The history of the INTERLUDE more particularly marks an epoch, for it enters into our political history. Mysteries and moralities were purely religious or ethical themes, but the comic interludes took a more adventurous course; and their writers, accommodating themselves to the fashions of the day, were the organs of the prevalent factions then dividing the unquiet realm. From the earliest moment of the projected reformation or emancipation from the Papal dominion by Henry, we discover the players of interludes at their insidious work; but affairs were floating in that uncertain state when the new had by no means displaced the old. In 1527, Henry the Eighth was greatly diverted at an interlude where the heretic Luther and his wife were brought on the stage, and the Reformers were ridiculed.[19] The king in the Creed and the ceremonies remained a Romanist; and in 1533, a proclamation inhibits "the playing of enterludes concerning doctrines now in question and controversy."[20] "The Defender of the Faith" was still irresolute to defend or to attack. In 1543, an act of parliament was passed for the control of dramatic representations; and at this later date, this reforming monarch decreed, that "no person should play in interludes any matter contrary to the doctrines of the Church of Rome!" Chronology in history is not only useful to date events, but to date the passions of sovereigns. It was absolutely necessary for Edward the Sixth on his ascension immediately to repeal this express act of parliament of his father;[21] and then the emancipated interluders now, openly, with grave logic or laughing ridicule, struck at all "the Roman superstitions." Hence we had Catholic and Protestant dramas. The Romanists had made very free strictures on Cromwell, Cranmer, and their followers; and on the side of the reformed we have no deficiency of oppugners of the Romish Church. Under Henry the Eighth, we have the sacred drama of _Every-man_, a single personage, by whom the writer not unaptly personifies human nature. This drama came from the Romanists to recall the auditors back to the forsaken ceremonies and shaken creed of their fathers. Under Edward the Sixth, we have _Lusty Juventus_, whom Satan and his old son Hypocrisy, with an extraordinary nomenclature of "holy things," would inveigle back to that seductive harlot, "Abominable Living," which the Reformer imagined was the favourite Dulcinea of "the false priests."[22] On the accession of Mary, this queen hastened a proclamation against the interludes of the Reformers. The term used in the proclamation looks like an ironical allusion to a word which now had long been bandied on the lips of the populace. It specifies to be for "the _reformation_ of busy meddlers in matters of religion." A strict watch was kept on the players, some of whom suffered for enacting a reformed interlude. Such plays seem to have been patronised in domestic secrecy. The interference of the Star