THE
most important writer of interludes,
at the period when they were merging into comedy, was John Heywood,
choir boy at the Chapel Royal in London, and at one time connected
with the production of plays at the court of Henry VII. He was
a loyal Catholic; and after the death of Mary, being out of sympathy
with the strong Protestant movement of the day, he journeyed
to the continent and died there. Although entirely faithful to
his Church, Heywood did not hesitate to criticize its weaknesses.
In his plays he broke away from the conventional tone and allegorical
manner of the morality, and treated his themes in an ironical,
good-humored style. His titles alone are diverting. The Merry
Play between Johan the Husband, Tyb his Wife, and Sir John the
Priest is a farce showing how Tyb and the Priest discipline
the Husband by making him sit by, fasting, while they devour
the pie which has been cooked for dinner. The Play of the
Pardoner and the Friar is a lively debate between two churchmen
each of whom tries to out-argue and out-preach the other. The
most famous of Heywood's interludes is the comic piece The
Four P's, written about 1530. It is in racy verse, has excellent
dialogue, a witty situation, and no ulterior purpose, unless
it be to expose in an amusing manner the weakness of both religionists
and medicine men. There is nothing strikingly original in the
plot, and long passages are taken bodily from Chaucer; but it
offers a good illustration of the extraordinary advance the interlude
had made since the days of Everyman
and The Castle of Perseverance.
This article was originally
published in A Short History of the Drama. Martha Fletcher
Bellinger. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1927. p. 185.
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