"Now purse that art to me my liues delight And sauiour, as downe in this world here, Out of this towne helpe me by your might Sith that you woll not be my treasure, For I am shave as nere as any frere, But I pray vnto your curtesie Be heauy againe, or els mote I die." Chaucer was very fond of allegory. This is especially visible not only in the "Romaunt of the Rose," but in the "Court of Love," "Flower and Leaf," the "House of Fame," and the "Cuckoo and Nightingale." In the "Assembly of Fowls" we have a fable. Chaucer was attached to the service of John of Gaunt, which may have led to his attacking the clergy, but in his youth he was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street. He favoured Wickliffe, and was for this reason eventually obliged to flee the country; but he returned and obtained remunerative appointments. It is said that on his death-bed he lamented the encouragement which vice might receive from his writings, but their indelicacy was not really great for the age in which he lived. Henry Heywood has been called the "Father of English Comedy," and he was certainly one of the first that wrote original dramas, representing the ordinary social life of this country. His pieces, which all appeared before 1550, were short and simple, and seem to us very deficient in delicacy and humour. But in his day he was considered a great wit, and as a court-jester drew many a lusty laugh from old King Hal, and could even soothe the rugged brow of the fanatical Mary. One of his best sayings was addressed to her. When the Queen told Heywood that the priests must forego their wives, he answered. "Then your Grace must allow them _lemans_, for the clergy cannot live without sauce." He was called the epigrammatist, but the greater part of his jests seem to have little point. Some of them have been attributed to Sir Thomas More. One of the earliest English comedies written by Nicholas Udall, and found entered in the books of the Stationers' Company in the year, 1566, is Royster Doister. "Which against the vayne glorious doth invey Whose humour the roysting sort continually doth feede." The play turns on Ralph Royster Doister--a conceited fool--thinking every woman must fall in love with him. Much of the humour is acoustic, and depends on repetitions-- "Then twang with our sonnets, and twang with our dumps, And hey hough for our heart, as heavie as lead lumps. Then to our recorder with toodle doodle poope, As the howlet out of an yvie bushe should hoope Anon to our gitterne, thrumpledum, thrumpledrum thrum, Thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrum." Royster is duped into sending Custance a love-letter, telling her that he seeks only her fortune, and that he will annoy her in every way after marriage. On discovering the deception, he determines to take vengeance on the scribbler who wrote the love-letter for him:--