Fragments of unidentified editions are described by Greg, Plays, 139. On Jan. 15, 1582, the copyright was transferred from the late Sampson Awdeley to John Charlwood (Arber, ii. 405). Modern reprints are in Hawkins, vol. i; Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. i; Manly, vol. i. There are 1,026 lines. Ten Brink, iii. 125, dates the play at about the beginning of the sixteenth century. Collier, ii. 227, and Ward, i. 119, place it in the reign of Henry VII, whose ship, the Regent, is named. Brandl, xxviii, notes that this is spoken of (l. 356) as sunk, which occurred in 1513. This is one of the ‘auncient Plays’ in Captain Cox, cxviii.
3. †1513-29. Youth.
[1546-86.] J. Waley. Thēterlude of Youth.
[1549-69.] W. Copland.
Greg, Plays, 141, mentions a fragment of a third edition. The play is printed in Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. ii. There are about 1,200 lines. Collier, ii. 230; Ward, i. 126; Pollard, liv, put the date in Mary’s reign; Brandl, xxviii, early in that of Henry VIII. Passages are borrowed from Hickscorner. This is named in Captain Cox, cxviii.
4. †1517. John Rastell. The Nature of the Four Elements.
[1516-33.] John Rastell. A new interlude and a mery of the nature of the .iiii. elements declarynge many proper poynts of phylosophy naturall and of dyuers strange landys and of dyuers strannge effect and causis, which interlude, if the whole matter be played, will contain the space of an hour and a half; but if you list you may leave out much of the said matter, as ... and then it will not be past three quarters of an hour of length.
There are modern editions by Halliwell (Percy Soc. lxxiv), and in Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. i, and extracts in Pollard, 97. There are about 900 lines. A note says ‘also, yf ye lyst, ye may brynge in a Dysguysinge,’ and a direction for the ‘dance’ or disguising shows that the stage was a ‘hall.’ The date is fixed by Collier, ii. 238; Ward, i. 126; Pollard, 205, on the ground that the discovery of America is said to be ‘within this twenty years’ and by ‘Americus’ (i.e. Amerigo Vespucci, 1497). The authorship has been doubted, apparently in ignorance of the ascription of it to Rastell by Bale, Scriptores (1557), i. 660 ‘Insignis his Cosmographus, de trium mundi partium, Asiae, Africae, et Europae descriptione, ingeniosissimam ac longissimam comoediam primum edidit, cum instrumentis & figuris, quam uocabat Naturam naturatam. Lib. 1. Exuberans diuinae potentiae gratia.’ The opening words quoted by Bale translate those of the play ‘Thaboundant grace of the power devyne.’ Probably Rastell was also the printer, although the unique and imperfect copy (B.M. 643, b. 45) has only a manuscript imprint.
5. †1541-8. John Redford. Wit and Science.
Printed by Halliwell (Shakespeare Soc., 1848) and Manly, vol. i, from Brit. Mus. Addl. MS. 15,233, which is imperfect at the beginning, but has the colophon ‘Thus endyth the Play of Wyt and Science, made by Master Jhon Redford.’
There are 1,059 lines. The final prayer is for the ‘Kyng and Quene.’ Brandl, lxxii, dates the play between 1541, when the ‘gaillard,’ which is mentioned, was first danced in England, and the death of Katharine Parr in 1548. It was adapted in more than one Elizabethan interlude; cf. Brandl, loc. cit.; J. Seifert, Wit- und Science-Moralitäten (1892); and p. 200, n. 2. Redford was at one time Master of the St. Paul’s song-school. The MS. also contains songs and fragments of other moralities by him.
6. †1521. John Heywood. Love.
7. †1521-31. John Heywood. Witty and Witless.
8. †1521-31. John Heywood (?). Gentleness and Nobility.
See s.v. Heywood.
9. †1503. W. Dunbar. The Droichis Part of the Play. Printed in Dunbar’s Works (ed. J. Small, for Scottish Text Soc.), ii. 314.
One MS. is headed ‘Ane Littill Interlud of the Droichis Part of the [Play]’; another, and the fuller, ‘Heir followis the maner of the crying of ane playe.’ Both have at the end ‘Finis off the Droichis Pairt of the Play.’
