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Gammer Gurton's Needle

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Comedy plays English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600

In: Humour·Plays/Films/Dramas·British Literature

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In 1782 Isaac Reed attributed Gammer Gurton's Needle to a Dr. John Still, who, in 1563, was raised to the see of Bath and Wells. His reasons for doing this are, on examination, found to be somewhat inconclusive. It seems that he discovered in the accounts of Christ's College an entry referring to a play acted at Christmas, 1567 (not 1566, as he states), and, as this is the latest entry of the kind occurring before 1575--the date of publication--he inferred that it related to the representation of Gammer Gurton's Needle, which in Colwell's title-page (see facsimile on page 1) was stated to have taken place "not longe ago." The only Master of Arts of the college then living whose surname began with S, that he was able to find, was John Still, whom he therefore confidently identified with the "Mr. S." who is said to have written Gammer Gurton's Needle.

Curiously enough, another Church dignitary has shared with Dr. Still the attributed authorship of, as Dr. Bradley expresses it, "this very unclerical play"--namely, Dr. John Bridges, Dean of Salisbury and Bishop of Oxford. In narrating the personal history of these two churchmen, let us take them in order.

John Still was the only son of William Still, Esq., of Grantham, in Lincolnshire, and was born in or about 1543. In 1559 he matriculated as a pensioner in Christ's College, Cambridge, and his record, according to The National Dictionary of Biography, supplemented by W. C. Hazlitt in Dodsley's Old Plays, appears to have been as follows:--B.A. in 1561-2; M.A. in 1565; D.D., 1575; Fellow, 1562; presented to the rectory of St. Martin Outwich, London, in 1570; collated by Archbishop Parker to the rectory of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, 1571; and appointed, with Dr. Watts, by the primate to whom he was chaplain, Joint-Dean of Bocking, 1572. From the deanery of Bocking he rose to the canonry at Westminster, the mastership of St. John's College, Cambridge, the vice-chancellorship of the university on two occasions, the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, and finally, the bishopric of Bath and Wells, to which last dignity he was named 1592-3. He died at the episcopal palace at Wells, 1607-8, and was buried, on the 4th April following, in the cathedral, where a handsome monument was erected to his memory. He was twice married, and left behind him several children.

John Bridges was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, his record being:--B.A., 1556; M.A., 1560; Fellow, 1556; D.D. from Canterbury, 1575. He spent some years in Italy, and translated three books of Machiavelli into English, which, however, were not printed. This was followed by a translation of Walther's 175 Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and The Supremacy of Christian Princes over all Persons throughout their Dominions. He became Dean of Salisbury in 1577, and was one of the divines appointed to reply to Edmund Campion's Ten Reasons. His most celebrated work was _A Defence of the Government established in the Church of England for Ecclesiastical Matters_--a monumental work of some 1,412 pp., published in 1587, and which derives its chief interest from the fact that it was the immediate cause of the famous Martin Marprelate controversy. Dr. Bridges also took part in the Hampton Court Conference in 1603, and on February 12, 1603-4, was consecrated Bishop of Oxford at Lambeth by Archbishop Whitgift. He officiated at the funeral of Henry Prince of Wales in 1612, and died at a great age in 1618.

The question of authorship has, indeed, always been, more or less, a moot point; the same uncertainty applies also to the question of the date of publication; and, notwithstanding recent research and criticism, these questions cannot even yet be said to be settled beyond a doubt.

Dr. Bradley, one of the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, has recently, in Professor Gayley's Representative English Comedies (Macmillan Co., New York, 1903), sifted the available evidence respecting the date and authorship of the play. I am enabled, through the courtesy of Dr. Bradley and the permission, readily granted, of Messrs. Macmillan and Co., to summarise the facts and inferences which Dr. Bradley adduces against the claims of both Dr. Still and Dr. Bridges, and those which seem to favour the identity of Mr. S. with a William Stevenson, who, born at Hunwick in Durham, matriculated as a sizar in November, 1546, became B.A. in 1549-50, M.A. in 1553, B.D. in 1560, being subsequently ordained deacon in London in 1552, appointed prebendary of Durham in January, 1560-1, and who died in 1575, the year in which Gammer Gurton was printed.

The facts are as follows:--

1. The colophon of the earliest known edition of Gammer Gurton's Needle bears date 1575. It also states that it was "played on stage, not longe ago, in Christes Colledge in Cambridge," and was "made by Mr. S., Mr. of Art."

2. The register of the Company of Stationers shows that in 1562-3 Colwell (whose dates as a printer-publisher range from 1561 to 1575) paid 4d. for licence to print a play entitled Dyccon of Bedlam, &c.

3. "Diccon the Bedlam" is a character in Gammer Gurton's Needle, and there is a presumption that the piece licensed to Colwell in 1562-63 was identical with that printed in 1575 under another title; or, as an alternative, that Gammer Gurton was a sequel to Dyccon: but that does not affect the value of the argument, as both would probably be by the same author.

