The morality was not, perhaps, quite such an arid type of drama as might be supposed, especially after the dramatists learnt, instead of leaving humanity as a dry bone of contention between the good and evil powers, to adopt a biographic mode of treatment, and thus to introduce the interest of growth and development[594]. But by the sixteenth century allegory had had its day, and the light-hearted court of Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon might be excused some weariness at the constant presentation before it of argumentative abstractions which occasionally yielded nothing more entertaining than a personified _débat_[595]. Certainly it is upon record that Medwall’s moral of ‘the fyndyng of Troth,’ played at the Christmas of 1513, appeared to Henry so long, that he got up and ‘departyd to hys chambre[596].’ The offenders on this occasion were English and his company of household players. They seem to have been unwisely wedded to the old methods. They pursued the princess Margaret to Scotland with a ‘Moralite’ in 1503, and in the reign of Edward VI they were still playing the play of _Self-Love_[597]. Perhaps this explains why they make distinctly less show in the accounts of Tudor revels than do their competitors of the Chapel. Unfortunately none of the pieces given by this latter body have been preserved. But, to judge by the descriptions of Hall, many of them could only be called interludes by a somewhat liberal extension of the sense of the term. There was perhaps some slight allegorical or mythological framework of spoken dialogue. But the real amusement lay in an abundance of singing, which of course the Chapel was well qualified to provide, and of dancing, in which the guests often joined, and in an elaborately designed pageant, which was wheeled into the hall and from which the performers descended. They were in fact masques rather than dramas in the strict sense, and in connexion with the origin of the masque they have already been considered[598].