CHAPTER LX.
Mystery Plays--The Two Prime Opponents--Analysis of Interlude--Riches and Poverty--Tom's Grand Qualities.
In the preceding chapter I have given an abstract of the life of Tom O' the Dingle; I will now give an analysis of his interlude; first, however, a few words on interludes in general.

It is difficult to say with anything like certainty what is the meaning of the word interlude.

It may mean, as Warton supposes in his history of English Poetry, a short play performed between the courses of a banquet or festival; or it may mean the playing of something by two or more parties, the interchange of playing or acting which occurs when two or more people act.

It was about the middle of the fifteenth century that dramatic pieces began in England to be called Interludes; for some time previous they had been styled Moralities; but the earliest name by which they were known was Mysteries.
The first Mysteries composed in England were by one Ranald, or Ranulf, a monk of Chester, who flourished about 1322, whose verses are mentioned rather irreverently in one of the visions of Piers Plowman, who puts them in the same rank as the ballads about Robin Hood and Maid Marion, making Sloth say: "I cannon perfitly my Paternoster as the priest it singeth, But I can rhymes of Robin Hood and Ranald of Chester." Long, however, before the time of this Ranald Mysteries had been composed and represented both in Italy and France.

The Mysteries were very rude compositions, little more, as Warton says, than literal representations of portions of Scripture.