that the
priests must forego their wives, he answered. "Then your Grace must
allow them _lemans_, for the clergy cannot live without sauce." He was
called the epigrammatist, but the greater part of his jests seem to have
little point. Some of them have been attributed to Sir Thomas More.

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,