And when they spring their fruits declare. Report me to you-report me to you. What should youth do with the fruits of age, Why should not youth fulfil his own mind, IV. JOHN HEYWOOD: "Merry Interludes"-The Four P's-Thersites. The "merry interludes" of John Heywood, an epigrammatist and noted jester or wit, in great favour with Mary, but driven abroad, on the accession of Elizabeth, by his adherence to the Roman Catholic faith, lie between moralities, otherwise called "moral interludes," and the regular comedy. They have not the plot of regular comedy, and they are superior to moralities in the exhibition of character, because they bring on the stage not personified abstractions but representatives of professions. In spirit they have much in common with the modern farce, being designed for the same purpose of keeping an audience in broad enjoyment for a short time. Heywood's "merry interludes" are fine examples of broad, boisterous, healthy English humour. He took a pride in his own "mad merry wit." "Art thou Heywood, with thy mad merry wit? Yea! forsooth, Master, that name is even hit. Art thou Heywood, that appliest mirth more than thrift? It seems a strange thing that this madcap should have suf fered persecution for his religious faith: it is a parallel to the contemporary paradox of the facetious but fundamentally serious Sir Thomas More. From his interludes one might suppose Heywood's leanings to have been the other way M towards the Reformers rather than the Papists: in his extant plays, priests, palmers, and pardoners are the chief butts of his ridicule. One of them-"The Pardoner, the Friar, the Curate, and neighbour Pratt "-exhibits a struggle between a Pardoner and a Friar for the temporary use of the Curate's church, and the vain efforts of the Curate and neighbour Pratt to keep the peace. Another, entitled “A merry play between John the husband, Tib the wife, and Sir Jhan the priest," has for its subjects a henpecked husband and a clerical paramour. The main fun of a third— "The Four P's, or the Palmer, the Pardoner, the Potecary, and the Pedlar". turns upon engaging three notorious liars in a competition to prove which can tell the biggest lie, the fourth standing by as judge. The "Four P's," which is reprinted in Dodsley's Old Plays, is brimful of bright broad humour. The Palmer enters and tells what he is, where he has travelled, and why he goes on pilgrimage. So far all is serious: we have a pious man before us, enumerating his pilgrimages, and crossing himself as he repeats his devout motives: "To these, with many other one, By whose prayers and my daily pain For my salvation, grace, and mercy. But the Pardoner enters, and dissipates the devout atmosphere with mad spirit. "For all your labour and ghostly intent," he says to the Palmer, "you return as wise as you went." The pilgrim should have come to him. Give me but a penny or twopence, In half-an-hour or three quarters at the most, The Apothecary now enters with an irreverent inquiry, and proceeds to boast with coarse strong humour that he is of more service to the health of souls than either Pardoner or Palmer. "No soul, ye know, entreth heaven gate Since of our souls the multitude Have thank of all their coming thither." And the Pardoner and the Potecary assert their rival claims as follows: "Par. If ye killed a thousand in an hour space, When come they to heaven dying out of grace? Pot. But if a thousand pardons about their necks were tied, When come they to heaven if they never died?" Thus the two knaves jest about serious things. Then the Pedlar enters and sets forth his wares; and after much humorous sparring chiefly between the Pardoner and the Potecary, who make very rough fun of one another's pretensions, they settle down into the serious competition in lying. The comparatively quiet Palmer outwits his more boisterous companions, and tricks them into a confession of his superiority. Gravely taking up the Pardoner's tale of a visit to hell, and of the devil's desire to get his kingdom kept clear of women, the Palmer wonders how women can be such shrews in the nether world, for in all his travels, in the course of which he has seen three hundred thousand women, he has never seen one woman out of patience. All cry out that this is a great lie. This kind of "merry interlude" was in high favour; its heroes must have been felt to be an advance in point of comical interest upon the "vice" of the moralities. The fun, indeed, was of the same boisterous breadth in the moralities, and grew out of similar conceptions and situations; but in the interludes the comical element was extracted and the heavy prosy element left behind. This process of extraction is seen in the interlude of "Thersites,”1 a revel of gross exaggerated boasting and violent contrast between pretension and performance. Thersites is very much the same character as the Herod of the Mysteries and the Magnificence of the Moralities, only he is exhibited without any admixture of more serious elements; he is a pure extravagance from beginning to end. The hero enters with a club on his neck, shouting Have in a ruffler, forth of the Greek land, Aback, give me room, in my way do not stand, He speaks with contempt of the Greek chiefs, vowing that if he meets them he will make the dastards "run into a bag to hide them fro me, as from the devil of hell." After some comical misunderstanding, he obtains from Mulciber various pieces of armour, boasting louder and louder after each successive piece, adjuring all the great heroes of antiquity Hercules, Samson, Cacus, Arthur, Launcelot, &c. &c.-to come and fight with him, declaring - 1 Written apparently in 1537; not printed till 1561; reprinted for the Roxburghe Club in 1820. them to be puny things. "O good Lord," he cries, "how broad is my breast!" "Behold you my hands, my legs, and my feet, Every part is strong, proportionable, and meet : Getting more and more intoxicated with the idea of his own might, he avows his intention of making a voyage to hell, to beat the devil and his dame and bring away the souls. Then he will go to old purgatory, and will supersede the need of pardons to let out the sufferers. Finally, he will climb to heaven, fetch away Peter's keys, keep them himself, and let in a great rout, for "why should such a fisher keep good fellows out?" By-and-by his mother enters, and he expresses a vehement desire to fight with some lion or other wild beast, resisting his mother's tearful and kneeling entreaties that he will stay at home. Not Jupiter himself could restrain him. Presently a snail comes in, at which Thersites falls into a cold perspiration, in his alarm mistaking it for a sow or a cow; he fights against it with his club, then casts away his club and takes to his sword, whereupon the snail draws his horns in, and he professes himself satisfied. Miles has entered while the combat was going on, and at the termination, when Thersites renews his bragging, offers to fight him. Thersites takes refuge at his mother's back, crying out that he is pursued by a thousand horsemen. This is the end of the plot; what follows is an incoherent appendage-a visit from Telemachus with a flattering introduction from Ulysses, asking Thersites to make his old mother charm the boy for a juvenile complaint of a not particularly delicate nature. V. NICHOLAS UDALL (1505-1556): Ralph Roister Udall, sometime head-master at Eton, and celebrated for the severity of his discipline, is the founder of English |