As related more or less distantly to the noisy element, the many songs in this Interlude call for notice. The practice of introducing lyrics was in vogue long before the playwrights of Shakespeare's time displayed their use so perfectly. From this point onwards the drama rings with the rough drinking songs, pious hymns, and sweet lyrics of the buffoon, the preacher, and the lover. Thus, turning haphazard to The Trial of Treasure, the Interlude immediately preceding Like Will to Like in the volume of Dodsley's Old English Plays, we find no less than eight songs. Like Will to Like has also eight. New Custom, the other Interlude in the same volume, has only two; but it may be added that, as the author of New Custom was writing with a very special and sober purpose in view, he may have felt that much singing would be inappropriate. That these lyrics went with a good swing may be judged from two of those in Like Will to Like.
(1) Tom Collier of Croydon hath sold his coals,
And made his market to-day;
And now he danceth with the Devil,
For like will to like alway.
Wherefore let us rejoice and sing,
Let us be merry and glad;
Sith that the Collier and the Devil
This match and dance hath made.
Now of this dance we make an end
With mirth and eke with joy:
The Collier and the Devil will be
Much like to like alway.
(2) Troll the bowl and drink to me, and troll the bowl again,
And put a brown toast in [the] pot for Philip Fleming's brain.
And I shall toss it to and fro, even round about the house-a:
Good hostess, now let it be so, I brink them all carouse-a.
More than once reference has been made to the lingering religious element in the Interludes. Probably 'moral element' would describe it better, though in those days religion and morality were perhaps less separable than they are to-day. In the midst of so much comical wickedness and naughty wit, with a decreasing use of the old Morality Virtues, it might be thought that this element would be crowded out. But it was not so. The downfall of the unrighteous was never allowed to pass without the voice of the preacher, frequently the reprobate himself, pointing the warning to those present. Cuthbert Cutpurse makes a 'godly end' in this fashion:
O, all youth take example by me:
Flee from evil company, as from a serpent you would flee;
For I to you all a mirror may be.
I have been daintily and delicately bred,
But nothing at all in virtuous lore:
And now I am but a man dead;
Hanged I must be, which grieveth me full sore.
Note well the end of me therefore;
And you that fathers and mothers be,
Bring not up your children in too much liberty.
The episode of the crowning of Virtuous Life owes its existence to this same element of moral teaching. Take up what Interlude we will, the preacher is always to be found uttering his short sermon on the folly of sin. Our merry friend, the Vice, usually gets caught in his own toils at last; even if he is spared this defeat, he must ultimately be borne off by the Devil.
But there are lessons to be learnt other than the elementary one that virtue is a wiser guide than vice: many an Interlude was written to castigate a particular form of laxity or drive home a needed reform, in those years when the Stage was the Cinderella of the Church; one at least, The Four Elements, was written to disseminate schoolroom learning in an attractive manner. Nice Wanton (about 1560) traces the downward career of two spoilt children, paints the remorse of their mother, and sums up its message at the end thus:
Therefore exhort I all parents to be diligent
In bringing up their children; aye, to be circumspect.
Lest they fall to evil, be not negligent
But chastise them before they be sore infect.