[Bibliographical Note.—The Annals of the Stage in J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry (new ed. 1879), although ill arranged and by no means trustworthy, now become of value. They may be supplemented from the full notices of Tudor spectacula in E. Hall, The Union of Lancaster and York, 1548, ed. 1809, and from the various calendars of State papers, of which J. S. Brewer and J. Gairdner, Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII (1862-1903), including the Revels Accounts and the Kings Books of Payments, is the most important. Some useful documents are in W. C. Hazlitt, The English Drama and Stage (1869). The French facts are given by L. Petit de Julleville, Les Comédiens en France au Moyen Âge (1889).]

The closing section of this essay may fitly be introduced by a brief retrospect of the conclusions already arrived at. The investigation, however it may have lingered by the way, has not been altogether without its logos or rational framework. The first book began with a study of the conditions under which the degenerate stage of the Roman Empire ceased to exist. The most important of these were the indifference of the barbarians and the direct hostility of the Church. A fairly clean sweep was made. Scarcely a thread of dramatic tradition is to be traced amongst the many and diverse forms of entertainment provided by mediaeval minstrelsy. But the very existence of minstrelsy, itself a singular blend of Latin and barbaric elements, is a proof of the enduring desire of the western European peoples for something in the nature of spectacula. In the strength of this the minstrels braved the ban of the Church, and finally won their way to at least a partial measure of toleration from their hereditary foes. In the second book it was shown that the instinct for spectacula had its definitely dramatic side. The ludi of the folk, based upon ancient observances of a forgotten natural religion, and surviving side by side with minstrelsy, broke out at point after point into mimesis. Amongst the villages they developed into dramatic May-games and dramatic sword-dances: in their bourgeois forms they overran city and cathedral with the mimicries of the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop; they gave birth to a special type of drama in the mask; and they further enriched Tudor revels with the characteristic figures of the domestic fool or jester and the lord of misrule. Upon the folk ludi, as upon the spectacula of the minstrels, the Church looked doubtfully. But the mimetic instinct was irresistible, and in the end it was neither minstrels nor folk, but the Church itself, which did most for its satisfaction. The subject of the third book is a remarkable growth of drama within the heart of the ecclesiastical liturgy, which began in the tenth century, and became, consciously or unconsciously, a powerful counterpoise to the attraction of ludi and spectacula. So popular, indeed, did it prove that it broke the bonds of ecclesiastical control; and about the thirteenth century a process of laicization set in, which culminated during the fourteenth in the great Corpus Christi cycles of the municipal guilds. The subject-matter, however, remained religious to the end, an end which, in spite of the marked critical attitude adopted by the austerer schools of churchmen, did not arrive until that attitude was confirmed by successive waves of Lollard and Protestant sentiment. Nor was the system substantially affected by certain innovations of the fifteenth century, a tendency to substitute mere spectacular pageantry for the spoken drama, and a tendency to add to the visible presentment of the scriptural history an allegorical exposition of theological and moral doctrine.

It is the object of the present book briefly to record the rise, also in the fifteenth century, of new dramatic conditions which, after existing for a while side by side with those of mediaevalism, were destined ultimately to become a substitute for these and to lead up directly to the magic stage of Shakespeare. The change to be sketched is primarily a social rather than a literary one. The drama which had already migrated from the church to the market-place, was to migrate still further, to the banqueting-hall. And having passed from the hands of the clergy to those of the folk, it was now to pass, after an interval of a thousand years, not immediately but ultimately, into those of a professional class of actors. Simultaneously it was to put off its exclusively religious character, and enter upon a new heritage of interests and methods, beneath the revivifying breath of humanism.

