Ancient Sports and Pastimes. 623 
denounced them on account of their immorality and the 
grossness of their performances. Yet they were sometimes 
compelled to call in their assistance, and it seems that 
plays resembling the interludes were occasionally intro- 
duced to enliven the audience, in the intervals of the 
somewhat tedious mysteries. 
When mysteries were forbidden by Henry VIII, the 
interludes became a fashionable entertaiment, and were 
performed at court for the amusement of the king. 
One of these interludes was called the Four P’s; it is 
written in doggrel verse, and represents a kind of match 
between a pedlar, a pilgrim, a poticary, and a pardoner, as 
to who could tell the greatest lie. After some wonderful 
stories have been told, the pardoner asserts, as if acci- 
dentally, that he never saw a woman out of temper; the 
prize of mendacity was, we need hardly assure our fair 
readers, at once assigned to him. 
The interludes were the immediate precursors of the 
regular drama, which reached such a glorious developement 
in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Probably in 
the reign of Henry VIII., says Mr. Shaw, in the “ Outlines 
of English Literature,” “but certainly not later than 1551, 
Nicholas Udall produced his “ Ralph Royster Doyster,” 
the first comedy in the language, in which the ingenuity 
of the plot, the nature of the characters, and the ease of 
the dialogue, are all carried to a high degree of perfection. 
The dramatis persone are all taken from middle life, and 
the play gives us a most admirable picture of the manners 
of the citizens of London at that period. It is written ina 
very loose and conversational species of rhymed couplet, 
and was probably performed by the scholars of Westmin- 
ster, of which school the author was master. 
The theatres in which the earliest English dramas were 
performed, were of the rudest description. They were 
uncovered, excepting over the stage. The scenery con- 
sisted only of a few curtains of tapestry or canvas; and 
if a change of scene was necessary, a placard was fixed to 
one of the curtains, with the name of the city or country 
where the action was supposed to take place written upon 
it. At the same time, the dresses of the actors were often 
of a very splendid character, but no attempt was made to 
delineate the dress of the time or country in which the 
action of the play was laid; thus the Spartan senators ap- 
peared with watches, and Roman soldiers armed with the 
Spanish rapier of the sixteenth century. 
