Note 532 — Chapter XXIV · PLAYERS OF INTERLUDES

Cf. the accounts in Leland, Collectanea, iv. 228, 236, of the court of Henry VII. Douglas, Palace of Honour, ii. 410 ‘At eis they eit with interludis betwene,’ dates from 1501. Horman, Vulgaria (1519), quoted on p. 137, speaks of the ‘paiantis’ of a play as corresponding in number to the courses of a feast. Much earlier Raoul de Presles (†1374) in his Exposicion to Augustine, de Civ. Dei, ii. 8 (Abbeville, 1486), says that comedies ‘sont proprement apellez interludia, pour ce quilz se font entre les deux mengiers.’ But the use of interludere by Ausonius, Idyll, x. 76, ‘interludentes, examina lubrica, pisces,’ and Ambrose, Epist. xlvii. 4, ‘interludamus epistolis,’ supports my view.