Eastward Ho!

Book excerpt: This collaborative masterpiece of hilarious city comedy was performed by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars playhouse in 1605. The story is of an allegorical simplicity that lends itself to satire of civic mores and traditions as well as to parody of the sentimental, idealising London comedy presented at the amphitheatres in the suburbs: Goldsmith Touchstone, an upright London citizen, has one modest and one ambitious daughter, one righteous and one disreputable apprentice; virtue is rewarded, ruthlessness comes to grief - and receives a drenching in the muddy Thames. The introduction to this edition discusses various methods of establishing authorship and highlights the irony of the collaborators' comic vision of contemporary London life.