While the plot of the _New Interlude and Mery of the Nature of the Four Elements_, calls for no special notice, it interests us because in purpose it is not moral, but scientific, and in conduct makes use of comic and commonplace means not previously availed of. The humour proceeds not simply from the jumble of oaths, nicknames, proverbs, gibes, bad puns, transparent jokes, mimicry, Sam Wellerisms, and _nugae canorae_ of which the talk of most Vices consists, but from the cleverly managed verbal misunderstanding between the Vice and the Taverner, the irrelevant question, and the humorous employment of snatches and tags from popular songs. The introduction of a character representing a trade, such as that of the Taverner, who enumerates sixteen kinds of wine, and "by his face seems to love best drinking," is, of course, novel, but is not without precedent in the miracle plays. This interlude was printed in 1519 by its author, John Rastell, evidently soon after it was written. When we consider that the _Four Elements_ was written by a friend of Sir Thomas More, and that, like the plays of John Heywood, another of More's friends, it depends for much of its effect upon its gibes at womankind, we are, perhaps, assisted in realizing the extent to which the literary taste of the day still indulged in this primitive form of amusement, and the distance which was yet to be covered before comedy could safely avail itself of the feminine element as it is,--witty and practical, as well as tender,--and so prepare to fulfil its peculiar function as the conserver of society. For, until it recognizes that women constitute the social other-half, the comic spirit has not come into full possession of its possibilities; it has not produced comedy, for it has not given us a full and undistorted reflex of life. This is a fact so rarely considered that I cannot refrain from quoting Mr. George Meredith. "Comedy," he says, in his excellent essay on its _Idea_--"comedy lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit, as they usually show it, when they have it, on the side of sound sense. The higher the comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it.... The heroines of comedy are like women of the world, not necessarily heartless for being clear-witted: they seem so to the sentimentally reared only for the reason that they use their wits, and are not wandering vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy is an exhibition of their battle with men, and of men with them: and as the two, however divergent, both look on one object, namely, life, the gradual similarity of their impressions must bring them to some resemblance. The comic poet dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual likeness; he is for saying that, when they draw together in social life, their minds grow liker; just as the philosopher discerns the similarity of boy and girl, until the girl is marched away to the