Before concluding this Introduction, by noticing some of the earliest regular dramas, we must go back in point of time and mention shortly a species of dramatic composition, which no doubt contributed largely to suggest the regular comedy; indeed it might itself be regarded as the earliest form of comedy, bearing somewhat of a resemblance to the modern farce. The kind of dramatic entertainment to which we refer is known as an 'Interlude,' and, as its name indicates, seems to have been intended for representation during the intervals of a longer and more serious entertainment. The term Interlude was not confined to plays of this peculiar kind, but as early as the reign of Edward IV. was applied to theatrical productions generally, both miracle and moral plays being sometimes so designated. The name, however, since the time of John Heywood, has been applied to a class of dramatical productions of which, Mr. Collier thinks, he has a claim to be considered the inventor; Heywood, at all events, is the earliest known author of interludes proper, those written by him being likewise the most meritorious. The interlude is a short farcical comedy, which would probably occupy not above half an hour in the performance, founded on some ludicrous or absurd incident, and carried on generally by only three or four characters. How the idea of such a composition was suggested to Heywood is not known, although there was often such a mixture of comedy and even screaming farce' in the old mysteries and morals, that it is not improbable the ludicrous scenes in some of these might have suggested to his merry mind the notion of the comic interlude; indeed, his earliest known composition of this kind resembles somewhat a short comical miracle play. The date of John Heywood's birth is not known, but early in the reign of Henry VIII. he is found attached to the court and in receipt of a salary as a 'player on the virginals;' in this capacity, and also as a writer of plays and a professed wit, he continued to be a retainer of the court during Henry's reign and that of his daughter Mary, and, though a zealous Catholic, was patronized even by the rigid Elizabeth. He died at Mechlin in Brabant in 1565. Heywood is perhaps better known as an epigrammatist than a writer of plays; he also wrote several songs. The earliest known of his interludes is A Merry Play between the Pardoner, the Friar, the Curate, and Neighbour Pratte, written before 1521. The tricks and imposition of both friars and pardoners are freely exposed and ridiculed during the course of the play.

Heywood's best interlude is undoubtedly the one entitled The Four P's, written probably about 1530. The play turns upon a dispute between a Pardoner, a Palmer, a Poticary (Apothecary), and a Pedlar. The play commences by each of the four boasting of the pre-eminence of his own profession, doing his best to cast contempt on that of his neighbours. The language here, as throughout the interlude, while sometimes highly ludicrous and full of wit and humour, is often very coarse and filthy; and Heywood, though a Catholic, does not scruple to expose the unclean lives and low tricks of the priesthood. Tired of reviling each other's occupation, they resolve, at the Pedlar's suggestion, to decide their dispute for pre-eminence by awarding it to him who will tell the greatest lie; and after some further wrangling, they agree each to put his lie in the form of a story. The Poticary begins, but his tale is so full of dirt and obscenity, that it is impossible for us to give even an abstract of it in these pages. The Pardoner takes his turn next, and commences by telling them that a female friend of his having died suddenly, he resolved to find out in what estate her sould did stand.' For this purpose he went to Purgatory-he apparently never dreamt of commencing higher up-but not finding her there, he made his way to hell.

He beseeches Lucifer to tell him where his friend is; the devil, after hearing her name, exclaims:

The Palmer allows that the Pardoner's tale is 'all much perilous,' but marvels

how the devils could complain that women put them to such pain.'

'Whereby much marvel to me ensueth,

That women in hell such shrews can be,
And here so gentle as far as I see.
Yet have I seen many a mile,
And many a woman in the while.
Not one good city, town, nor borough,

In Christendom, but I have been thorough;

1 sothery-savoury.

Poticary. By the mass, there is a great lie.
Pardoner. I never heard a greater, by our

Lady.

Pedlar. A greater! nay, know ye any so great?

Palmer. Sir, whether that I lose or get, For my part judgment shall be prayed. Pardoner. And I desire as he hath said. Poticary. Proceed, and ye shall be obeyed.'

The Pedlar then proceeds to give his award, and of course decides in favour of the Palmer, who has thus unwittingly, by the confession of all, told the greatest lie:

Thus I award by way of judgment:

Of all the lies ye all have spent,

His lie to be most excellent.'

