little Nell
A proper wench, she danceth well,
And Jane with the black lace,
We will have bouncing Bess also.
and Humanity slinks out of the lecture room, being more concerned
to see a pretty girl,
It is a world to see her whirl
Dancing in a round,
than to observe the gyrations of the terrestrial globe.
In "Hickscorner," an interlude of the same kind, the hero has been in as many places as Widsith himself, including
the land of Rumbelow
Three mile out of hell.
Hickscorner and Free Will are worse roisterers than Humanity, and their rude waggeries make the mirth, though Free Will speaks of forswearing sack and living cleanly.
Heywood.
John Heywood is one of the few known authors of these things; he was of what is now Pembroke College, Dr. Johnson's College, in Oxford, and was an acquaintance of Sir Thomas More, who frankly admits that by nature he was "a giglot," a gay fellow, though, by grace, devout. Heywood was merry in mournful times, when Henry VIII began to make martyrs of Protestants, and of Catholics who were not, at any moment, of the same shade of belief as himself. The anecdotes say that Heywood saved his skin by his jests, that after Henry's death he amused Mary Tudor, who was not easily amused, and that he fled from persecution under Edward VI, and died abroad in the reign of Elizabeth.
His best-known piece is "The Four P's," a Pothecary, Pardoner, Palmer, and Pedlar. Why, asks the Pardoner, should the Palmer visit hundreds of remote shrines, while the Pardoner, at his very door, can sell him forgiveness of sins at the lowest figure? He can cleanse a thousand souls for as small a sum as the Palmer spends on one voyage. All four men are impudent rogues, and all, in the spirit of the Morality, are rapidly converted; the Pedlar becoming as pious as Piers Plowman. There is no action, and the great jest is that, in a lying competition, the Pedlar says that he has never seen "a woman out of patience". The diversion must have been derived mainly from the antics of the players on the stage.