Heywood’s Interludes were written between 1520 and 1540.  His most famous is “The Four P’s,” a contest of wit between a “Pardoner, a Palmer, a Pedlar and a Poticary.”  The characters here strongly suggest those of Chaucer.[131] Another interesting Interlude is called “The Play of the Weather.”  In this Jupiter and the gods assemble to listen to complaints about the weather and to reform abuses.  Naturally everybody wants his own kind of weather.  The climax is reached by a boy who announces that a boy’s pleasure consists in two things, catching birds and throwing snowballs, and begs for the weather to be such that he can always do both.  Jupiter decides that he will do just as he pleases about the weather, and everybody goes home satisfied.

All these early plays were written, for the most part, in a mingling of prose and wretched doggerel, and add nothing to our literature.  Their great work was to train actors, to keep alive the dramatic spirit, and to prepare the way for the true drama.

3.  THE ARTISTIC PERIOD OF THE DRAMA.  The artistic is the final stage in the development of the English drama.  It differs radically from the other two in that its chief purpose is not to point a moral but to represent human life as it is.  The artistic drama may have purpose, no less than the Miracle play, but the motive is always subordinate to the chief end of representing life itself.

The first true play in English, with a regular plot, divided into acts and scenes, is probably the comedy, “Ralph Royster Doyster.”  It was written by Nicholas Udall, master of Eton, and later of Westminster school, and was first acted by his schoolboys some time before 1556.  The story is that of a conceited fop in love with a widow, who is already engaged to another man.  The play is an adaptation of the Miles Gloriosus, a classic comedy by Plautus, and the English characters are more or less artificial; but as furnishing a model of a clear plot and natural dialogue, the influence of this first comedy, with its mixture of classic and English elements, can hardly be overestimated.

The next play, “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” (cir. 1562), is a domestic comedy, a true bit of English realism, representing the life of the peasant class.

Gammer Gurton is patching the leather breeches of her man Hodge, when Gib, the cat, gets into the milk pan.  While Gammer chases the cat the family needle is lost, a veritable calamity in those days.  The whole household is turned upside down, and the neighbors are dragged into the affair.  Various comical situations are brought about by Diccon, a thieving vagabond, who tells Gammer that her neighbor, Dame Chatte, has taken her needle, and who then hurries to tell Dame Chatte that she is accused by Gammer of stealing a favorite rooster.  Naturally there is a terrible row when the two irate old women meet and misunderstand each other.  Diccon also drags Doctor Rat, the curate, into the quarrel by telling