ngland was a
character no less dignified than its founder in Germany. Erasmus,
as he sits enthroned in a scholar's chair in the market-place at
Rotterdam, the buildings about leaning on their insecure foundations
out of the perpendicular, and the market-women, with their apple-bloom
complexions, crowding around him, shows a somewhat withered face
and figure, less genial than the handsome Heidelberg professor as he
stands at Worms. But it was Erasmus, probably, who, among many other
things he did while in England, lent an important impulse to the
acting of plays by students. He, no doubt, was no further interested
than to have masterpieces of Greek and Latin drama represented, that
the students might have exercise in those languages; but before the
reign of Henry VIII. was finished, the practice was becoming pursued
for other ends, and growing in importance. _Gammer Gurton's
Needle_, long supposed to be the first English comedy, was first
acted by students at Cambridge. That our more rollicking boys had
their counterparts then, we may know from its rousing drinking-song,
which the fellows rang out at the opening of the second act, way back
there in 1551. The chorus is not yet forgotten:

"Backe and side go bare, go bare,
Booth foot and hand go colde;
But, belly, God send thee good ale inoughe,
Whether it be new or olde!"

For the most part, probably, the performances were of a more dignified
character than this. Among the statutes of Trinity College, Cambridge,
1546, there is one entitled _de praefectu ludorum qui imperator
dicitur_, under whose direction and authority Latin comedies are
to be exhibited in the hall at Christmas. This "imperator" must be a
master of arts, and the society was to be governed by a set of laws
framed in Latin verse. The authority of this potentate lasted from
Christmas to Candlemas, during which time six spectacles were to be
represented. Dr. John Dee, a prodigy of that century, who might have
been illustrious like Bacon almost, but who wasted his later years
in astrological dreams, in his younger life, while Greek lecturer
at Cambridge, superintended in the refectory of the college the
representation of the [Greek: _Eirhene_]; of Aristophanes, with
no mean stage adjuncts, if we may trust his own account. He speaks
particularly of the performance of a "Scarabeus, his flying up to
Jupiter's palace with a man and his basket of victuals on his back;
whereat was great wondering and ma