A boy then comes upon the stage, and the first speaker inquires for the Fool; but being told he is not to perform that night, he says—
Well, since there will be nere a fool i' th' play,
I'll have my money again; the comedy
Will be as tedious to me as a sermon.
VII.—SECULAR PLAYS.
The plays mentioned in the preceding pages, and especially the miracles and mysteries, differed greatly from the secular plays and interludes which were acted by strolling companies, composed of minstrels, jugglers, tumblers, dancers, bourdours or jesters, and other performers properly qualified for the different parts of the entertainment, which admitted of a variety of exhibitions. These pastimes are of higher antiquity than the ecclesiastical plays; and they were much relished not only by the vulgar part of the people, but also by the nobility. The courts of the kings of England, and the castles of the great earls and barons, were crowded with the performers of the secular plays, where they were well received and handsomely rewarded; [540] vast sums of money were lavishly bestowed upon these secular itinerants, which induced the monks and other ecclesiastics to turn actors themselves, in order to obtain a share of the public bounty. But to give the better colouring to their undertaking, they took the subjects of their dialogues from the holy writ, and performed them in the churches. The secular showmen, however, retained their popularity notwithstanding the exertions of their clerical rivals, who diligently endeavoured to bring them into disgrace, by bitterly inveighing against the filthiness and immorality of their exhibitions. [541] On the other hand, the itinerant players sometimes invaded the province of the church-men, and performed their mysteries, or others similar to them, as we find from a petition presented to Richard II. by the scholars of Saint Paul's school, wherein complaint is made against the secular actors, because they took upon themselves to act plays composed from the scripture history, to the great prejudice of the clergy, who had been at much expense to prepare such performances for public exhibition at the festival of Christmas, 1378. But, generally speaking, the secular plays had nothing to do with religion; and if an early writer of our own country, John of Salisbury, may be fully credited, but little with morality: they consisted of comic tales, dialogues, and stories, to which were added coarse and indecent jests, intermixed with instrumental music, singing, dancing, tumbling, gesticulation, and mimicry, to excite laughter, without the least regard to decency; and for this reason the clergy were prohibited from going to see them. In 1519 Cardinal Wolsey, in his regulations for the monastery of the canons regular of Saint Austin, forbad the brethren to be players, or mimics; but the prohibition meant, that they should not go abroad to exercise those talents in a secular or mercenary capacity. [542]
VIII.—INTERLUDES.
The interludes, which, I presume, formed a material part of the performances exhibited by the secular players, were certainly of a jocular nature, consisting probably of facetious or satirical dialogues, calculated to promote mirth, and therefore they are censured by Matthew Paris [543] as "vain pastimes." Something of this kind was the representation made before king Henry VIII. at Greenwich, in 1528, thus related by Hall: "Two persons plaied a dialogue, the effect whereof was, whether riches were better than love; and, when they could not agree upon a conclusion, each called in thre knightes all armed; thre of them woulde have entered the gate of the arche in the middle of the chambre, and the other thre resisted; and sodenly betweene the six knightes, out of the arche fell downe a bar all gilte, at the which bar the six knightes fought a fair battail, and then they departed, and so went out of the place; then came in an olde man with a silver berd, and he concluded that love and riches bothe be necessarie for princes, that is to say, by love to be obeyed and served, and with riches to rewarde his lovers and frendes; and with this conclusion the dialogue ended." We hereby find, that these dialogues were not only a part of the entertainment, but also ingeniously made the vehicles for the introduction of other sports. Sometimes they were of a satirical nature; and, when occasion required, they took another turn, and became the agents of flattery and adulation: both these purposes were answered by the following dialogue, taken from the author just now quoted: "On Sonday at night the fifteenth of June, 1523, in the great halle at Wyndsore," the emperor Maximilian and Henry VIII. being present, "was a disguisiyng or play; the effect of it was, that there was a proud horse which would not be tamed nor bridled; but Amitie sent Prudence and Policie which tamed him, and Force and Puissance brideled him. This horse was meant by the Frenche kyng, [544] and Amitie by the kynge of England, and the emperor and the other persons were their counsail and power."