No man complaining, No man for despite, After drudgery, When they be weary, Then to be merry, To laugh and sing they be free; Heigh derie derie, Trill on the berie, WHO THE MINION WIFE. HO so to marry a minion† wife, Must love her and cherish her all his life, If she will fare well, if she will go gay, A good husband ever still, What ever she list to do or to say, Must let her have her own will. * Twite, entwite-to twit, to reproach. † Pet or darling. About what affairs so ever he go, He must shew her all his mind, None of his counsel she may be kept fro, I MUN BE MARRIED A SUNDAY. IMUN be married a Sunday; Roister Doister is my name; Christian Custance have I found; Custance is as sweet as honey; When we shall make our wedding feast, I mun be married a Sunday.* * The following passage occurs in the Taming of the Shrew : We will have rings, and things, and fine array; Act ii, Sc. 1. The concluding words, probably intended to be sung with a fine air of banter and bravery by Petruchio as he goes off the stage, are evidently taken from the burthen of Ralph Roister Doister's song, which we may, therefore, infer to have been one of the popular ballads in Shakespeare's time. THE PSALMODIE FOR THE REJECTED LOVER. MAISTER Roister Doister will straight go home and die, Our Lord Jesus Christ his soul have mercy upon : Yet, saving for a woman's extreme cruelty, He might have lived yet a month, or two, or three; And while some piece of his soul is yet him within, Good night, Roger old knave; knave knap. [A peal of bells rung by the Parish Clerk JOHN HEYWOOD. 157-. [JOHN HEYWOOD's claims to a prominent place amongst the dramatists are not very considerable. His productions in this way are neither numerous nor important. They can scarcely be called plays, in the higher sense of the term, and are more accurately described by the designation usually applied to them of Interludes, having few characters and scarcely any plot, and consisting entirely of an uninterrupted dialogue, without an attempt at action or structural design. They may be said to represent the transition from the Moralities to the regular drama; and in this point of view they possess a special interest. The date of Heywood's birth is not known, nor has the place been ascertained with certainty. According to Bale and Wood, he was born in the city of London, and received his education in the University of Oxford, at the ancient hostel of Broadgate, in St. Aldgate's parish. Other writers assert that he was born at North Mimms, near St. Alban's, Hertfordshire, where the family had some property, and at which place he lived after he left college; while a MS. in the possession of the Earl of Ellesmere describes him as a native of Kent. Heywood had no inclination for the life of a student. His tastes lay in music, good fellowship, and 'mad, merry wit;' and, as he tells us in one of his epigrams, he applied himself to mirth more than thrift.' That he profited little by his residence at Oxford may be inferred from an observation made by Puttenham, who ascribes the favour in which he stood at Court to his 'mirth and quickness of conceit more than any good learning that was in him.' In Hertfordshire he became acquainted with Sir Thomas More, who lived in the neighbourhood, and who was so well pleased with his aptness for jest and repartee, qualities in much request at that period with the reigning monarch, that he not only introduced him to Henry VIII., but is said to have assisted him in the composition of his epigrams. He became a great favourite with the king, who appears, from his Book of Payments, to have taken him into his service as a player on the virginal; and gratuities from both the princesses are to be found amongst the items of the royal expenditure. In addi tion to his wit and his music, he appears also to have had some talent as an actor, and to have presented an interlude at court (written no doubt by himself), played, according, to the fashion then prevalent, by children. Heywood was a staunch Roman Catholic, a circumstance to which, we may presume, he was mainly indebted for the particular favours bestowed upon him by the Princess Mary, who admitted him to the most intimate conversation during the time of Henry VIII. and the succeeding reign; and conferred a distinguished mark of her patronage upon him when she came to the throne, by appointing him to address her in a Latin and English oration on her procession through the city to Westminster the day before her coronation. These were the palmy days of Heywood's career. The queen was so great an admirer of his humorous talents that she constantly sent for him to beguile the hours of illness, and is said to have sought relief from pain in his diverting stories even when she was languishing on her death-bed. His stories,' observes Chalmers, 'must have been diverting, indeed, if they soothed the recollections of such a woman.' 6 Upon the death of Queen Mary he suffered the reverse which attended most of her personal adherents. The Protestant religion was now in the ascendancy, and Heywood had been so conspicuous a follower of the late sovereign, that he either could not endure to live under the rule of her successor, or was apprehensive that his safety would be jeopardized if he remained in England. He accordingly left the kingdom, and settled at Mechlin, in Belgium, where Wood informs us he died in 1565. The Ellesmere MS., however, says that he was still living in 1576. He left two sons, Ellis and Jasper, who both became Jesuits, and were eminent for their learning. In private life Heywood was a humorist and a jovial companion. The same character pervades his writings, which derived their popularity in his own time mainly from his social talents and his position at court. He began to write |