There are 176 lines. The Droich (dwarf) enters to an ‘amyable audiens’ in Edinburgh, ‘to cry a cry.’ He calls himself ‘Welth,’ and bids
The piece is clearly a ‘banns’ for a May-game; cf. vol. i. p. 174. The S. T. S. editors (i. ccxxxiii), think it was written for the reception of Princess Margaret in 1503.
10. Necromantia.
[1516-33.] John Rastell. Necromantia. A dialog of the poet Lucyan, for his fantesye faynyd for a mery pastyme. And furst by hym compylyd in the Greke tonge. And after translated owt of the Greke into Latyn, and now lately translated out of Laten into Englissh for the erudicion of them, which be disposyd to lerne the tongis. Inter locutores, Menippus and Philonides.
R. G. C. Proctor, in Hand Lists of English Printers, Pt. ii, distinguishes two editions, one certainly, the other probably, printed by Rastell. Hazlitt, Manual, 164, describes the translation as ‘after the manner of an interlude.’ The Latin and English are in parallel columns, and Collier, ii. 280, who saw a fragment in the Douce collection, thought that it was ‘a modern Latin play, possibly by Rightwise.’ Bale, Scriptores (1557), i. 656, says that More translated Lucian’s ‘Menippum, seu Necromantiam, Dial. 1. Salue atrium, domusque uesti[bulum]’; but the reference is probably to the Latin version of this and other dialogues published in 1506.
11. †1521. John Heywood. The Pardoner and the Friar.
12. †1521. John Heywood. The Four Ps.
13. †1521-31. John Heywood. The Weather.
14. †1521-31. John Heywood. John, Tib and Sir John.
See s.v. Heywood.
15. Calisto and Melibaea.
[1516-33.] John Rastell. A new cōmodye in englysh in maner Of an enterlude ryght elygant & full of craft of rethoryk wherein is shewd & dyscrybyd as well the bewte & good propertes of women as theyr vycys & euyll cōdiciōs with a morall cōclusion & exhortacyon to vertew.
A modern reprint is in Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. i. The dramatis personae are Calisto, Melibaea, Sempronio, Celestina, Parmeno. The play is a partial English version through the Italian of the Spanish Celestina (1492) of Fernando Rojas de Montalvan and Rodrigo Costa. A later translation is J. Mabbe, Celestina (1630), ed. J. Fitzmaurice Kelly in Tudor Translations; cf. J. G. Underhill, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors, 65, 375.
16. Terence. Andria.
[1516-33.] John Rastell (?). Terens in englyssh. The translacyon out of Latin into englysh of the furst comedy of tyrens callyd Andria.
17. 1537. Thersites.
[1558-63.] John Tysdale. A new Enterlude called Thersytes. This Enterlude Folowynge Dothe Declare howe that the greatest boesters are not the greatest doers.
There are modern editions in J. Haslewood, Two Interludes (Roxburghe Club, 1820); F. J. Child, Four Old Plays (1848); Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. i; also a facsimile by H. S. Ashbee (1876) and extracts in Pollard, 126. There are 915 lines. The dramatis personae are Thersites, Mulciber, Miles, Mater, Telemachus. Mulciber has ‘a sharp sword made in the place,’ and Mater ‘the place which is prepared for her.’ The date is fixed by a prayer for Prince Edward, born Oct. 12, 1537, and Queen Jane Seymour, who died Oct. 24, 1537. Bolte, in Vahlen-Festschrift, 594, says that the piece is translated from the Thersites of J. Ravisius Textor, printed in his Dialogi (1651), 239. The first edition of the Dialogi was in 1530 (Bahlmann, Lat. Dr. 31).
18. †1560. Thomas Ingelend. The Disobedient Child.
[Probably an Elizabethan play, but included here on account of its relation to Thersites.]
[1561-75.] Thomas Colwell. A pretie and Mery new Enterlude: called the Disobedient Child. Compiled by Thomas Ingelend late Student in Cambridge.