A characteristic note of the new phase is the rise of the term interludium or ‘interlude.’ This we have already come across in the title of that fragmentary Interludium de Clerico et Puella which alone amongst English documents seemed to bear witness to a scanty dramatic element in the repertory of minstrelsy⁠[524]. The primary meaning of the name is a matter of some perplexity. The learned editors of the New English Dictionary define it as ‘a dramatic or mimic representation, usually of a light or humorous character, such as was commonly introduced between the acts of the long mystery-plays or moralities, or exhibited as part of an elaborate entertainment.’ Another recognized authority, Dr. Ward, says⁠[525]: ‘It seems to have been applied to plays performed by professional actors from the time of Edward IV onwards. Its origin is doubtless to be found in the fact that such plays were occasionally performed in the intervals of banquets and entertainments, which of course would have been out of the question in the case of religious plays proper.’ I cannot say that I find either of these explanations at all satisfactory. In the first place, none of the limitations of sense which they suggest are really borne out by the history of the word. So far as its rare use in the fourteenth century goes, it is not confined to professional plays and it does not exclude religious plays. The Interludium de Clerico et Puella is, no doubt, a farce, and something of the same sort appears to be in the mind of Huchown, or whoever else was the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, when he speaks of laughter and song as a substitute for ‘enterludez’ at Christmas⁠[526]. But on the other hand, Robert Mannyng of Brunne, at the very beginning of the century, classes ‘entyrludes’ with ‘somour games’ and other forbidden delights of the folk⁠[527], while the Wyclifite author of the Tretise on Miriclis at its close, definitely uses ‘entirlodies’ as a name for the religious plays which he is condemning⁠[528]. In the fifteenth century, again, although ‘interlude’ is of course not one of the commonest terms for a miracle-play, yet I find it used for performances probably of the miracle-play type at New Romney in 1426 and at Harling in 1452, while the jurats of the former place paid in 1463 for ‘the play of the interlude of our Lord’s Passion⁠[529].’ The term, then, appears to be equally applicable to every kind of drama known to the Middle Ages. As to its philological derivation, both the New English Dictionary and Dr. Ward treat it as a ludus performed in the intervals of (inter) something else, although they do not agree as to what that something else was. For the performance of farces ‘between the acts of the long miracle-plays’ there is no English evidence whatever⁠[530]. The farcical episodes which find a place in the Towneley plays and elsewhere are in no way structurally differentiated from the rest of the text. There are some French examples of combined performances of farces and miracles, but they do not go far enough back to explain the origin of the word⁠[531]. A certain support is no doubt given to the theory of the New English Dictionary by the ‘mirry interludes’ inserted in Sir David Lyndsay’s morality Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, but, once more, it is difficult to elucidate a term which appears at the beginning of the fourteenth century from an isolated use in the middle of the sixteenth. Dr. Ward’s hypothesis is perhaps rather more plausible. No doubt plays were performed at court and elsewhere between the banquet and the ‘void’ or cup of spiced drink which followed later in the evening, and possibly also between the courses of the banquet itself⁠[532]. But this fact would not differentiate dramatic ludi from other forms of minstrelsy coming in the same intervals, and the fact that miracle-plays are called interludes, quite as early as anything else, remains to be accounted for. I am inclined myself to think that the force of inter in the combination has been misunderstood, and that an interludium is not a ludus in the intervals of something else, but a ludus carried on between (inter) two or more performers; in fact, a ludus in dialogue. The term would then apply primarily to any kind of dramatic performance whatever.

In any case it is clear that while ‘interlude’ was only a subordinate name for plays of the miracle-type, it was the normal name, varied chiefly by ‘play’ and ‘disguising,’ for plays given in the banqueting-halls of the great⁠[533]. These begin to claim attention during the fifteenth century. Dr. Ward’s statement that religious plays could not have been the subject of such performances does not bear the test of comparison with the facts. A miracle of St. Clotilda was played before Henry the Sixth at Windsor Castle in 1429, a Christi Descensus ad Inferos before Henry the Seventh during dinner at Winchester in 1486; nor is it probable that the play performed by the boys of Maxstoke Priory in the hall of Lord Clinton at Candlemas, 1430, was other than religious in character⁠[534]. The records of the miracle-plays themselves show that they were often carried far from home. There was much coming and going amongst the villages and little towns round about Lydd and New Romney from 1399 to 1508. One at least of the existing texts, that of the Croxton Sacrament, appears to be intended for the use of a travelling troupe, and that such troupes showed their plays not only in market-places and on village greens but also in the houses of individual patrons, is suggested by entries of payments to players of this and that locality in more than one computus⁠[535]. Thus Maxstoke Priory, between 1422 and 1461, entertained lusores⁠[536] from Nuneaton, Coventry, Daventry, and Coleshill; while Henry the Seventh, between 1492 and 1509, gave largess, either at court or abroad, to ‘pleyers’ from Essex, Wimborne Minster, Wycombe, London, and Kingston. The accounts of the last-named place record an ordinary parochial play in the very year of the royal ‘almasse.’

