ABSTRACT

When, in this late Elizabethan play, Thomas More enquires of the player the nature of his company’s repertoire and composition, we are offered an intriguing evocation of an early Tudor performance culture whose bills of fare had continued to please audiences for more than a century. The appetite for a vibrant drama of disputation and interaction variously populated by allegorical and more individuated characters, for didactic content and witty set pieces was accommodated decade after decade in the shape of the interlude – a generic term which, as we shall see, has remained the subject of much critical consternation.