A short entertainment
put on between the courses of a feast or the acts of a play. During the Middle
Ages and up to the 16th c. the term was used to describe a variety of dramatic
entertainments. Italian Renaissance drama had intermezzi. Interludes were
particularly popular in England in the 15th and 16th c., and especially between
1550 and 1580. In the Annals of English Drama 975–1700 Harbage lists ninety or
so plays which could qualify as interludes. It is very likely that they form a
link between the Mystery Play, the Miracle Play and the Morality Play, and the
psychological drama of the Elizabethans. Dividing lines are not clear. Many of
them are very similar to Moralities and in some cases are indistinguishable
from them. They were often allegorical and didactic (many also were farcical)
and written in rough verse. They were usually about a thousand lines long and
there seems little doubt that most were intended as entertainment at banquets
at court, in the houses of nobility, at university colleges and at the Inns of
Court.
A list of the most
notable examples (some of these are also classified as Moralities) should
include:
The Pride of Life (c.
1300–25)
Mankind (1465– 70)
The Castell of
Perseverance (1400–25)
Wisdom (1460–3)
Medwall’s Fulgens and
Lucrece (1490–1500)
Youth (1515–28)
Heywood’s The Play of
the Wether (1527)
A Play of Love (1534)
Thersites (1537)
The Foure P’s (1545)
Redford’s Wit and
Science (1531–47)
Respublica, possibly by
Nicholas Udall (1533)
Appius and Virginia (c.
1567); Like Will to Like (1567)
A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory J. A. Cuddon