called into life without the direct influence
of classical examples. Already in the reign of Edward VI. the spirit of
the Reformation had (with the aid of a newly awakened desire for the
study of history, which was no doubt largely due to Italian examples)
quickened the relatively inanimate species of the morality into the
beginning of a new development.[155] But though the _Kyng Johan_ of Bale
(much as this author abhorred the chronicles as written by
ecclesiastics) came very near to the chronicle histories, there is no
proof whatever that the work, long hidden away for very good reasons,
actually served as a transition to the new species; and Bale's
production was entirely unknown to the particular chronicle history
which treated the same subject. Before the earliest example of this
transitional species was produced, English tragedy had directly
connected its beginnings with classical models.

Imitation of classical examples.

Much in the same way, nothing could have been more natural and in
accordance with the previous sluggish evolution of the English drama
than that a gradual transition, however complete in the end, should have
been effected from the moralities to comedy. It was not, however, John
Heywood himself who was to accomplish any such transition; possibly, he
was himself the author of the morality _Genus humanum_ performed at the
coronation feast of Queen Mary, whose council speedily forbade the
performance of interludes without the queen's licence. Nor are we able
to conjecture the nature of the pieces bearing this name composed by
Richard Farrant, afterwards the master of the Children of St George's at
Windsor, or of William Hunnis, master under Queen Elizabeth of the
Children of the Chapel Royal. But the process of transition is visible
in productions, also called interludes, but charged with serious
purpose, such as T. Ingeland's noteworthy _Disobedient Child_ (before
1560), and plays in which the element of abstractions is perceptibly
yielding to that of real personages, or in which the characters are for
the most part historical or the main element in the action belongs to
the sphere of romantic narrative.[156] The demonstration would, however,
be alien to the purpose of indicating the main conditions of the growth
of the English drama. The immediate origin of the earliest extant
English comedy must, like that of the first English tragedy, be sought,
not in the development of any popular literar