Notwithstanding the rudeness of the language and the coarseness of the fun of this unique play, it is full of humour, sarcasm, liveliness, and vigour of expression, and is, on the whole, not an unworthy harbinger of the regular British comic drama.

Besides the two above spoken of, other interludes by Heywood are-A play between John the husband, Tyb his wife, and Sir John the priest; it is a 'merry play,' resembling in its structure and composition a one-act farce; The Play of the Weather, written to enforce and illustrate a point of natural philosophy, and under the name of Jupiter, to vindicate Providence in the course and distribution of the seasons. Both these were printed in 1533, but probably written much earlier.

The last interlude we shall notice is one of some importance, in so far as it bears the same relation to the serious drama that Heywood's productions do to comedy. It was published about 1530, and bears the following title:

A new comedy in English, in manner of an interlude, right elegant and full of craft of rhetoric, wherein is showed and described, as well the beauty and good properties of women, as their vices and evil conditions, with a moral conclusion and exhortation to virtue.'

The characters are the hero Calisto, the heroine Melibea, Danio her father, Sempronio, a parasite, and a procuress Celestina. The following is Mr. Collier's account of the plot :

"The story is simply this: Calisto, a gay young man, is in love with Melibea, the daughter of Danio, but she dislikes him. By the advice of a parasite, called Sempronio, he engages by gifts old Celestina, who keeps a common brothel, on his side. She endeavours to seduce the heroine into her house to meet Calisto, but failing, pretends that he has a dreadful fit of the toothache, which cannot be cured without the loan of the relic-hallowed girdle of Melibea, aided by the maiden's prayers. Melibea, thus importuned, consents to lend her girdle (which seems to be taken figuratively for a much less innocent concession), and immediately after she has given it, she repents her rashness, confesses her fault to her father, puts up prayers to Heaven for assistance and forgiveness, and the performance ends with a moralization and warning to old and young by Danio.'

It

There are several other interludes extant, written about the same time as these just mentioned, but we have not space to go further into the subject; and indeed, considering the aim of this Introduction, more details on this point are unnecessary, as we have said enough to show that early in the sixteenth century English comedy had come into being, though in a sufficiently crude state. is the writer's fault if the reader has not also been able to understand clearly the influences which were at work about the middle of the sixteenth century, tending to give rise to a kind of serious drama, whose characters would be entirely distinct both from the scriptural and saintly personages of the miracle play and the tiresome abstractions of the morality. Into the latter, as we have seen, were gradually introduced, alongside the abstract impersonations peculiar to the moral, characters taken both from everyday life and from history; and

to us it seems that this must have had a considerable share in suggesting the forms of the regular drama, known as Tragedy and History. There may have been other influences at work which we have now no means of ascertaining, and previous to the appearance of the first regular tragedy, there may have existed moral plays much more nearly resembling it in their characters and construction than any now extant. Still, we think that the mixed moral plays which have come down to us, containing, as some of them do, a serious or tragical element,-combined with the interludes and earlier comedies, which in their construction approximate closely to the form of the legitimate drama,-would of themselves be to a great extent suggestive of the earliest form assumed by the regular serious drama. No doubt, however, the greater attention given to the Greek and Roman classics, consequent on the revival of learning, during the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, had its share in giving birth to the last form assumed by the English drama. One of the interludes, Thyestes, took its title from a Homeric hero, and the moral Jack Juggler is founded on a comedy of Plautus. It is also known the Andrea of Terence was not only translated but acted before the middle of the sixteenth century; and somewhat later a drama appeared having for its title Julius Cæsar. Later still, we learn from Gosson's School of Abuse, published in 1579, there existed dramas bearing such titles as Cæsar and Pompey, The Fabii, Cupid and Payche, etc.; and Gosson also informs us that 'comedies in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, have been thoroughly ransacked to furnish the playhouses in London.' These statements show that somewhere about the middle of the sixteenth century the attention of British play-writers was attracted not only to the dramatic and other productions of Greece and Rome, but also to the theatrical productions of the continental nations, in some of which the regular drama had begun to flourish. While, then, the British drama of the latter half of the sixteenth century is doubtless the legitimate child of the later moral plays, it appears highly probable that the influences just mentioned had something to do in helping to give it birth, and in bestowing upon it the character which ultimately marked it.

