6. The Relation between Miracle, Moral, and Interlude
An unfortunate misapprehension has obtained currency to the effect that there was a deliberate transition, chronological and logical, from the miracle cycle to the "morality," and thence to a something entirely different, called the interlude; and it is supposed that definite advances in the development of comedy were made pari passu with this transition. It is even said, by one of the most genial and learned of English scholars, who of course was not intending anything by way of scientific accuracy, at the time, that "in the progress of the drama, Moralities followed Mysteries, and were succeeded by Interludes. When folk tired of Religion on the Stage they took to the inculcation of morality and prudence; and when this bored them they set up Fun."[60] But the moral play[61] was rather a younger contemporary and complement of the miracle than a follower, or a substitute for it. Moreover, allegory in the acted drama commanded the attention of the public contemporaneously with the scriptural plays of the later fourteenth century; in literature it had occupied attention long before. People, therefore, did not wait until they were tired of religion upon the stage, before taking to the inculcation of morality; nor could they have hoped to escape religion by any such substitute. Moral plays, like plays which were originally liturgical, aimed at religious instruction. But as the scriptural-liturgical illustrated the forms of the church service and its narrative content, the moral illustrated the sermon and the creed. The former dealt with history and ritual, the latter with doctrine; the former made the religious truth concrete in scriptural figures and events, the latter brought it home to the individual by allegorical means. The historical course of the drama was not from the scriptural play to the allegorical, but from the collective miracle and collective moral, practically contemporary, to the individual miracle and individual moral. The dramatic quality of the moral was, as we shall presently remark, not the same as that of the miracle, but it neither supplanted nor fully supplemented that of the miracle.
The distinction between 'morality' and 'interlude' has likewise been unduly and illogically emphasized. The former term may properly be said to indicate the content and aim of a drama; the latter, its garb and occasion; but the essential characters of the moral play, the human hero and the representatives of good and evil contending for his soul, may be common to interlude and 'morality' alike, and both terms may with justice refer to the same drama. After 1500 the rôle of hero is, to be sure, sometimes filled by an historical character, or by one or mere concrete personages representative of a type; but it must not be supposed that the play possessing such a hero is therefore to be called an interlude, for similar heroes are to be found in the morals before 1500. Nor should the statement be accepted that morals are distinguished from interludes by the presence in the former of both Devil and Vice; for several interludes of a later date have both Devil and Vice, while some of the earlier morals, written before 1500, have but one or the other of these characters, or neither.[62] The attempt to characterize the moral by its professed didactic intent, and the interlude by the lack thereof or the profession of mirth, is equally unavailing; for that manifest moral, the Pride of Life, one of the earliest extant, makes explicit promise in its prologue "of mirth and eke of kare" from "this our game"; while Mankynd, a moral of 1461 to 1485, which advertises no amusement, is as full of it as any late interlude. On the other hand, several plays written after 1568, calling themselves "comedies or enterludes," and promising brevity and mirth, are tedious. But, for the advertisement, sub-title, or specification of the play we must of course hold the publisher, and not the author, generally responsible. The common belief that 'moralities' were succeeded by 'interludes' is probably due in large part to the fact that 'interlude' has been used in England at different periods for entirely different kinds of entertainment, some of which, notably that to which Collier in 1831 restricted the term,—the play after the style of Heywood,—were of later production than the moral. But other kinds of 'interlude' date back to 1300, and precede the first mention of the moral play; while later kinds include the moral, and finally are synonymous with any humorous and popular performance. Collier's restriction of the term was, therefore, unfortunate. It interpreted a genus as a species; for, although the interlude was originally any short entertainment, occupying the pauses between graver negotiations of the palate or intellect, it had, in the course of its history, acquired a significance almost as broad as 'drama' itself. The interlude was of various form and content and covered many species. As farce, the interlude anticipated moral plays; as allegorical drama, it absorbed them; and as comedy, it is their younger contemporary. It is not merely the play after the style of John Heywood. It is long or short; religious, moral, pedagogic, political, or doctrinal; scriptural, allegorical, or profane; classical or native; imaginative or reproductive of the commonplace; stupid or humorous; satirical or purely comic. It seems to me, therefore, unwise to perpetuate a distinction between moral plays and interludes which was not recognized by those who wrote and heard the plays in question.
The reduction of the number of actors, the abbreviation of the play, the concentration of the plot, wherever these exist in the later morals or moral interludes, are not evidence of a change of kind, but merely of a natural evolution through a period of some two hundred years. When ten Brink says that the interlude was the species best adapted to further the development of dramatic art, we must understand by interlude the individual, as opposed to the collective drama,—or the occasional performance by professionals for the delectation, and sometimes at the order, of private persons or parties, as opposed to expository or perfunctory plays, plays manipulated by crafts, or associated with times, places, and ends external to art. The improvement in scope and elasticity which marks the individual play is due to various causes: to patronage, which prefers amusement to instruction, and the work of artists to that of journeymen; to the development accordingly of a bread-and-butter profession of acting, with its accompanying stimuli of necessity and opportunity. Poetic invention, dramatic constructiveness and style, are sometimes spurred by hunger; they are always responsive to the appreciation of the cultivated, and maybe to the reward.