this extraordinary conflict Ralph is horribly belaboured by the
malicious Matthew under pretence of blows aimed at Dame Custance. Act
V, however, brings Goodluck himself and explanations. That worthy man
finds his lady true, friendship is established all round, and Ralph and
Merrygreek join the happy couple in a closing feast.

This bald outline perhaps makes sufficiently clear the great advance in
plot structure. Within the play, however, are many other good things.
The character of Ralph Roister Doister, 'a vain-glorious, cowardly
blockhead', as the list of dramatis personae has it, is thoroughly well
done: his heavy love-sighs, his confident elation, his distrust, his
gullibility, his ups and downs and contradictions, are all in the best
comic vein. Only second in fullness of portraiture, and truer to Nature,
is Dame Custance, who--if we exclude Melibaea as not native to English
shores--may be said to bring into English secular drama honourable
womanhood. Her amused indifference at first, her sharp reproof of her
maids who have allowed themselves to act as Ralph's messengers, her
gathering vexation at Ralph's tiresome wooing, her genuine alarm when
she sees that his boastful words are accepted by the sea-captain as
truth--these are sentiments and emotions copied from a healthy and
worthy model. Matthew Merrygreek, an unmistakable 'Vice' ever at Ralph's
elbow, is of all Vices the shrewdest striker of laughter out of a block
of stupidity: it is from his ingenious brain that almost every absurd
scene is evolved for the ridiculing of Ralph. Thoroughly human, and
quite assertive, are the lower characters, the maid-servants and
men-servants, Madge Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace, Truepenny, Dobinet
Doughty and the rest. Need it be added that the battle in Act IV is pure
fooling? or that jolly songs enliven the scenes with their rousing
choruses (e.g. 'I mun be married a Sunday')? _Ralph Roister Doister_ is
an English comedy with English notions of the best way of amusing
English folk of the sixteenth century. With all its improvements it has
no suggestion of the alien about it, as has the classically-flavoured
_Thersites_ (also based, like Udall's play, on Plautus's _Miles
Gloriosus_), or _Calisto and Melibaea_ with its un-English names.
Perhaps that is why it had to wait fifteen years for a successor. Quite
possibly its spectators regarded it as merely a better Interlude than
usual, without recognizing the precise qualities