Udall, Nicholas
Udall, Nicholas (1505–56). Dramatist. Udall was educated at Winchester and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, took up teaching, and became headmaster of Eton and, at the end of his life, at Westminster. Like most Tudor pedagogues he was reputed a heavy flogger. His sympathies were with Lutheran reform and he prospered during the reign of Edward VI but managed to survive in that of Mary. Udall translated from the classics and wrote Latin plays, but is remembered as the author of the earliest known English comedy, Ralph Roister Doister, an imitation of Plautus, performed about 1552. The subject-matter is the wooing of a widow by Roister, a simple-minded braggart who comes to grief, and must have owed its popularity to the opportunities it presented for knockabout humour.
J. A. Cannon
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BORN: 450 bce, Athens, Greece
DIED: 385 bce, Greece
NATIONALITY: Greek
GENRE: Plays
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