appears chiefly in his prevailing love for slander and scorns. Frewyll and Imaginacyon are as like him as two peas. But even in the case of Pity, Perseverance, and Contemplacyon, the allegory is only, as it were, the firm under which these personages act; they are in reality actual human beings, who, again, are characterised principally in regard to these virtues. For this very reason it does not seem to me likely that the play, as Collier thinks, was written in the reign of Henry VII., I should be inclined to place it in that of Henry VIII. supposition is supported not only by a few very severe attacks upon the sinful, licentious life of the priests, but also by diction and versification, especially by those long lines, like the Alexandrines, which decidedly predominate, and which in a play of the thirteenth century would be unparalleled.

This

CHAPTER III.

JOHN HEYWOOD'S INTERLUDES.

HICK SCORNER, in my opinion, must be regarded as the point of transition from the Moralities to Heywood's Interludes, which again mark an important historical stage in the development of the English drama. The reign of Henry VIII. is the beginning of a new period as regards England. Without entering upon a closer examination of this period, I shall merely mention some events which directly influenced the further development of dramatic art. Among these were, I think, first of all, King Henry's luxury, love of splendour and pleasure: he ruled like a despot, made an external show of the whole might, majesty and power of the state, which was centred in his own person; and then that peculiar excitement of the nation which, being politically oppressed, began (in consequence of the Reformation) to move more freely and independently in the clerico-religious direction, and by its lively interest in the great ecclesiastical questions of the day, took an important part in public life.

The king's extravagant love of show and amusement in the first place increased dramatic art both as regards the external means of its subsistence and also as regards the greater value and esteem which were conferred upon it. The example of the Duke of Gloucester (afterwards Richard III.) to keep a private company of actors, had already become a fashion among the English nobles. A certain number of actors were engaged and formed part of the lord's men or retainers, wore his crest and livery, and had a claim to his protection, but were otherwise specially paid for every performance (twenty shillings by an earl, ten by a baron), a relation which continued down to Shakspeare's time. Even under Henry VII. we hear of the special theatrical companies in the service of the Dukes of Norfolk and Buckingham, and of Earls Arundel, Oxford, and

Northumberland, who gave representations at Court on various occasions. At the same time we meet with companies of actors belonging to the respective towns of York, Coventry, Lavenham, Chester, Kingston, and others, who, probably, as the annual Miracle Plays still continued to be given by the members of the trading companies, generally played Moralities and Interludes. Henry VII. himself kept two companies of players, each of which, however, as was usually the case, consisted but of four or five members (hence the frequent direction of the author on the ancient prints of Moral Plays and Interludes, as to how the different parts were to be divided among the players, which, and how many each one had to play). However, the luxurious Henry VIII., whose meeting with Francis I.* cost 3000l. for dresses and maskers alone, was not satisfied with so limited a number of players. He not only ordered the gentlemen of the choir and the singing boys of the Royal Chapel, as well as those of the clerical singing schools of Westminster, St. Paul's, and Windsor, to become stage players, but in 1514 engaged a third company of actors for the service of the Court. The cost for theatrical entertainments, for masques, disguisings, and revels of all kinds, amounted to something enormous, according to the ideas of the time. Henry, for instance, raised the sum, which up to that time had been paid for a "play," from £6 13s. 4d. to £10. William Cornishe, the choir-master of the chapel boys, received on one single occasion 2001. as a remuneration, and John Heywood (as a Court "singer") received an annual salary of 201., in addition to his other extraordinary emoluments. Besides this the Lord of Misrule (the master of all sports and revels at Court) was specially paid, with equal liberality.

The persons about Court naturally followed the king's example, and the number of the companies of players in the service of some individual lords became exceedingly. numerous. Even monasteries and abbeys encouraged and fostered dramatic art, and occasionally, as it seems, with the assistance of the clergy themselves, had representations given by companies of players within the abbey walls; this was done, for instance, in the Priory of Dunmow, for * Mentioned by Shakspeare, Act I. Sc. i.

in the account-books of that place from 1532-36, we find noted down thirty-six different sums as paid to the king's players, as also to those in the service of Earls Derby, Exeter, and Sussex.

This rise and increase of the external appurtenances was naturally followed by the extension, decoration, and variety of the subject. The play had received its appointed position in the class of revels, and the more that entertainment and pleasure was demanded of it, the more accordingly rose the value of the comic element; the spectators wished to be amused, wished to laugh; comic scenes therefore were wanted. The comic element, in the first stages of its development in all cases, naturally moves at first within the lower strata of human society; it appears at first rough and outspoken even to rudeness, and the grotesque is its favourite garb. Hence coarse comic scenes from common popular life form the subject in which it most delights to express itself. In addition to this it must be remembered that, as already remarked, the life of the people at this time was acquiring a greater importance, an inner restlessness and animation, and demanded consideration on the part of princes and the nobility. Lastly, it lay in the general character of the more recent times not only to oppose a more practical, worldly, and realistic tendency to the idealism of the Middle Ages, but also to question the prevailing ideas, the ruling powers, and the transmitted institutions, as to their justification and validity, a tendency which at first always appears in the form of the comic, in the garb of parody and satire, because they and the comic, in their nature, are one and the same thing. For the comic, of course, is the very natural opposite of every exaggerated sublimation of the mind, the sworn enemy of fantastic ideals, as of all thoughts and opinions, that are opposed to actual life; it is the contemplation of actual conditions and relations in the light of this contrast. But the character of the more recent times possessed the principle of individuality, the right of asserting the living personality against the decaying institutions of the Middle Ages, against the feudal state and hierarchy, as indeed against the tyrannical system of corporations which had become

mechanical, and in which the individual living man was only employed as the lifeless part of a machine. Henry VIII. was a monarch who stood as man and king at the extreme point of this contrast; following entirely his own caprices and personal desires, he spared neither the traditional claims of the Church nor the rightful and political institutions of the State-neither arbitrary assumptions nor well-founded rights. This opposition to the spirit of the Middle Ages appears at first under the protecting veil of the comic.

All these endeavours, desires, and requirements, could not be satisfied either by the ancient Miracle Plays, with their limited and ever-repeated subjects, nor by the Moralities with their stiff seriousness, their cold allegory and their diffuse and abstract generalities. It required a new form, a new kind of conception and treatment of the dramatic material. This presented itself in John Heywood's 'Interludes,' a species of dramatic play, to which, as Collier thinks, the title of Interludes' most properly belongs, were it only to distinguish them from the Moralities in the narrower sense of the word.

John Heywood was born in London, and was not without higher culture, having studied at Oxford, but he was more witty than learned; he was acquainted with many distinguished men of his day, such as Sir Thomas More and others, was a favourite of Henry VIII., and still more so of Mary, the Catholic. He began to write for the stage (as Collier has proved) about 1520, when Player on the Virginals,' at the court of King Henry, although his earliest piece, the Play between the Pardoner and the Friar,' etc., must necessarily have been written before the death of Leo X. (1521). This piece found great favour with both high and low. Heywood is also noted for his witty epigrams, of which he wrote hundreds, and appears in fact to have stood in high estimation as an author and wit. Nevertheless after the death of Queen Mary he left his native country, owing to religious considerations (he was a zealous Catholic), and repaired to Malines, where he died in 1565.* He must not be confounded with his son

* See Chalmers, in the already mentioned edition of Dodsley's 0. Plays, xii. 45 ff. Also Collier, ii. 385.