The Westminster Latin play cannot be clearly shown to be pre-Elizabethan[578], and the Westminster dramatic tradition is, therefore, less old than that of either Eton or St. Paul’s. Professor Hales has, indeed, made it seem plausible that Udall’s _Ralph Roister Doister_ dates from his Westminster (?1553-6) and not his Eton mastership (1534-41). But the Eton plays can be traced back to 1525-6[579], and were a recognized institution when Malim wrote his _Consuetudinary_ about 1561[580]. In 1538 the Eton boys played, under Udall, before Cromwell[581]. A decade earlier, in 1527, John Ritwise had brought the boys of Colet’s new foundation at St. Paul’s to court. They acted an anti-Lutheran play before Henry and probably also the _Menaechmi_ before Wolsey. Certainly they acted the _Phormio_ before him in the following year[582]. The dramatic history of this school is a little difficult to disentangle from that of its near neighbour, the song-school of St. Paul’s cathedral[583]. The song-school probably provided the children whom Heywood brought before the princess Mary in 1538[584] and to court in 1553. But some doubt has been cast upon the _bona fides_ of the account which Warton gives of further performances by them before the princess Elizabeth at Hatfield in 1554[585]. Plays, either in English or in Latin, of which Bale preserves a list, were also acted in the private school set up in 1538 by one Ralph Radclif in the surrendered Carmelite convent of Hitchin[586]. It will be seen that the non-professional dramatic activities of England, outside the miracle-plays, although of some importance in the sixteenth century, came late and hardly extended beyond courtly and scholastic circles. There is nothing corresponding to the plentiful production of farces by amateur associations of every kind which characterized fifteenth-century France. Besides the scholars and the _Basoche_, which corresponded roughly to the Inns of Court, but was infinitely more lively and fertile, there were the _Enfants sans Soucis_ in Paris, and in the province a host of _puys_ and _sociétés joyeuses_. All of these played both morals and farces, particularly the latter, for which they claimed a very free licence of satirical comment[587]. As a result, although salaried _joueurs de personnages_ begin to make their appearance in the account books of the nobles as early as 1392-3[588], the professional actors were unable to hold their own against the unequal competition, and do not really become of importance until quite the end of the sixteenth century[589]. In England it was otherwise. The early suppression of the Feast of Fools and the strict control kept over the Boy Bishop afforded no starting-point for _sociétés joyeuses_, while the late development of English as a literary language did not lend itself to the formation of _puys_. We hear indeed of satirical performances by the guild of Brothelyngham at Exeter in 1348, and again by the _filii civitatis_ in