To passe the tyme in thys without offence Was the cause why the maker dyd make it, And so we humbly beseche you take it, says the Pedler:--and in substituting stories and a lighter form of argument for the more formal disputation of the _Dyaloge of Wit and Folly_ and the _Play of Love_ it comes a little nearer to the modern conception of comedy, and may be thought to have deserved the success which it is said to have achieved. The possession by the _Play of the Wether_ of an obvious moral--the mess which men would make of rain, wind, and sunshine if they had the ruling of them--is undoubtedly a link with the interludes of a didactic character, and so may seem at first sight to place it in a lower grade of dramatic development. There can be little doubt that it was acted by Heywood's company of "children," whom we hear of as performing under his direction before the Princess Mary, and a children's play would perhaps naturally be cast in this form. But the form is here less important than the intention, and it does not need Mery-report's comment ("now shall ye have the wether--even as yt was") to tell us that Heywood's didactics were purely humorous. The point to be noted is that this is really a play--a play, moreover, which if it could be shortened and the unforgivable passages omitted, might be acted by children of the present day with some enjoyment. The part of "the Boy, the least that can play" is charming. There is stage furniture in Jupiter's "trone," and in the coming and going of the characters at least a semblance of action. We must note, however, the set disputation between the two millers, as still linking it with Heywood's other argumentative plays, though with all its faults it is the brightest and most pleasing of its class. We come now to the two plays, _The Pardoner and the Frere_ and _Johan Johan_, which modern writers have uniformly assigned to Heywood, although William Rastell printed them[90] without any author's name, and no one has yet adduced contemporary evidence for assigning them to Heywood. In neither of these plays is there any trace of the disputation which in those we have been looking at is so conspicuous. They are both true comedies, comedies in miniature if you like, but true comedies, with a definite scene and dramatic action. _The Pardoner and the Frere_ is little more than an expansion of hints given by Chaucer, from whom the author does not hesitate to borrow two whole passages, but the development of the little plot is well managed and the climax when the Parson and Neighbour Prat are badly worsted and the two rogues go off in triumph is thoroughly artistic. It has been said that this play must have been written during the life of Leo X., who died in 1521, because the Pardoner's speech contains the passage (omitting the Friar's interruptions):--