Let us return to trace the change to the Interlude. Quite a short step will carry us to it.
We have said that Moralities gave to the drama originality in plot and in characters. This statement invites qualification, for its truth is confined to rather narrow limits, in fact, to the early days of this new kind of play. Let a few Moralities be produced and the rest will be found to be treading very closely in their footsteps. For there are not possible many divergent variations of a story that must have for its central figure Man in his three ages and must express itself allegorically. Nor is the list of Virtues and Vices so large that it can provide an inexhaustible supply of fresh characters. However ingenious authors may be, the day is quickly reached when parallelism drives their audience to a wearisome consciousness that the speeches have all been heard before, that the next step in the plot can be foretold to a nicety. Something of this was perceived by the author of Everyman. With bold strokes of the pen he drew a line through two-thirds of the orthodox plot, crossed off from the list of characters the hackneyed Good and Bad Angels, and, against the old names that must still remain, seems to have jotted for himself this reminder, 'Try human types.' So, at least, we may imagine him doing. The figures that occupy the stage of the old Morality are for the most part, like the two Angels, mere mouthpieces for pious or wicked counsels. Fellowship and his companions, on the other hand, are selected examples from well-known and clearly-defined classes of mankind. They are not more than that. All we know of Fellowship is his ready faculty for excusing himself when help is needed. He has no traits to distinguish him from others of his kind. If we describe to one another the men or women whom he recalls to our memory we find that the descriptions differ widely in all but the one common characteristic. In other words, he is a type. The step which brings us to the Interludes is the conversion of the type into an individual with special marks about him peculiar to himself. It is an ingenious suggestion, that the idea first found expression in an attempt to excite interest by adding to a character one or two of the peculiarities of a local celebrity (miser, prodigal, or beggar) known for the quality typified. If this was so, it was an interesting reversion to the methods of Aristophanes. But it is only a guess. What is certain is that in the Interludes we find the 'type' gradually assuming a greater complexity, a larger measure of those minor features which make the ordinary man interesting. Significantly enough, the last thing to be acquired was a name such as ordinary men bear. A few characters attained to that certificate of individuality, but even Heywood, the master of the Interlude, preferred class names, such as Palmer, Pardoner, or Pedlar. This should warn us not to expect too much from the change. To the very end some features of the earliest Moralities are discernible: we shall meet Good Angel and Bad Angel in one of Marlowe's plays. After all, the interval of time is not so very great. The Castell of Perseverance was written probably about the middle of the fifteenth century; Everyman may be assigned to the close of that century or the beginning of the next; one of the earliest surviving Interludes, Hick Scorner, has been dated 'about 1520-25'; and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus belongs probably to the year 1588.
Let us turn to Hick Scorner and see the new principle of characterization at work. How much of the old is blended with it may be seen in the opening speech, which is delivered by as colourless an abstraction as ever advocated a virtuous life in the Moralities. A good old man, Pity, sits alone, describing himself to his hearers. To him comes Contemplation, and shortly afterwards Perseverance, both younger men but just as undeniably 'Virtues'. Each explains his nature to the audience before discovering the presence of Pity, but they quickly fall into a highly edifying conversation. Fortunately for us Contemplation and Perseverance have other engagements, which draw them away. Pity relapses into a corner and silence. Thereupon two men of a very different type take the boards. The first comer is Freewill, a careless, graceless youth by his own account; Imagination, who follows, is worse, being one of those hardened, ready-witted, quick-tempered rogues whom providence saves from drowning for another fate. He is sore, this second fellow, with sitting in the stocks; yet quite unrepentant, boasting, rather, of his skill in avoiding heavier penalties. That others come to the gallows is owing to their bad management. As he says,
For, and they could have carried by craft as I can,
In process of years each of them should be a gentleman.
Yet as for me I was never thief;
[i.e. was never proved one.]
If my hands were smitten off, I can steal with my teeth;
For ye know well, there is craft in daubing[42]:
I can look in a man's face and pick his purse,
And tell new tidings that was never true, i-wis,
For my hood is all lined with lesing[43].
Nevertheless once he was very nearly caught. And he narrates the incident with so much circumstantial detail that it would be a pity not to have his own words.
Imagination. Yes, once I stall a horse in the field,
And leapt on him for to have ridden my way.
At the last a baily me met and beheld,
And bad me stand: then was I in a fray[44].
He asked whither with that horse I would gone;
And then I told him it was mine own.
He said I had stolen him; and I said nay.
This is, said he, my brother's hackney.
For, and I had not excused me, without fail,
By our lady, he would have lad me straight to jail.
And then I told him the horse was like mine,
A brown bay, a long mane, and did halt behine;
Thus I told him, that such another horse I did lack;
And yet I never saw him, nor came on his back.
So I delivered him the horse again.
And when he was gone, then was I fain[45]:
For and I had not excused me the better,
I know well I should have danced in a fetter.
Freewill. And said he no more to thee but so?
Imagination. Yea, he pretended me much harm to do;
But I told him that morning was a great mist,
That what horse it was I ne wist:
Also I said, that in my head I had the megrin,
That made me dazzle so in mine eyen,
That I might not well see.
And thus he departed shortly from me.
By this time a third party has approached; for an impatient inquiry for Hick Scorner immediately brings that redoubtable gentleman upon the stage, possibly slightly the worse for liquor, seeing that his first words are those of one on a ship at sea. They may, however, indicate merely a seafaring man, for he has been a great traveller in his time, 'in France, Ireland, and in Spain, Portingal, Sevile, also in Almaine,' and many places more, even as far as 'the land of Rumbelow, three mile out of hell'. He is acquainted with the names of many vessels, of which 'the Anne of Fowey, the Star of Saltash, with the Jesus of Plymouth' are but a few. With something of a chuckle he adds that a fleet of these ships bound for Ireland with a crowded company of all the godly persons of England—'piteous people, that be of sin destroyers', 'mourners for sin, with lamentation', and 'good rich men that helpeth folk out of prison'—has been wrecked on a quicksand and the whole company drowned. Next he has an ill-sounding report of his own last voyage to give. When that is finished Imagination proposes an adjournment for pleasures more active than conversation, where purses may be had for the asking.
Every man bear his dagger naked in his hand,
And if we meet a true man, make him stand,
Or else that he bear a stripe;
If that he struggle, and make any work,
Lightly strike him to the heart,
And throw him into Thames quite.