I’ll be with you again. In a trice, Like to the old Vice
Your need to sustain; Who with dagger of lath
In his rage and his wrath, Cries ha! ha! to the devil
Like a mad lad, Pare his nails, dad.
Adieu, goodman devil.
IV, 2, 134.
The Vice is a character chiefly to be met with in interludes, for the sake of comic relief, much in the same manner as in our melodramas of to-day comic characters are introduced, in order to render less oppressive the serious or tragic situations. This personality was dressed in a cap with ass’s ears, a long coat, and provided with a dagger of lath. One of his chief employments was to make sport with the devil by leaping on his back and belabouring him with his cardboard property till he made him roar. The devil, however, always carried him off in the end. His Satanic Majesty was supposed from choice to keep his nails always unpared, therefore to pare them was considered an affront.
In an interlude, “The Trial of Treasure,” he appeared in his customary stage apparel, with the addition of a pair of huge spectacles, no doubt to render him more ridiculous. The character seems to have been quite a popular one in mediæval times. The Vice appears in several plays of the sixteenth century, and is frequently mentioned by Elizabethan dramatists.
INTERLUDE.
I was one, sir, in this interlude, one