Born at Grantham about 1543: died Feb. 26, 1607. An English prelate. He was a student at Christ’s College, Cambridge; afterward dean of Bocking, canon of Westminster, master of St. Johns and of Trinity, vice-chancellor of Cambridge, and bishop of Bath and Wells (1593–1607). In 1570 he was Lady Margaret’s professor of divinity. He was probably the author of the comedy “Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” He made a large fortune in lead-mines discovered in the Mendip Hills.
Personal
Some helpes, more hopes, all encouragements in my best studies; to whom I never came but I grew more religious; from whom I never went, but I parted better instructed…. His breeding was from his childhood in good literature and partly in musique…. I hold him a rare man for preaching, for arguing, for learning, for lyving; I could only wish that in all theise he would make lesse use of logique and more of rhetoricke.
He was one of a venerable presence, no lesse famous for a Preacher then a Disputant. Finding his own strength, he did not stick to warn such as he disputed with in their own arguments, to take heed to their answers, like a perfect Fencer, that will tell aforehand in what button he will give his Venew.
His effigy may still be seen beneath its canopy in Wells Cathedral. A grim Puritan divine, with pointed beard and long stiff painted robes, lies face-upward on the monument. This is the author of the first elaborately executed farce in our language.
Gammer Gurton’s Needle
The writer has a degree of jocularity which sometimes rises above buffoonery, but is often disgraced by lowness of incident. Yet in a more polished age he would have chosen, nor would he perhaps have disgraced, a better subject.
The humour of this curious old drama…. is broad, familiar, and grotesque; the characters are sketched with a strong though coarse outline, and are to the last consistently supported.
“Gammer Gurton’s Needle” has this peculiarity belonging to it, that it is, I believe, the first existing English play acted at either University; and it is a singular coincidence, (which is farther illustrated in “The Annals of the Stage,”) that the author of the comedy so represented should be the very person who many years afterwards, when he had become Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, was called upon to remonstrate with the ministers of Queen Elizabeth against having an English play performed before her at that University, as unbefitting its learning, dignity, and character.
It is impossible for any thing to be meaner in subject and characters than this strange farce; but the author had some vein of humor, and writing neither for fame nor money, but to make light-hearted boys laugh, and to laugh with them, and that with as little grossness as the story would admit, is not to be judged with severe criticism.
For the simple dry humour which prevails in it, as well as for the sustained tone and colouring, which are in perfect keeping with the subject, and the sphere of life in which its scene is laid, is not unworthy of its place in the history of the English drama.
This ancient comedy is the work of a truly comic genius, who knew not how to choose his subject, and indulged a taste repulsive to those who only admit of delicate and not familiar humor. Its grossness, however, did not necessarily result from the prevalent grossness of the times; since a recent discovery, with which Warton was unacquainted, has shown the world that an English comedy, which preceded the hitherto supposed first comedy in our language, is remarkable for its chasteness, the propriety of its great variety of characters, the truth of the manners in a wide circle of society, and the uninterrupted gayety pervading the whole airy composition.
It may be coarse, earthy, but in reading it one feels that he is at least a man among men, and not a humbug among humbugs.
“Gammer Gurton’s Needle” is not such a play as a Bishop would have written, for its fun is associated with some coarseness of jesting common to the good old time, from which “Ralph Roister Doister” was free only because it was written by a schoolmaster for public acting by his boys. John Still wrote as a young man with high spirits, to amuse his comrades. Fun is abundant in this comedy of rustic life, and its jesting—at the rudest—only sins against later convention, the play being in no thought or word immoral. It is indelicate, but not indecent.
The serious-minded Still has been generally claimed as the author of the boisterously merry comedy “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” but the evidence in his favour proves on examination to be inconclusive. While Still was in residence at Christ’s College the books of the bursar show that a play was performed there in 1566, when 20s. was paid “the carpenters for setting up the scaffold.” It may be inferred (although there is no positive proof) that the play was identical with the one published in 1575 under the title of “A Ryght Pythy, Pleasaunt, and Merie Comedie: Intytuld Gammer Gurton’s Needle: Played on Stage not long ago in Christes Colledge in Cambridge. Made by Mr. S. Master of Art” (London, 4to, by Thomas Colwell). It has been argued that the piece was written at an earlier date than 1566, on the ground that a play called “Dyccon of Bedlam” (not now extant) was, according to the “Stationers’ Register,” licensed for publication to Thomas Colwell, the publisher of “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” in 1563; and that “Diccon the Bedlam” (a half-witted itinerant beggar) is a leading character in the extant comedy. But the sobriquet was at the period not uncommonly applied to any half-imbecile mendicant, and in itself offers no proof of the two plays’ identity. “Mr. S. Master of Art,” the author of “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” was first identified with Still by Isaac Reed in 1782 in his edition of Baker’s “Biographia Dramatica.” Reed’s main argument was that Still was the only M.A. of Christ’s College whose name began with S. in 1566, when “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” may be assumed to have been first performed. This statement is not accurate, for William Sanderson graduated M.A. from Christ’s College in 1555, and was living more than thirty years later, and twelve other masters of arts of the college, all of whose names began with S, proceeded to the degree in or before 1566, and were alive in 1575, when “Mr. S. Master of Art” was put forth as the author of “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” on the title-page of the first edition. In his lifetime the comedy was not assigned to Still, who is not known to have manifested any interest in the English drama. The only contemporary references to the question of authorship are indeterminate, but they do not point in Still’s direction…. A study of the play itself gives no assistance as to its authorship, which must be left undetermined.