It is obvious that this practice of travelling must have brought the local players into rivalry with those hereditary gentlemen of the road, the minstrels. Possibly they had something to do with provoking that querelosa insinuatio against the rudes agricolae et artifices diversarum misterarum which led to the formation of the royal guild of minstrels in 1469. If so, the measure does not seem to have been wholly successful in suppressing them. But the minstrels had a better move to make. Their own profession had fallen, with the emergence of the trouvère and the spread of printing, upon evil days. And here were the scanty remnants of their audiences being filched from them by unskilled rustics who had hit upon just the one form of literary entertainment which, unlike poetry and romance in general, could not dispense with the living interpreter⁠[537]. What could they do better than develop a neglected side of their own art and become players themselves? So there appear in the computi, side by side with the local lusores, others whose methods and status are precisely those of minstrels⁠[538]. The generosity of Henry the Sixth at the Christmas of 1427 is called forth equally by the entreludes of the jeweis de Abyndon and the jeuues et entreludes of Jakke Travail et ses compaignons. By 1464 ‘players in their enterludes’ were sufficiently recognized to be included with minstrels in the exceptions of the Act of Apparel⁠[539]. Like other minstrels, the players put themselves under the protection of nobles and persons of honour. The earliest upon record are those of Henry Bourchier, earl of Essex, and those of Richard, duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard the Third. Both companies were rewarded by Lord Howard in 1482. The earls of Northumberland, Oxford, Derby, and Shrewsbury, and Lord Arundel, all had their players before the end of the century⁠[540]. The regulations of the Northumberland Household Book, as well as entries in many computi, show that by the reign of Henry the Eighth the practice was widespread⁠[541]. Naturally it received a stimulus when a body of players came to form a regular part of the royal household. Whether Richard the Third retained his company in his service during his brief reign is not upon record. But Henry the Seventh had four lusores regis, alias, in lingua Anglicana, les pleyars of the Kyngs enterluds at least as early as 1494. These men received an annual fee of five marks apiece, together with special rewards when they played before the king. When their services were not required at court, they took to the road, just as did the minstrels, ioculator, and ursarius of the royal establishment. In 1503 they were sent, under their leader John English, in the train of Margaret of Scotland to her wedding with James the Fourth at Edinburgh, and here they ‘did their devoir’ before the Scottish court⁠[542]. Henry the Eighth increased their number to eight, and they can be traced on the books of the royal household through the reigns of Edward the Sixth and Mary, and well into that of Elizabeth⁠[543].

The new conditions under which plays were now given naturally reacted upon the structure of the plays themselves. The many scenes of the long cyclical miracles, with their multitudinous performers, must be replaced by something more easy of representation. The typical interlude deals with a short episode in about a thousand lines, and could be handled in the hour or so which the lord might reasonably be expected to spare from his horse and his hounds⁠[544]. Economy in travelling and the inconvenience of crowding the hall both went to put a limit on the number of actors. Four men and a boy, probably in apprenticeship to one of them, for the women’s parts, may be taken as a normal troupe. In many of the extant interludes the list of dramatis personae is accompanied by an indication as to how, by the doubling of parts, the caste may be brought within reasonable compass⁠[545]. The simplest of scenic apparatus and a few boards on trestles for a stage had of course to suffice. But some sort of a stage there probably was, as a rule, although doubtless the players were prepared, if necessary, to perform, like masquers, on the floor in front of the screen, or at best upon the dais where the lord sat at meals⁠[546]. The pleasure-loving monks of Durham seem as far back as 1465 to have built at their cell of Finchale a special player-chamber for the purposes of such entertainments⁠[547]. Henry the Eighth, too, in 1527 had a ‘banket-house’ or ‘place of plesyer,’ called the ‘Long house,’ built in the tiltyard at Greenwich, and decorated by none other than Hans Holbein⁠[548]. But this was designed rather for a special type of disguising, half masque half interlude, and set out with the elaborate pageants which the king loved, than for ordinary plays. A similar banqueting-house ‘like a theatre’ had been set up at Calais in 1520, but unfortunately burnt down before it could be used⁠[549]. Another characteristic of the interlude is the prayer for the sovereign and sometimes the estates of the realm with which it concludes, and which often helps to fix the date of representation of the extant texts⁠[550].

