in the dirt still from day to day.
A hundred things that be abroad cham set to see them well:
And four of you sit idle at home and cannot keep a nee'le!

_Gammer._ My nee'le, alas, ich lost it, Hodge, what time ich me up
hasted
To save milk set up for thee, which Gib our cat hath wasted.

_Hodge._ The devil he burst both Gib and Tib, with all the rest;
Cham always sure of the worst end, whoever have the best.
Where ha' you been fidging abroad, since you your nee'le lost?

_Gammer._ Within the house, and at the door, sitting by this same
post;
Where I was looking a long hour, before these folks came here.
But, wellaway! all was in vain; my nee'le is never the near.

_Hodge._ Set me a candle, let me seek, and grope wherever it be.
Gog's heart, ye be foolish (ich think), you know it not when you
it see.

_Gammer._ Come hither, Cock: what, Cock, I say!

_Cock._ How, Gammer?

_Gammer._ Go, hie thee soon, and grope behind the old brass pan,
Which thing when thou hast done,
There shalt thou find an old shoe, wherein, if thou look well,
Thou shalt find lying an inch of white tallow candle:
Light it, and bring it tite away.

_Cock._ That shall be done anon.

_Gammer._ Nay, tarry, Hodge, till thou hast light, and then we'll
seek each one.

_Ralph Roister Doister_ and _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ mark the end of the
Interlude stage and the commencement of Comedy proper. Leaving the
latter at this point for the present, we shall return in the next
chapter to study its fortunes at the hands of Lyly.

* * * * *

Morality Plays, though theoretically quite as suitable for tragic effect
as for comic, since the former only required that Mankind should
sometimes fail to reach heaven, seem nevertheless to have developed
mainly the lighter side, setting the hero right at the finish and in the
meantime discovering, to the relief of otherwise bored spectators, that
wickedness, in some unexplained way, was funny. As long as propriety
forbade that good should be overcome by evil it is hard to see how
tragedy could appear. Had Humankind, in _The Castell of Perseverance_,
been fought for in vain by the Virtues, or had Everyman found no
companion to go with him and intercede for him, there had been tragedy
indeed. But religious opti