The English drama, it is well known, in reference to subject, is divided into tragedy, comedy, and a species which may partake of the nature of either of these, known as history or chronicle-history. The use of the terms tragedy and comedy was well enough defined both by the Greek and Roman dramatists; but in the earlier days of the English drama they appear to have been used indifferently to designate any kind of play, and were sometimes also applied to poetical compositions of other kinds. The play of Appius and Virginia is styled by its author a tragical comedy;' and Bale calls his miracle play, God's Promises, a tragedy, and his Christ's Temptation a comedy. Before his time, 'tragedy' was used to signify any serious narrative in verse, and even late in the reign of Elizabeth the term was applied to other besides dramatic productions. Dante, we know, calls his Inferno a commedia. The terms, however, with the rise of the regular drama, began to be generally confined to theatrical productions; and although we have already attempted to define them, we shall here take the liberty of quoting a paragraph from the work of Mr. Collier, in which he describes the terms with particular reference to their use in the English drama:

By tragedy and comedy, I mean theatrical productions, the characters in which are either drawn from life, or are intended to represent life, whether those characters be actual or imaginary; the terms include also a species of drama, well known of old in the literature of this country, called "history," or "chronicle-history," which consisted of certain passages, or events detailed by annalists, put into a dramatic form, often without regard to the course in which they happened; the author sacrificing chronology, situation, and

circumstance to the superior object of producing an attractive play. It is the disregard of the trammels of the unities which constitutes our "romantic drama," whether the story be real or fictitious; and from the earliest period to the time of Shakespeare, there is not a play in our language in which they are strictly observed. The words "romantic drama" have reference to form and construction merely, and do not in any respect relate to sentiment or language.'

In order to connect this Introduction with the body of the work, we shall conclude by noticing one or two of the earliest extant regular comedies and tragedies. As we shall give specimens of these, our remarks here will be

brief.

Judging from the remains that have reached our time, comedy had its birth at least ten years before tragedy. The earliest extant regular English comedy, discovered not many years ago, is entitled Ralph Roister Doister; it was certainly in existence in 1551, though probably written some years earlier. Its author was Nicholas Udall, a native of Hampshire, who was born in 1506, matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1520, and died about 1557, after having been successively Master of Eton and Westminster Schools. He appears to have written other comedies, but this is the only one which has come down to us, and in the prologue the author calls it a comedy or interlude. From this prologue we might infer that the comedies of Plautus and Terence were the models which he endeavoured to imitate. Before the discovery of Udall's play, the palm of precedence in point of time was given to Gammer Gurton's Needle, a comedy by Bishop Still, written not much earlier than 1566, and much inferior both in plot, construction, and literary merit to Ralph Roister Doister. The latter is regularly divided into five acts and scenes; and whereas Still's play depicts the manners of coarse rustic life, the scene of Udall's comedy is in London, and it possesses much interest as representing in no slight degree the manners of more polished society, exhibiting some of the peculiarities of thinking and acting in the metropolis at the period when it was written. The plot is interesting and well conducted, the language on the whole natural and vigorous, the characters marked by considerable individuality. As we shall give as much of this comedy as will enable the reader to judge of its merits for himself, it is unnecessary to notice it more minutely; it is certainly a great advance on the meagre interlude. It is written in rhyme, but it was not till the time of Marlowe that the stage was fairly freed from this trammel, and even Shakespeare himself sometimes concludes his speeches with a jingle.

There was an interval of ten years before the next regular extant drama made its appearance. Not that during this time no other theatrical productions besides morals made their appearance,—the probability is that there were; and Mr. Collier thinks that the play we are about to notice was preceded by a tragedy upon Luigi da Porto's famous novel of Romeo and Juliet; and it is known that in 1559 and 1560 respectively, appeared translations of two of Seneca's tragedies, The Troas and Thyestes, by Jasper Heywood, son of the author of the Interludes. Between 1559 and 1566, other eight translations from the same author appeared by various hands. However, we are speaking only of those dramas that have reached our own time. The earliest extant drama which may be regarded as the harbinger of the regular tragedy, was played before the queen at Whitehall, by the members of the Inner Temple, on the 18th of January 1561, and was first printed in 1565 under the title of The Tragedy of Gorboduc, although in the second edition of 1571 it is entitled The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex. The author of this piece was Thomas Sackville, afterwards Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset, who appears to have been assisted by Thomas Norton, although it is probable that the latter had a very