In the preceding chapter I have given an abstract of the life of Tom O’ the Dingle; I will now give an analysis of his interlude; first, however, a few words on interludes in general. It is difficult to say, with anything like certainty, what is the meaning of the word interlude. It may mean, as Warton supposes in his history of English Poetry, a short play performed between the courses of a banquet, or festival; or it may mean the playing of something by two or more parties, the interchange of playing or acting which occurs when two or more people act. It was about the middle of the fifteenth century that dramatic pieces began in England to be called Interludes; for some time previous they had been styled Moralities; but the earliest name by which they were known was Mysteries. The first Mysteries composed in England were by one Ranald, or Ranulf, a monk of Chester, who flourished about 1322, whose verses are mentioned rather irreverently in one of the visions of Piers Plowman, who puts them in the same rank as the ballads about Robin Hood and Maid Marion, making Sloth say: “I cannot perfitly my Paternoster as the priest it singeth, But I can rhymes of Robin Hood and Ranald of Chester.” Long, however, before the time of this Ranald, Mysteries had been composed and represented both in Italy and France. The Mysteries were very rude compositions; little more, as Warton says, than literal representations of portions of Scripture. They derived their name of Mysteries from being generally founded on the more mysterious parts of Holy Writ—for example, the Incarnation, the Atonement and the Resurrection. The Moralities displayed something more of art and invention than the Mysteries; in them virtues, vices and qualities were personified, and something like a plot was frequently to be discovered. They were termed Moralities because each had its moral, which was spoken at the end of the piece by a person called the Doctor. {349} Much that has been said about the moralities holds good with respect to the interludes. Indeed, for some time dramatic pieces were called moralities and interludes indifferently. In both there is a mixture of allegory and reality. The latter interludes, however, display more of everyday life than was ever observable in the moralities, and more closely approximate to modern plays. Several writers of genius have written interludes, amongst whom are the English Skelton and the Scottish Lindsay, the latter of whom wrote eight pieces of that kind, the most celebrated of which is called “The Puir Man and the Pardonar.” Both of these writers flourished about the same period, and made use of the interlude as a means of satirising the vices of the popish clergy. In the time of Charles the First the interlude went much out of fashion in England; in fact, the play, or regular drama, had superseded it. In Wales, however, it continued to the beginning of the present century, when it yielded to the