Oddly enough it has lately been asserted that this character had no part in the 'morality' proper. An implication to the same effect is to be found in Halliwell-Phillipps's notes to _Witt and Wisdome_ as early as 1846, where he says that "the Vice is the buffoon of the old moral plays which _succeeded_ the Reformation." The fact is that the Vice takes part in all the plays under consideration, whether called morals proper or moral interludes, from 1400 to 1578, except only _Wisdom_ of the pre-Reformation series and the _Disobedient Child_ of the post-Reformation. Two other of the thirty-odd morals and moral interludes, namely, the _Pride of Life_ and _Everyman_, resort to a substitute. They distribute the rôle among minor representatives of the World, Flesh, and Devil, but they do not dispense with the idea of the Vice.[59] From him proceeds most of the human interest of these earlier comedies. Like the inclinations that he personifies, he is first sinful, then venial, then amusing; and to his tradition the comedy of a later age owes more than we are wont to suspect. It owes to him the development of certain spiritual characteristics, a cynical but rollicking superiority to sham, a freedom from the thrall of social and religious externality, a reckless joy of living, but an aloofness, withal, and a humour requisite to the exercise of satire. It is, indeed, as satirist sometimes virulent, but usually jocose, that the Vice is most to be esteemed. In so far as the genial character of the domestic fool of Green, Lodge, or Shakespeare reflected his irony and shrewd wit, some memory of him survived; and the clown-Vice of _Friar Bacon_ renews a passage or two of his later career, but not every usurper of his comic appanage, his mimicry, puns, irrelevance, and horse-play can lay claim to be descended from the Vice.