had already engaged in a noisy fight. Toward the close of the play a rather violent wrench forces Freewill and Imagination to accord with the common and conventional conversion to a better life. Such a play as this has little plot; its strength rests rather upon the portrayal of such a character as Imagination, a sharp and witty villain who informs us that he can look in a man's face and pick his purse and that even if his hands were smitten off he could steal with his teeth. Hick Scorner also has a distinguishing mark; in a rather boastful passage he speaks at length of his wide travels and his experiences in different countries. More and more in such a play was plot sacrificed to the demand of the moment. The Interlude was in fact much like the modern "sketch;" largely transitional in form, it was capable of development or adaptation in any direction. In its later course the line between it and the typical Morality was not always clear; and farcical, didactic, and controversial elements were frequently joined. Representative of some of these different or mixed tendencies were The Interlude of the Nature of the Four Elements (ante 1536) and The Marriage of Wit and Science (c. 1570), primarily reminiscent of the schoolroom, and Like Will to Like (c. 1568), in which there are many elements of low comedy and buffoonery but little more emphasis on plot than Hick Scorner possessed.

10. John Heywood.-Foremost of the writers of Interludes and the prime representative of the form was John Heywood (1497-1577?). With this writer we are for the first time confronted by a dramatist of whose life there is documentary evidence and whose work may be considered as a whole and in relation to his time. He seems to have been interested first of all in music. At an early age he

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entered the royal service, probably as a chorister, and in the years of his young manhood he is more than once mentioned as a 66 singer " and a "player of the virginals." About 1540 he was still working in such capacities as these, though at a lower salary than formerly. In March, 1537, he was paid 40s. for playing before Princess Mary an interlude with his "children" (probably choir boys from St. Paul's Cathedral).

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While Heywood lived on well into the reign of Elizabeth his dramatic work was done primarily in the reign of Henry VIII. It was his distinctive achievement that he "dispensed with allegorical machinery and didactic aim, and gave a realistic representation of contemporary citizen types." Undoubtedly his work are The Play of the Wether (1533), A Play of Love (1534), The Play called the Foure P. P. (c. 1535), and A Dialogue concerning Witty and Witless. More important than all save the second of these works, and generally attributed to him, are A Mery Play betwene the Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate, and Neybour Pratte (1533) and A Mery Play betwene John the Husbande, Johan Tyb his Wife, and Syr John the Preest (1533-4). In The Four P's we meet first a Palmer who recounts his journeys (recall Hick Scorner). While he is still speaking the Pardoner enters to inform him that after he has traveled as far as he can he will still come home no wiser than he was when he went forth. The two discuss at length the relative merits of pilgrimages and pardons, and the veracity of palmers and pardoners. To them enters the Poticary, and last of all comes the Peddler, light of heart and with a well-filled pack (cf. Autolycus in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale). A debate now takes See Boas: "Early Comedy," C. H. E. L., V, 101.

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place as to who can tell the biggest lie, and the Palmer wins at last by his declaration that in all his wanderings he has never seen a woman out of patience. On such a slender thread did Heywood work; and he could make a play with only four characters. The important thing to be observed about his work is that in it we have the drama "escaping from its alliance with religion into the region of pure comedy. Here is no well planned moral, no sententious mouthpiece of abstract excellence, no ruin of sinners and crownings of saints . . . . nor is there any buffoonery." The playwright was simply an artist, working with no theory to advance, but only with the aim of setting before his audience life as he saw it, with a touch of satire, but satire all the more pleasant because no one was wounded by the jest.

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II. The Vice.-One of the most important contributions to the drama developed by the early plays, and especially by the morality, was the Vice. One scholar has said that "this personage was probably descended from the merry devil Tutivillus, who was taken over from the mysteries into the moralities." It is to be noted, however, that a spirit of mischief was attributed to all smaller demons; and in this connection we might remark a spirit of mockery that frequently characterized the old drama and that was exemplified in such a thing as the so-called Feast of Fools. In Heywood's Play of the Wether the Vice takes the form of Mery-reporte, a self-assertive rogue with a very free tongue; and Like Will to Like opens with Nichol Newfangle playing a trick upon an auditor as soon as he comes upon the stage. The Vice was regularly full of fun, and he became important in the history of the drama * Wynne, 85. • Creizenach, C. H. E. L., V, 63.

when he bequeathed some of his characteristics to the Fool of more highly developed comedy.

12. Conditions of Presentation.-For the proper presentation of a play certain conditions are of course necessary. First of all a group of people must be together. Such a group might be in a school, and it is astonishing to learn of just how high an order of merit was some of the work of schoolboys in the sixteenth century. The most important group of boys in England for the present purpose was to be found in the Chapel Royal. The origin of the Chapel is obscure; but "it entered the histrionic field early" and "it was, if we may trust the extant records, a pioneer in the production of some important kinds of plays." In the reign of Edward IV (14611483) eight children were included in the organization of the school. Later the number was increased to twelve, but the Chapel still limited itself strictly to its primary purpose of the celebration of divine service. Under the Tudor sovereigns, however, if not earlier, notable additions were made to its functions. "Both the gentlemen and the children took part, frequently if not regularly, in the pageants, masques, and plays produced at Christmas and on other festal occasions." The activities of the gentlemen seem to have ceased soon after the amusements of the court took a more secular turn; but the career of the children continued longer. In the earlier years of the sixteenth century no other company of people exercised a (more real leadership in the drama than that of these children of the Chapel Royal. In course of time other companies of boys also helped in the general advance, notably

་ Manly: "The Children of the Royal Chapel and their Masters," C. H. E. L., VI, 314.

those of Paul's and of Windsor, and of the Westminster and Merchant Tailors' schools. Such companies were of course removed from the professional stage; and a group of adult performers could be held together only by some stable and reliable patronage. We have seen that as far back as the period of the miracle plays the responsibility for a production had to be assumed by a town, or at least divided by the town among different gilds. More and more it became the custom for a nobleman to keep a group of players under his special patronage. Interludes were generally given by professional entertainers who were in the service of persons of rank or who traveled from town to town, and in the circumstances of their presentation were to be found many of the conditions which gave rise to modern comedy and to the traveling company.