Like the minstrels, the interlude players found a welcome not only in the halls of the great, but amongst the bourgeois and the village folk. In the towns they would give their first performance before the municipality in the guildhall and take a reward⁠[551]. Then they would find a profitable pitch in the courtyard of some old-fashioned inn, with its convenient range of outside galleries⁠[552]. It is, however, rather surprising to find that Exeter, like Paris itself⁠[553], had its regular theatre as early as 1348, more than two centuries before anything of the kind is heard of in London. This fact emerges from two mandates of Bishop Grandisson; one, already quoted in the previous volume, directed against the secta or ordo, probably a société joyeuse, of Brothelyngham⁠[554], the other inhibiting a satirical performance designed by the youth of the city, in disparagement of the trade and mystery of the cloth-dressers. In both cases the ‘theatre’ of the city was to be the locality of the revels⁠[555]. Much later, in 1538, but still well in anticipation of London, the corporation of Yarmouth appear to have built a ‘game-house’ upon the garden of the recently surrendered priory⁠[556].

In the villages the players probably had to content themselves with a stage upon the green; unless indeed they could make good a footing in the church. This they sometimes did by way of inheritance from the local actors of miracles. For while the great craft-cycles long remained unaffected by the professional competition and ultimately came to their end through quite different causes, it was otherwise in the smaller places. If the parson and the churchwardens wanted a miracle in honour of their patron saint and could readily hire the services of a body of trained actors, they were not likely to put themselves to the trouble of drilling bookless rustics in their parts. And so the companies got into the churches for the purpose of playing religious interludes, but, if the diatribes of Elizabethan Puritans may be trusted, remained there to play secular ones⁠[557]. The rulers of the Church condemned the abuse⁠[558], but it proved difficult to abolish, and even in 1602 the authorities of Syston in Leicestershire had to buy players off from performing in the church⁠[559].

Even where the old local plays survived they were probably more or less assimilated to the interlude type. It was certainly so with those written by John Bale and played at Kilkenny. It was probably so with the play of Placidas or St. Eustace given at Braintree in 1534, if, as is most likely, it was written by Nicholas Udall, who was vicar of Braintree at the time. And when we find the wardens of Bungay Holy Trinity in 1558 paying fourpence for an ‘interlude and game-booke’ and two shillings for writing out the parts, the conjecture seems obvious that what they had done was to obtain a copy of one of the printed interludes which by that time the London stationers had issued in some numbers. On the other hand the example of the travelling companies sometimes stirred up the folk, with the help, no doubt, of Holophernes the schoolmaster, to attempt performances of secular as well as religious plays on their own account. The rendering of Pyramus and Thisbe by the mechanicals of Athens, which is Stratford-upon-Avon, is the classical instance. But in Shropshire the folk are said to have gone on playing debased versions of Dr. Faustus and other Elizabethan masterpieces, upon out-of-door stages, until quite an incredibly late date⁠[560].

I return to the atmosphere of courts. It must not be supposed that, under the early Tudors, the professional players had a monopoly of interludes. On the contrary, throughout nearly the whole of the sixteenth century, it remained doubtful whether the future of the drama was to rest in professional or amateur hands. The question was not settled until the genius of Marlowe and of Shakespeare came to the help of the players. Under the pleasure-loving Henries accomplishment in the arts of social diversion was as likely a road to preferment as another. Sir Thomas More won a reputation as a page by his skill in improvising a scene⁠[561]. John Kite stepped almost straight from the boards to the bishopric of Armagh. His performances, not perhaps without some scandal to churchmen, were given when he was subdean of the Chapel Royal⁠[562]. This ancient establishment, with its thirty-two gentlemen and its school of children, proved itself the most serious rival of the regular company. Both gentlemen and children, sometimes together and sometimes separately, took part in the performances, the records of which begin in 1506⁠[563]. The rather exceptional nature of the repertory will be considered presently. Few noblemen, of course, kept a chapel on the scale of the royal one. But that of the earl of Northumberland was of considerable size, and was accustomed about 1523 to give, not only a Resurrection play at Easter and a Nativity play at Christmas, but also a play on the night of Shrove-Tuesday. The functionary to whom it looked for a supply of interludes was the almoner⁠[564].

The gentlemen of the Inns of Courts were always ready to follow in the wake of courtly fashion. Their interludes were famous and important in the days of Elizabeth, but, although Lincoln’s Inn entertained external lusores in 1494 and 1498⁠[565], Gray’s Inn is the only one in which amateur performances are recorded before 1556. A ‘disguising’ or ‘plaie’ by one John Roo was shown here in 1526, and got the actors into trouble with Wolsey, who found, or thought that he found, in it reflections on his own administration⁠[566]. All ‘comedies called enterludes’ were stopped by an order of the bench in 1550, except during times of solemn Christmas⁠[567]. In 1556 an elaborate piece for performance by all the Inns was in preparation by William Baldwin⁠[568].

