may claim to be in part the forerunner of the Shaksperean Fool.

The Moral Interludes, which deal with the temptations of youth, belong chiefly to the reigns of Henry VIII and Mary, and have generally a controversial tendency. Thus Lusty Juventus is a dramatic 'tract for the times' on the side of the Reformation. It opens with a pretty lyric, with the refrain, 'In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure,' sung by Juventus, or Youth. He is interrupted in his merriment by Good Counsel and Knowledge, who take him to task for his religious ignorance, and imbue him with strict Protestant principles. This puts the Devil on his mettle, and he sends as a companion to Juventus his son Hypocrisy, the Vice of the piece, who introduces him to Abominable Living. In her company he follows evil courses till at last he is rescued by his former tutors, who renew their instructions in Divinity. Juventus repents, and ends the play with appropriate Lutheran sentiments.

The champions of the orthodox faith naturally rejoined in kind to such attacks, and among their contributions to this polemical stage-literature are Hycke-Scorner and its recast in the reign of Mary, The Interlude of Youth. The other, and more attractive, class of these Moral Interludes is not concerned with religion, but with the 'new learning' introduced by the Renaissance. The earliest play of the kind that has been preserved is The Nature of the Four Elements. The Messenger who speaks the prologue laments that English books deal only with toys and trifles,' and that 'works of gravity' are to be found only in Latin and Greek. Then Nature enters with Humanity, whom she instructs in the properties of the elements. Studious Desire continues the lecture, which is interrupted by the entrance of Sensual Appetite, a rollicking character, who carries off thirsty Humanity to a tavern. After he has been refreshed, the traveller Experience instructs him in geography, but Ignorance breaks in with a song and dance. Then Nature reappears and warns Humanity that while mirth is allowable within limits, he must make study his chief concern. Similarly didactic in its tendency is the interlude of Wyt and Science, written by John Redford, probably in the latter part of

Henry VIII's reign. It traces the adventures of Wit, who is wooing Science, the daughter of Reason and Experience. He is led astray by Ignorance and Idleness, and suffers a defeat at the hands of the giant Tediousness, whom, however, he finally overthrows. He is then robed in the gown of Knowledge,

and united in wedlock to the lady of his heart.

But these Moral Interludes, with their echoes of the Reformation and the Renaissance, carry us beyond the mediaeval atmosphere. The novel forces of which they were in part the product were destined eventually to crush them out of existence. Indeed, neither in its earlier or later form had the Morality so prolonged or vigorous a life as the Miracle cycle, and the personifications whom it substitutes for the Biblical figures of the older plays are often less interesting and vitally conceived than their predecessors. Yet an immense step was taken when the drama shook itself free from its exclusive dependence on Scriptural themes. In the Miracles the playwright had been compelled to confine himself within prescribed limits; his plot was determined beforehand, and he could only vary it in details. But the writers of Moralities and Moral Interludes had to invent their own framework, and this liberty in choice of theme once asserted, it was inevitable that other than abstract figures should gradually be introduced on the stage. Indeed, abstractions like Folly, Abominable Living, or Hypocrisy, only became dramatically effective in proportion as they ceased to be allegorical symbols, and took the concrete shape of typical human representatives of the vice in question. It was natural that a writer of realistic temper should push this tendency to its logical issue, and, boldly dispensing with personifications, should introduce in their place familiar social types.

Such a writer was John Heywood, who enjoyed the favour of Henry VIII and of Mary. He is the creator of a peculiar dramatic species, which has been distinguished as the Satirical Interlude, though the satire is bright and genial. Orthodox in doctrine, he yet had a keen eye for clerical failings, and these he rallied with much of the racy vigour of Chaucer in his Mery Play between Johan the Husbond, Tyb his Wyfe, and Syr Jhon the Preest, and in the Mery Play between the Pardoner and

the Frere, the Curate and neghbour Pratte. More comprehensive in its range is his chief work, The Four P's, which hits at clergy and laity alike. It introduces four stock characters of mediaeval society, the Palmer, the Pardoner, the Poticary, and the Pedlar. The dialogue is opened by the Palmer, a professional pilgrim, who relates how, in the hope of saving his soul, he has journeyed 'in many a fair and far country,' and gone the round of all the shrines. The Pardoner, the seller of Papal indulgences, sneeringly retorts that he is a fool for his pains. Why wander over the world in search of salvation when it can be obtained much more easily and comfortably at home? An indulgence bought at his own door will do as much for him as a voyage 'thrice to Jericho'; for the trifling expenditure of a penny or twopence,