There are modern editions by Halliwell (Percy Soc. xxiii) and in Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. ii. The closing prayer is for Elizabeth. Bolte, loc. cit., considers this a translation of the Iuvenis, Pater, Uxor of Ravisius Textor (Dialogi, 71). Brandl, lxxiii, finds in it the influence of the Studentes (1549) of Christopherus Stymmelius (Bahlmann, Lat. Dr. 98).
19. †1550-3. W. Stevenson (?). Gammer Gurton’s Needle.
1575. Thomas Colwell. A Ryght Pithy, Pleasaunt and merie Comedie: Intytuled Gammer gurton’s Nedle: Played on Stage, not longe ago in Christes Colledge in Cambridge. Made by Mʳ S. Mʳ of Art.
1661. Thomas Johnson.
There are modern editions in Hawkins, vol. i; W. Scott, Ancient British Drama (1810), vol. i; Old English Drama (1830), vol. i; Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. iii; Manly, vol. ii. The latest is by H. Bradley in C. M. Gayley, Representative English Comedies (1903).
The play is divided into Acts and Scenes, has a prologue and a plaudite; but the subject is not taken from Latin comedy. It is probably identical with the Dyccon of Bedlam entered by Colwell on the Stationers’ Register in 1562-3, since ‘Diccon, the bedlem’ is a character. The 1575 edition may, therefore, not have been the first. Jusserand, Théâtre, 181, thinks that the satire is even pre-Reformation in tone. The authorship is much in dispute. I. Reed, Biographia Dramatica (1782), suggested John Still, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells, who was a M.A. of Christ’s in 1565. C. H. Ross, in Modern Language Notes, vii (1892), no. 6, and Anglia, xix. 297, accepts John Bridges, afterwards bishop of Oxford, who is spoken of, but with doubtful seriousness, as the author, in Martin Marprelate’s Epistle (1588). But Bridges’ initial is not S, nor was he a Christ’s man. H. Bradley, in Athenæum for August 6, 1898, and J. Peile, Christ’s College (1900), 54, 73, point out that one William Stevenson, a Bachelor Fellow of Christ’s, is shown by college accounts to have been in charge of plays there between 1550 and 1553. His seems to me by far the strongest claim yet made.
20. †1553-4. Nicholas Udall. Roister Doister.
See s.v. Udall.
21. †1553-8. Jack Juggler.
[1562-9.] W. Copland, A new Enterlude for Chyldren to playe, named Jacke Jugeler, both wytte, and very playsent Newly Imprentid.
According to Grosart, two leaves of another edition are bound with the Duke of Devonshire’s copy.
The play was entered by Copland on the Stationers’ Register in 1562-3. There are modern reprints in J. Haslewood, Two Interludes (Roxburghe Club, 1820); F. J. Child, Four Old Plays (1848); A. B. Grosart, Fuller Worthies Library Miscellanies (1873), vol. iv; Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. ii, and a facsimile by E. W. Ashbee (1876). The piece is an imitation of the Amphitruo of Plautus. Brandl, lxxi, assigns it to the reign of Mary on the strength of a Catholic sentiment.
22. †1516-33. Lucrece.
A fragment of a ‘Play concerning Lucretia’ is attributed by R. G. C. Proctor, in Hand Lists of English Printers (1896), Part ii, to the press of John Rastell (1516-33). It is in the Bagford collection of fragments, Harl. MS. 5919, f. 20 (no. 98), and consists of two pages, containing a scene in which Publius Cornelius instructs a confidential friend with the initial B to sound the feeling of ‘Lucres’ towards him, and the beginning of a scene between B. and ‘Lucres.’ Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 340, says that the play was written by Medwall, †1490, and gives the title as ‘A godely interlude of Fulgeus, Cenatoure of Rome, Lucres his daughter, Gayus Flaminius and Publius Cornelius, of the Disputacyon of Noblenes.’ The ‘Fulgius and Lucrelle’ of seventeenth-century play-lists (Hazlitt, Manual, s.v.; Greg, Masques, lxx) may be related to this. The heroine is not Shakespeare’s Lucrece.
23. †1535-45. Thomas Watson (?). Absolon.
