The Interlude

The first impression that the student receives in passing from the fifteenth-century morality to the Tudor interlude 1 is one of sudden light. He passes from a species preserved in the scantiest examples to one so copiously illustrated that coherent brief discussion is impossible; from a drama wholly anonymous and (except Mankind) unlocalized, to plays heavily charged with London realism and to a large extent written by figures of definite historical importance; from a drama based upon the abstractions of the universal medieval church to one that is above all things topical, mundane, and aristocratic.