_Everyman._ Ye, therto ye wolde be redy:
To go to myrthe, solas[41] and playe
Your mynde wyll soner apply
Than to bere me company in my longe journaye.

The difference between the plays is clearer now. Somewhere we have met
such a fellow as Fellowship; at some time we have taken part in such a
conversation, and heard the gushing acquaintance of prosperous days
excuse himself in the hour of trouble. But never in daily life was met
so dull a creature as one of those angels, nor ever was heard
conversation like theirs.

Let us return to trace the change to the Interlude. Quite a short step
will carry us to it.

We have said that Moralities gave to the drama originality in plot and
in characters. This statement invites qualification, for its truth is
confined to rather narrow limits, in fact, to the early days of this new
kind of play. Let a few Moralities be produced and the rest will be
found to be treading very closely in their footsteps. For there are not
possible many divergent variations of a story that must have for its
central figure Man in his three ages and must express itself
allegorically. Nor is the list of Virtues and Vices so large that it can
provide an inexhaustible supply of fresh characters. However ingenious
authors may be, the day is quickly reached when parallelism drives their
audience to a wearisome consciousness that the speeches have all been
heard before, that the next step in the plot can be foretold to a
nicety. Something of this was perceived by the author of _Everyman_.
With bold strokes of the pen he drew a line through two-thirds of the
orthodox plot, crossed off from the list of characters the hackneyed