Gammer Gurton's Needle by Charles Whitworth

Gammer Gurton's Needle by Charles Whitworth

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Summary

This play is one of the first English comedies, vigorous and farcical, dealing with the loss of a housewife's needle and its eventual rediscovery. It was perfomed in 1566 in the hall of Christ's College Cambridge. The introduction discusses the question of authorship by a "Mr S".

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Gammer Gurton's Needle by Charles Whitworth

Published in 1575 and acted at Christ's College, Cambridge, probably as early as King Edward V's reign, the drama of Grandma Gurton and her lost sewing needle, which is finally retrieved from the bottom of her servant Hodge's breeches, is an outstanding example of mid-Tudor comedy. Although a university production, the play's doggerel rhymes, its village characters and their dialect speech, its seemingly innocuous plot and its Rabelaisian humour are the very opposite of academic or neo-classical. Yet its anonymous author's ingenuity manifests itself at every turn, not least in the multiple ironies evoked when Diccon the trickster makes Hodge believe that he will conjure the devil by kissing his backside in a travesty of religious or masonic oath-taking.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780713644975
ISBN 10 0713644974
Title Gammer Gurton's Needle
Author Charles Whitworth
Series New Mermaids
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published 1997-06-30
Number of pages 112
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.