me full sore.
Note well the end of me therefore;
And you that fathers and mothers be,
Bring not up your children in too much liberty.

The episode of the crowning of Virtuous Life owes its existence to this
same element of moral teaching. Take up what Interlude we will, the
preacher is always to be found uttering his short sermon on the folly of
sin. Our merry friend, the Vice, usually gets caught in his own toils at
last; even if he is spared this defeat, he must ultimately be borne off
by the Devil.

But there are lessons to be learnt other than the elementary one that
virtue is a wiser guide than vice: many an Interlude was written to
castigate a particular form of laxity or drive home a needed reform, in
those years when the Stage was the Cinderella of the Church; one at
least, _The Four Elements_, was written to disseminate schoolroom
learning in an attractive manner. _Nice Wanton_ (about 1560) traces the
downward career of two spoilt children, paints the remorse of their
mother, and sums up its message at the end thus:

Therefore exhort I all parents to be diligent
In bringing up their children; aye, to be circumspect.
Lest they fall to evil, be not negligent
But chastise them before they be sore infect.

_The Disobedient Child_ (printed 1560), of which the title is a
sufficient clue to its purpose, permits a boy to refuse to go to
school, and, as a young man, to flout his father's advice in regard to
matrimony, only to bring him to the bottom rung of miserable drudgery
and servitude under a scolding wife. Of some interest is the lad's
report of a schoolboy's life, voicing, as it possibly does, a needed
criticism of the excessive severity of sixteenth-century pedagogues.
Speaking of the boys he says:

For as the bruit goeth by many a one,
Their tender bodies both night and day
Are whipped and scourged and beat like a stone,
That from top to toe the skin is away.

A slightly fuller outline of _The Marriage of Wit and Science_ (1570
approx.) will show how pleasantly, yet pointedly, the younger generation
of that day was taught the necessity of sustained industry if
scholarship was to be acquired. It has been suggested, with good reason,
that the play was written by a schoolmaster for his pupils' performance.
The superior plot-structure, and the rare adoption of subdivision into
acts and scenes, indicate an author of some classical knowledge.

Wit, a promising yo