Nicholas Udall

Nicholas Udall (1504–1556) was born in Hampshire, educated at Winchester and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became a schoolmaster and translator. He was headmaster of Eton College from about 1534 until his dismissal in 1541, and in 1555 he became headmaster of Westminster School. He translated parts of Erasmus's Apophthegms into English (1542) and wrote and staged plays and pageants at court.

His Ralph Roister Doister, written about 1552, is usually counted the first English comedy. It adapts the braggart-soldier and parasite of Plautus and Terence to an English town, in rhyming verse with songs, and is the work for which he is remembered.