"Gammer Gurton's Needle was the first to gather the threads of farce ... interlude, and ... school play into a well-sustained comedy of rustic life [with] the rollicking humour of the ... Bedlem; the pithy and saline interchange of feminine amenities; the ... Chaucerian, laughter,—not sensual but animal; the delight in physical incongruity; the mediÆval fondness for the grotesque. If the situations are farcical, they ... hold together; each scene tends towards the climax of the act, and each act towards the dÉnouement. The characters are both typical and individual; and ... the execution is an advance because it smacks less of the academic. Gammer Gurton carries forward the comedy of mirth."—C. Mills Gayley, Litt.D., LL.D., Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University of California.