importance whatsoever as a step in the evolution of a plot. Indeed it is
open to question whether there is a plot. There are speeches, there is
conversation, there is some scuffling, and there is a happy ending, but
there is no guiding thread running through the story, no discernible
objective steadily aimed at from the start. It looks as though the new
interest in drawing (or seeing) a real human individual has monopolized
the whole attention; that for the time being characterization has driven
plot-building completely into the shade.

A curious, yet not unnatural, thing has happened. In _The Castell of
Perseverance_ Humankind was more acted upon than acting. The real force
of the action lay in the antagonism between the Virtues and Vices, the
Good Angel and the Bad Angel, an antagonism so inveterate that even if
the temporary object of their struggle were removed, the strife would
still break out again from the sheer viciousness of the Vices. This
instinctive hostility between Virtues and Vices supplies the groundwork
of the Interludes. They dismiss Humankind from the stage. He was always
a weak, oscillating sort of creature. Sound, forceful Abstractions and
Types were wanted, which could be worked up into thoroughgoing rascals
or heroes, rascality having all the preference. Any underlying thread,
therefore, that there may be in _Hick Scorner_ is this rivalry and
embitterment between the wicked sort and the virtuous. We shall observe
that already one of the rogues is taking precedence of the others in
dramatic importance, in fullness of portraiture, and, of course, in
villany.

_Like Will to Like_--of an uncertain date prior to 1568 (when it was
printed) but almost certainly a later production than many Interludes
which we omit here, notably Heywood's--illustrates the development of
some of these changes. In brief outline its story is as follows.