These unsubstantial personages of allegory--these apparitions of human nature--were to assume a more bodily shape, when not only the passions, but the individual characters whom they agitated, were exhibited in every-day life, not however yet venturing into a wide field of society, but peeping from a corner,--it was nothing more than a single act, satirical and comic, in a dialogue sustained by three or four professional characters of the times. It was called the INTERLUDE, or "_a play between_," to zest by its pleasantry the intervals of a luxurious, and sometimes a wearisome, banquet. The most dramatic interludes were the invention of JOHN HEYWOOD, the jester of Henry the Eighth. The Scottish Bard, Douglas, the Bishop of Dunkeld, alludes to these interludes, in his "Paleys of Honour." Grete was the preis the feast royál to sene, At ease they eat, with INTERLUDES between.[17] Such was the march of events, the steppings which were conducting the national genius to the verge of tragedy and comedy; a vast interval of time and labour separates the writers of these primitive plays from the fathers of dramatic art; yet however ludicrous to us the simplicity of the age, often these singular productions betray shrewd humour and natural emotions. To condemn them as barbarous and absurd would be forming a very inadequate notion of the influence of these earliest of our European dramas on their contemporaries. An enlightened lover of the arts has said, perhaps with great truth, that Raphael never received from his age such flattering applause, and excited such universal approbation, as did Cimabué, the rude father of his art. The first essays strike more deeply than even the masterpieces of a subsequent age after all its successful labour; for its more finished excellence depends partly on reflection, as well as on sensation. The mystery and the morality lingered among us; but in the improved taste and literature of the court of Henry the Eighth, the facetious INTERLUDE, while it was facetious, won the royal smile. The successive agitations of the age, however, could not fail to reflect its tempers in these public exhibitions. In the reforming government of Edward the Sixth, the miracle-plays were looked on as Romish spectacles, and were fast sinking into neglect, when the clergy of the papistic queen retrograded into this whole fabulous mythology; adepts not only in the craft of miracles, but desirous, by these shows or "plays of miracles," to revive the taste in the imaginations of the people. The public authorities patronised what recently they had laughed at or had scorned. On Corpus Christi day, the Lord Mayor and the Privy Council were spectators of _The Passion of Christ_, always an affecting drama; and it was again represented before this select audience: and on St. Olave's day, the truly "miracle-play" of that legendary saint was enacted in the church dedicated to the saint.[18]