Ascham, Scholemaster (ed. Mayor, 1869), highly praises, together with Buchanan’s Jephthes, the Absolon of Thomas Watson ‘in Sᵗ John’s College Cambridge’ which he never would publish because an anapaest sometimes stood where he thought, incorrectly, that there should have been an iambus. Watson became bishop of Lincoln. Fleay, Biog. Chron. ii. 267, and others ascribe the play in error to John Watson, bishop of Winchester, and speak of a manuscript at Penshurst, which, however, is not mentioned in the account of the Penshurst MSS. in Hist. MSS. iii. app. 227. Probably the play is identical with the Absolon preserved in Brit. Mus. Stowe MS. 957, described by G. B. Churchill and W. Keller, Die lat. Universitäts-Dramen Englands in der Zeit der Königin Elisabeth (Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xxxiv (1898), 229). An eighteenth-century ascription on the first leaf to John Bale is of no authority. The play is of a Senecan type, with acts and scenes and a chorus. The first line was originally ‘Adhuc animus vexatur excusso metu,’ but in the MS., which has many corrections, ‘Animus adhuc’ has been substituted.
24. †1540. Nicholas Grimald. Christus Redivivus.
25. †1547. Nicholas Grimald. Archipropheta.
See s.v. Grimald.
26. †1550. John Foxe. Christus Triumphans.
1551. Christus triumphans, Comoedia apocalyptica. Autore Ioanne Foxo Anglo. London 1551. 8ᵒ.
1556. Oporinus, Basle.
1590. Nuremberg, Gerlach.
In 1672 and 1677 the Latin text was edited by Thomas Comber for school use. A French translation by Jacques Bienvenu appeared in 1562. There is also
1579. John and Richard Day. Christ Jesus Triumphant, A fruitefull Treatise, wherein is described the most glorious Triumph, and Conquest of Christ Iesus our Saviour.... Made to be read for spiritual comfort by Iohn Foxe, and from Latin translated intoo English by the Printer....
There are later editions of 1581 and 1607. This is generally regarded as a translation of the Christus Triumphans, but Greg, Masques, cxxiii, doubts this, and notes that ‘a modern reprint [1828] in the B. M. is not dramatic.’ The reprint is in fact a translation of the De Christo Triumphante, Eiusdem Autoris Panegyricon appended to the Basle edition of the play. But possibly it does not represent the whole of Day’s work. The 1551 edition is given by Bahlmann, Lat. Dr. 107. According to S. L. Lee, in D. N. B., it only rests on the authority of Tanner. In 1551 Foxe was tutor to the children of Lord Surrey, who had been executed some years before. In 1555 he entered the printing office of Oporinus at Basle, and in 1564 that of John Day in London. The MS. of the play is Lansd. MS. 1073. It is an ‘Antichrist’ play, written under the influence of the Pammachius (1538) of Thomas Kirchmaier or Naogeorgus (Bahlmann, op. cit. 71). A full analysis is given by Herford, 138.
27. †1530-40. J. Palsgrave. Acolastus.
1540. Thomas Berthelet. Ioannis Palsgravi Londoniensis, ecphrasis Anglica in comoediam Acolasti. ¶ The Comedye of Acolastus translated into oure englysshe tongue, ... Interpreted by John Palsgraue.
This is a translation of the Acolastus (1530) of Wilhelm de Volder, known in learning as Gnaphaeus or Fullonius, of the Hague (Bahlmann, Lat. Dr. 39). It is arranged for school use, with marginal notes on grammar, &c. The original play is the most important of the group dealing with the Prodigal Son motive: cf. Herford, 152.
28. 1553. Respublica.
Printed by Collier, Illustrations of Old English Literature (1866), vol. i, and Brandl, 281, from sixteenth-century MS. of Mr. Hudson Gurney of Keswick Hall, Norfolk, with the heading ‘A merye enterlude entitled Respublica, made in the yeare of our Lorde, 1553.’
The play is divided into Acts and Scenes, and is a ‘Christmas devise’ (prol. 6) by ‘boyes’ (prol. 39). The place-names are of London. The controversial tone is Catholic, and political, rather than theological. Brandl, lviii, finds the model in Lyndsay’s Satyre. Except for the Prologue (the Poet) all the characters are abstractions. Avarice, alias Policy, is ‘the vice of the plaie.’
