These shows were called by various names, Pageants, Masques, Interludes, Mummings or Disguisings, and on every great or little occasion there was sure to be something of the sort.  If the King or Queen went on a journey he or she was entertained by pageants on the way.  If a royal visitor came to the court of England there were pageants in his honor.  A birthday, a christening, a wedding or a victory would all be celebrated by pageants, and in these plays people of all classes took part.  School-children acted, University students acted, the learned lawyers or Inns of Court acted, great lords and ladies acted, and even at times the King and Queen themselves took part.  And although many of these shows, especially the pageants, were merely shows, without any words, many, on the other hand, had words.  Thus with so much acting and love of acting it was not wonderful that a crowd of dramatists sprang up.

Then, too, plays began to be divided into tragedies and comedies.  A tragedy is a play which shows the sad side of life and which has a mournful ending.  The word really means a goat-song, and comes from two Greek words, “tragos” a goat and “ode” a song.  It was so called either because the oldest tragedies were acted while a goat was sacrificed, or because the actors themselves wore clothes made of goat-skins.  A comedy is a play which shows the merry side of life and has a happy ending.  This word too comes from two Greek words, “komos,” a revel, and “ode,” a song.  The Greek word for village is also “komo,” so a comedy may at first have meant a village revel or a merry-making.  “Tragedy,” it has been said, “is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited jest."* But the old Moralities were neither the one nor the other, neither tragedy nor comedy.  They did not touch life keenly enough to awaken horror or pain.  They were often sad, but not with that sadness which we have come to call tragic, they were often indeed merely dull, and although there was always a funny character to make laughter, it was by no means unlimited jest.  The Interludes came next, after the Moralities, with a little more human interest and a little more fun, and from them it was easy to pass to real comedies.

Coleridge.

A play named Ralph Roister Doister is generally looked upon as the first real English comedy.  It was written by Nicholas Udall, headmaster first of Eton and then of Westminster, for the boys of one or other school.  It was probably for those of Westminster that it was written, and may have been acted about 1552.  The hero, if one may call him so, who gives his name to the play, is a vain, silly swaggerer.  He thinks every woman who sees him is in love with him.  So he makes up his mind to marry a rich and beautiful widow named Christian Custance.

Not being a very good scholar, Ralph gets some one else to write a love-letter for him, but when he copies it he puts all the stops in the wrong places, which makes the sense quite different from what he had intended, and instead of being full of pretty things the letter is full of insults.