rality to the regular drama.

Heywood's interludes.

The transition from the morality to the regular drama in England was
effected, on the one hand, by the intermixture of historical personages
with abstractions--as in Bishop Bale's _Kyng Johan_ (c. 1548)--which
easily led over to the _chronicle history_; on the other, by the
introduction of types of real life by the side of abstract figures. This
latter tendency, of which instances occur in earlier plays, is
observable in several of the 16th-century moralities;[10] but before
most of these were written, a further step in advance had been taken by
a man of genius, John Heywood (b. c. 1500, d. between 1577 and 1587),
whose "interludes"[11] were short farces in the French manner. The term
"interludes" was by no means new, but had been applied by friend and foe
to religious plays, and plays (including moralities) in general, already
in the 14th century. But it conveniently serves to designate a species
which marks a distinct stage in the history of the modern drama.
Heywood's interludes dealt entirely with real--very real--men and women.
Orthodox and conservative, he had at the same time a keen eye for the
vices as well as the follies of his age, and not the least for those of
the clerical profession. Other writers, such as T. Ingeland,[12] took
the same direction; and the allegory of abstractions was thus undermined
on the stage, very much as in didactic literature the ground had been
cut from under its feet by the _Ship of Fooles_. Thus the interludes
facilitated the advent of comedy, without having superseded the earlier
form. Both moralities and miracle-plays survived into the Elizabethan
age after the regular drama had already begun its course.

Pageants.

Such, in barest outline, was the progress of dramatic entertainments in
the principal countries of Europe, before the revival of classical
studies brought about a return to the examples of the classical drama,
or before this return had distinctly asserted itself. It must not,
however, be forgotten that from an early period in England as elsewhere
had flourished a species of entertainments, not properly speaking
dramatic, but largely contributing to form and foster a taste for
dramatic spectacles. The _pageants_--as they were called in
England--were the successors of those _ridings_ from which, when they
gladdened "Chepe," Chaucer's idle apprentice would not keep away; but
they had advanced in splendour and