29. 1538. John Bale. God’s Promises.
30. 1538. John Bale. John Baptist.
31. 1538. John Bale. The Temptation.
32. 1538. John Bale. The Three Laws.
33. ?1539, 1561. John Bale. King John.
See s.v. Bale.
34. †1547-53. R. Wever. Lusty Juventus.
[1549-69.] W. Copland. An Enterlude called lusty Iuuentus. Lyuely describing the frailtie of youth: of natur prone to vyce: by grace and good counsayll, traynable to vertue.—At end of play, ‘Finis, quod R. Wever.’
[1548-86.] A. Vele.
Copyright was entered on the Stationers’ Register by John King in 1560-1. There are modern reprints in Hawkins, vol. i, and Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. ii. The characters are abstractions with the Devil, a Messenger, and Little Bess a ‘Curtisane.’ The prayer is for a king and his council who rule, which points to the reign of Edward VI.
35. †1547-53. T. R. Nice Wanton.
1560. John King. A Preaty Interlude called, Nice wanton.—At end of play, ‘Finis T. R.’
There are reprints in Hazlitt-Dodsley, vol. i, and Manly, vol. i. The characters are curiously heterogeneous: Messenger, Barnabas, Ismael, Dalila, Eulalia, Iniquitie, Baily Errand, Xantippe, Worldly Shame, Daniel. Brandl, lxxii, considers the play an adaptation of the Rebelles (1535) of George Van Langeveldt or Macropedius, of Utrecht (Bahlmann, Lat. Dr. 55). The rhyme ‘queenes’—‘things’ in the final prayer shows an original date of composition under Edward VI.
36. †1547-53. Somebody, Avarice and Minister.
Fragment of unidentified edition amongst papers of the reign of Edward VI in Lambeth Library, reprinted by S. R. Maitland, List of Early Printed Books at Lambeth (1843), 280. Brandl, lix, considers this a politico-religious interlude of the school of Lyndsay.
37. †1561. Henry Cheke. Freewill.
[1558-63.] John Tisdale. A certayne Tragedie wrytten fyrst in Italian, by F. N. B. entituled, Freewyl, and translated into Englishe, by Henry Cheeke.
The copyright of a book ‘of frewil’ was entered on the Stationers’ Register on May 11, 1561 (Arber, i. 156). The original is the Tragedia del Libero Arbitrio (1546) of Francesco Nigri de Bassano. The translator cannot be, as stated in the D. N. B., Henry, the son of Sir John Cheke, if the date of his birth is as there given (†1548).
38. †1547-53. Robin Conscience.
Often described as an ‘interlude,’ but really a series of dialogues between Robin Conscience, his father Covetousness, his mother New-guise, and his sister Proud-beauty. Collier, ii. 315, describes it from a printed fragment in the Devonshire library, and inclines to ascribe it to the reign of Edward VI; cf. Herford, 55. Hazlitt, iii. 225, prints the full text from a later edition.
39. 1549. Ponet. Bishop of Rome.
A tragoedie or Dialoge of the uniuste usurped primacie of the Bishop of Rome. A translation by John Ponet, Bishop of Winchester, from the Italian of Bernardino Ochino (1549); cf. Bale, i. 694; Herford, 33. Among the speakers are Edward VI and Somerset.
See s.v. Skelton for the alleged Nigramansir (1504).
S. Jones, Biographia Dramatica (1812), ii. 328, describes ‘A newe Interlude of Impacyente Poverte, newlye Imprinted. M. V. L. X.’ The copyright of this play, which is in the Sir Thomas More list (cf. p. 200) and that in Captain Cox, cxviii, was transferred on the Stationers’ Register from the late Sampson Awdeley to John Charlwood on Jan. 15, 1582.
Halliwell-Phillipps, Dictionary of Old English Plays (1860), quoting ‘Coxeter’s Notes,’ is the authority for ‘An Interlude of Welth and Helth, full of Sport and mery Pastyme,’ n.d.