interlude

In 16th‐century England, a short dramatic work, often comical, performed in the intervals of a banquet or court pageant, or between the parts of mystery plays. The characters were usually traditional personifications, such as Mercy, Youth, or Gluttony. Interludes appeared in the transitional period (c. 1500–c. 1575) between the medieval religious drama (mystery, morality, and miracle plays) and Elizabethan drama.

John Heywood was the first English playwright to treat the interlude as an independent dramatic form and to use characters who were social types (for example, friars or pedlars) rather than moral qualities. An example is his farcical interlude The Pardoner and the Friar (1533).