'In half an hour, or three-quarters at most,
The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.'

While the two men of religion are disputing about the merits of their rival methods, the Poticary breaks in with a word for the medical profession. How seldom is it that an honest man is ushered into the next world 'without help of the Poticary'! Thus the duel becomes triangular, when the Pedlar enters, and he is appointed umpire. He disclaims any competence to judge in things spiritual, but he has 'some skill in lying,' and if the competitors will give a display of their powers in that art, of which he knows them all to be past masters, he will make his award. The Poticary leads off with a sensational story of a marvellous cure that he has effected. The Pardoner caps this with his burlesque account of his 'harrowing of Hell' to rescue the soul of his friend Margery Corson. There are few passages in our early literature to surpass this episode for humour and verve. Lucifer and all the devils, who 'have more to do' with two women than with the rest of their 'charge,' are only too delighted to get rid of such a shrew, and 'roar' with joy at her delivery. This gives the Palmer his chance: he declares that he cannot understand why women have so bad a reputation in hell, as, though he has met on his travels half a million of the sex, he has never seen or known any one woman out of patience.' Such a quintessential falsehood simply takes away the breath of the listeners;

not only the judge, but even his two rivals, unanimously acknowledge the Palmer's victory, and the piece ends with a few serious words from the Pedlar on the right use of pilgrimages and pardons.

The Four P's is the last typical utterance on the stage of the Pre-Renaissance spirit in this country. It shows absolutely no trace of foreign influence, and is English to the core alike in its excellences and its faults. Its dialogue is pungent and nervous in a high degree; its sketches of character are firm and effective; its mixture of good sense, humour, and piety is singularly pleasing. But it lacks the distinctive mark of the higher drama, for in spite of the neatness of the dénouement, there is nothing that can seriously be called a plot. Many of the features that go to make a first-rate comedy are present, but we miss one that is essential-the constructive faculty. This was a gift almost entirely withheld from the mediaeval playwrights, and in his lack of it Heywood proves himself a late-born son of the era which produced the Miracle and the Morality. Before his death the new learning had begun to familiarize men with higher dramatic types, and the old-world forms had had their day.

It is true that allegorical figures are found in some of the early Elizabethan comedies, and in such first-fruits of native tragedy and chronicle-history as Cambises, Apius and Virginia, and Bale's Kynge Johan. Moreover, the representation of Moralities and of Miracles continued till the opening of the seventeenth century, and thus overlapped with the production of Hamlet. Hence it is something worthier than love of picturesque anecdote that prompts us to accept the statement of biographers, supported by apparent reminiscences in his works, that Shakspere in his boyhood had made the short pilgrimage from Stratford to Coventry, to witness the famous Corpus Christi pageant. It is genuinely significant that the historic continuity of our dramatic literature should thus have been preserved. But by this time the Miracle cycles and the Moralities were a mediaeval survival amidst the surroundings of the Renaissance. By their very nature they were wanting in flexibility and power of adaptation to a novel environment; their decay was inevitable, and left no regrets behind. But they had done an

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all-important work. They had kept the theatre alive through centuries whose instinct was largely hostile to it. They had preserved and popularized the knowledge of stage conventions and technique. They had identified the drama with the national life, and had ensured it against monopoly by a single class or school. They had based it on a moral foundation which, shaken by the tumultuous forces of the new age, was to be relaid, deep and broad, by the master-builder Shakspere.