Although the _Three Lordes and Ladies_, one of the earliest sequels in the history of English drama, is "more of a moral" than its predecessor and makes no improvement in plot-structure, it is of importance fully equal. For what it lacks in passion and romance is more than counterbalanced by technical qualities--the blank verse, the fluent prose, the wit of Simplicity and the pages, the scenic display, the variety of incidents, and the portrayal of manners. If we consider the definite transition from abstractions to social and individual traits of character in this play and the preceding,--the multi-fold impersonation of worldly wisdom, fraud, and shoddy, one might say the resolution of the rôle of Vice into its component specialties; the corresponding offset of all these by ensamples of virtuous living, but still human; and the attendant _troupe_ of more obvious 'humours,' Simplicity and the pages, Painful Penury, Diligence, and the rest,--it will be evident that these plays of Robert Wilson are the merging of moral interlude in romantic and social comedy. On this account I cannot agree with Dr. Ward,[88] who says that in construction and conception they mark no advance whatever upon the older moralities. I think they mark a significant advance. In them the moral has arrived at a consciousness of the demands of art; and, attempting to fulfil its possibilities, it acquires body, spirit, and _bouquet_, even though, in the moment of fermentation, it bursts the bottle. Still we must remember that we have now reached a date, 1588-90, by which much of the best work of Lyly, Marlowe, Peele, and Greene had already been produced, and we must, therefore, not attribute to Wilson an importance greater than that of an industrious and inventive contemporary, hospitable to ideas, but essentially conservative in practice. He is at once "father of interludes," as interludes then were regarded, and an intermediary between the interlude of moral abstractions and the comedy of humours. He appears, also, to have played so lively a part in the dramatic history of his day that Mr. Fleay is justified in calling this period by his name; and, therefore, a few further words concerning him and other plays which he seems to have written might well be said here, but we must reserve them for another occasion. =14. Conclusion=