4. If Gammer Gurton's Needle is the play licensed in 1563, the performance at Christ's College must have taken place before that date, for it was not the custom to send a play to the press before it had been acted.

5. In the academic year ending Michaelmas, 1563, there is no record of dramatic representation given in the college; in 1561-62, the accounts mention certain sums "spent at Mr. Chatherton's playe"; in 1560-61 there is no mention of any play; but in 1559-60 we find two items:--"To the viales at Mr. Chatherton's plaie, 2s. 6d."--"Spent at Mr. Stevenson's plaie, 5s."

6. Therefore, as no evidence to the contrary has been found, it appears highly probable that the "Mr. S." of Gammer Gurton's Needle was Mr. William Stevenson, Fellow of Christ's College from 1559 to 1561, and identical with the person of the same name who was Fellow of the college from 1551 to 1554, and who appears in the bursar's accounts as the author of a play acted in the year 1553-54.

7. It is presumed that he was deprived of his fellowship under Queen Mary, and was reinstated under Elizabeth. Whether Stevenson's play of 1559-60 was that given six years before, or a new one, there is no evidence to show, but the former supposition derives plausibility from the fact that allusions to church matters in Gammer Gurton's Needle seem to indicate a pre-Elizabethan date for its composition. [On this Prof. Gayley (of the University of California, and the general editor of Representative English Comedies) remarks that the reference to the King, Act v. ii. (151c), would strengthen the probability that the play of 1575 (and 1559-60) was originally composed during Stevenson's first fellowship, at any rate before the death of Edward VI.; it might therefore be identical with the play acted in 1553-54.]

8. An objection to Stevenson's authorship of the play is the title-page of 1575 speaking of the representation at Cambridge "not longe ago," but Colwell had had the MS. in his possession ever since 1563, and it is not unlikely that the original title-page was retained without other alteration than the change in the name of the piece. The appearance of the title-page (see facsimile, p. 1) suggests the possibility that it may have been altered after being set up; "_Gammer gur-/tons Nedle_" in small italic may have been substituted for =Diccon of| Bedlam= in type as large as that of the other words in the same lines. In Colwell's edition of Ingelend's Disobedient Child (printed 1560, see facsimile title-page opposite) the title-page has the same woodcut border, but the name of the piece is in type of the same size as that of the preceding and following words. As this woodcut does not occur in any other of Colwell's publications now extant, it seems reasonable to infer that Gammer Gurton was printed long before 1575.

9. Reverting now to the former attributions of the play to Dr. Bridges and Bishop Still, it is clear, to take the former first, that Dr. Bridges was not "Mr. S." Further, he did not belong to Christ's College, but to Pembroke. These two facts make it difficult to understand why the author of the Martin Marprelate tracts should have thrice claimed for him the authorship of this play, once in the Epistle (1588) and twice in the Epitome. In the first the attribution is somewhat ambiguous; but in the others the writer evidently believed what he stated. Dr. Bradley suggests in explanation that as Dr. Bridges was resident at Cambridge in 1560 he may have assisted William Stevenson in the composition or revision of the play. [In a recent letter to the Editor, Dr. Bradley observes, on reading this article, that "if the arguments offered for an Edwardian date are valid, of course Bridges cannot have been the author, though he may well have revised the play for its performance in 1559-60. I suspect he was rather the sort of man to boast of the authorship, even if his real connection with it was slight."] "Bridges might have written comedy in his youth." His writings "abound in sprightly quips, often far from dignified in tone; and his controversial opponents complained, with some justice, of his buffoonery."

A pretie and Mery new Enterlude: called the Disobedient Child. Compiled by Thomas Ingelend late student in Cambridge.

Imprinted at London in Flete Strete, beneath the Conduit by Thomas Coldwell.

[_Reduced Facsimile of Title-page of "The Disobedient Child," from a Copy in the British Museum._]]

So far Dr. Bradley. The arguments against Still's authorship of Gammer Gurton, and in favour of that of Bridges, are stated at length in an article by Mr. C. H. Ross in the nineteenth volume of Anglia (1896). The main contention is that "Mr. S." is a "blind" of some sort, standing, it may be, for the last letter, or the last syllable of the name "Bridges." "This is," remarks Prof. Hales in The Age of Transition, ii. 37, "possible, if not very likely." "Professor Boas," adds the same authority, "is disposed to support the Stevenson theory, but with qualifications. He points out (in a private letter) that it does not follow, because the play was acted at Christ's, that the writer was necessarily a member of that college, and he grants weight to the confident assertion of the Marprelate writer that Bridges was the author, although Bridges was at Pembroke College.... Professor Boas's general conclusion is as follows: 'I think Mr. Bradley's ascription of the play to Stevenson, though plausible and probable, is by no means certain, and that more may be said for Bridges' authorship than he allows.' In our opinion [that is, Prof. Hales's] the evidence, such as it is, is all in favour of Stevenson as the original author, but it may be hoped that the discovery of some contemporary allusion may yet settle the question once for all."

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