shew and to describe as well the bewte and good propertes of women as theyr vyces and evyll condicions." For the first time since plays became secular, women are introduced, not as the objects of scurrility and ridicule, but as dramatic material of an æsthetic, moral, and intellectual value equal to that of men. What the author of _Johan_ did for the amusing and real action desirable in a comedy, the author of this play did for vital characterization and passion. Melibœa is the first heroine of our romantic comedy; she is so fair that for her lover there is "no such sovereign in heaven, though she be in earth." She is, if the play was written before the _Play of Love_, our earliest heroine "loved, not loving." She is a woman and pitiful and to be wooed; frail and repentant; but then indignant and not to be won. Calisto is, likewise, our first lover in despair. This element of woman worship--not worship of the Blessed Virgin or traditional interest in the Magdalene or any other saint--is no slight contribution to the material of comedy. The intrigue of the play,--the foils of character and action, the go-betweens, the plot within plot introduced by Celestina, her realistic account of Sempronio's character, her device of the "girdle," the mysterious agency of the dream,--no better indication of romantic tendency can be detected until we reach Redford's play of _Wit and Science_, of which presently. But first, and that we may keep in mind the parallelism of dramatic tendencies in this momentous first half of the sixteenth century, let us turn to another stream, that of the school interludes and the classical influence. =10. The Period of Transition: School Interlude and Controversial Moral=