There were interludes, moreover, at universities and in schools. The earliest I have noted are at Magdalen College, Oxford, where they occur pretty frequently from 1486 onwards. They were given in the hall at Christmas, and overlap in point of time the performances of the Quem quaeritis in the chapel⁠[569]. There was a play at Cardinal’s College in 1530⁠[570]. Nicholas Grimald’s Christus Redivivus was given at Brasenose about 1542. Possibly his Archipropheta was similarly given about 1546 at Christ Church, of which he had then become a member. Beyond these I do not know of any other Oxford representations before 1558. But in 1512 the University granted one Edward Watson a degree in grammar on condition of his composing a comedy⁠[571]. At Cambridge the pioneer college was St. John’s, where the Plutus of Aristophanes was given in Greek in 1536⁠[572]. Christ’s College is noteworthy for a performance of the antipapal Pammachius in 1545⁠[573], and also for a series of plays under the management of one William Stevenson in 1550-3, amongst which it is exceedingly probable that Gammer Gurton’s Needle was included⁠[574]. Most of these university plays were however, probably, in Latin. The Elizabethan statutes of Trinity College⁠[575] and Queens’ College⁠[576] both provide for plays, and in both cases the performances really date back to the reign of Henry VIII. At Trinity John Dee seems to have produced the Pax of Aristophanes, with an ingenious contrivance for the flight of the Scarabaeus to Zeus, shortly upon his appointment as an original fellow in 1546⁠[577].

The Westminster Latin play cannot be clearly shown to be pre-Elizabethan⁠[578], and the Westminster dramatic tradition is, therefore, less old than that of either Eton or St. Paul’s. Professor Hales has, indeed, made it seem plausible that Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister dates from his Westminster (?1553-6) and not his Eton mastership (1534-41). But the Eton plays can be traced back to 1525-6⁠[579], and were a recognized institution when Malim wrote his Consuetudinary about 1561⁠[580]. In 1538 the Eton boys played, under Udall, before Cromwell⁠[581]. A decade earlier, in 1527, John Ritwise had brought the boys of Colet’s new foundation at St. Paul’s to court. They acted an anti-Lutheran play before Henry and probably also the Menaechmi before Wolsey. Certainly they acted the Phormio before him in the following year⁠[582]. The dramatic history of this school is a little difficult to disentangle from that of its near neighbour, the song-school of St. Paul’s cathedral⁠[583]. The song-school probably provided the children whom Heywood brought before the princess Mary in 1538⁠[584] and to court in 1553. But some doubt has been cast upon the bona fides of the account which Warton gives of further performances by them before the princess Elizabeth at Hatfield in 1554⁠[585]. Plays, either in English or in Latin, of which Bale preserves a list, were also acted in the private school set up in 1538 by one Ralph Radclif in the surrendered Carmelite convent of Hitchin⁠[586].

It will be seen that the non-professional dramatic activities of England, outside the miracle-plays, although of some importance in the sixteenth century, came late and hardly extended beyond courtly and scholastic circles. There is nothing corresponding to the plentiful production of farces by amateur associations of every kind which characterized fifteenth-century France. Besides the scholars and the Basoche, which corresponded roughly to the Inns of Court, but was infinitely more lively and fertile, there were the Enfants sans Soucis in Paris, and in the province a host of puys and sociétés joyeuses. All of these played both morals and farces, particularly the latter, for which they claimed a very free licence of satirical comment⁠[587]. As a result, although salaried joueurs de personnages begin to make their appearance in the account books of the nobles as early as 1392-3⁠[588], the professional actors were unable to hold their own against the unequal competition, and do not really become of importance until quite the end of the sixteenth century⁠[589]. In England it was otherwise. The early suppression of the Feast of Fools and the strict control kept over the Boy Bishop afforded no starting-point for sociétés joyeuses, while the late development of English as a literary language did not lend itself to the formation of puys. We hear indeed of satirical performances by the guild of Brothelyngham at Exeter in 1348, and again by the filii civitatis in 1352⁠[590], but Bishop Grandisson apparently succeeded in checking this development which, so far as the information at present available goes, does not seem to have permanently established itself either at Exeter or elsewhere.