A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 02 — Inside the Classic

Allegory and Doctrine in the Moral Plays

The Interlude of Youth opens with Charity delivering a Latin quotation—Qui manet in charitate in Deo manet—and insisting that 'no man may saved be / Without the help of me.' This direct claim positions the play as a doctrinal tool, likely Catholic in origin, as Collier noted. The character of Charity functions as both teacher and gatekeeper, using the ABC of books to cite Deus caritas est. The play's structure is a debate between virtues and vices, with Youth as the everyman figure. The language is plain and repetitive, designed for oral performance and memorization. Hazlitt's preface mentions the rarity of surviving copies, with only two or three editions known, which underscores the fragility of these texts.

Domestic Drama and Biblical Adaptation

The History of Jacob and Esau adapts Genesis 27 into a five-act play with added comic servants. In the excerpt, Isaac complains that 'whom fathers do best favour, / Of them they have least love again,' a line that humanizes the patriarch. Rebecca's aside—'This talk of Isaac in secret have I heard'—and her subsequent prayer to 'let Jacob have the blessing' show the play's interest in private motives. The stage direction 'Rebecca entereth behind unseen, and listens' creates a moment of dramatic irony. The servants Mido and Abra bicker in prose, providing comic relief: 'There is none here that prattleth so much as you.' This blend of biblical story and low comedy anticipates later Elizabethan drama.

Editorial Framing and Textual History

Hazlitt's edition is the fourth, 'now first chronologically arranged, revised and enlarged.' The front matter includes a preface by Halliwell that discusses the Interlude of Youth's woodcuts and its possible date under Mary I. The excerpts show that the plays are presented with act and scene divisions, though these may be editorial additions. The volume's catalog subject is simply 'English drama,' but the contents are far from uniform: they range from the theological Lusty Juventus to the schoolroom comedy The Disobedient Child. Readers should note that the Project Gutenberg text includes the lengthy license and boilerplate, which is not part of the original edition.

These plays reward attention to their performance conditions: the short lines, repeated phrases, and direct addresses to the audience suggest a theatre of instruction and entertainment. Readers may wish to compare the treatment of biblical material in Jacob and Esau with the allegorical method of Youth, noting how each play negotiates its didactic purpose. The volume as a whole offers a cross-section of mid-sixteenth-century dramatic practice, preserved in a scholarly edition that itself has a history.

I keep thinking about Rebecca whispering her secret prayer, bending fate in the dark toward Jacob. It felt familiar, that quiet pull of loyalty and longing. Years ago, The Turn of the Road A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue — Reading Companion stirred something similar—that ache of choosing a path nobody else sees, then waiting, breath held, to see if love forgives the choice.