The ''Interlude of Youth'' is an English 16th-century
morality play
The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...
. It is one of the earliest printed morality plays to have survived. Only two or three copies of any edition are known to exist. Waley's edition of the work appeared probably about the year
1554
__NOTOC__
Year 1554 ( MDLIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
January–June
* January 5 – A great fire breaks out in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
*January 11 ...
, and has a woodcut on the title-page of two figures, representing Charity and Youth, two of the characters in the interlude. Another edition was printed by
William Copland
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Eng ...
, and has also a woodcut on the title-page, representing Youth between Charity, and another figure which has no name over its head. The colophon is: "Imprinted at London, in Lothbury, over against Sainct Margarytes church, by me,
Wyllyam Copland." A fragment of a
black-letter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
copy of the interlude has survived at
Lambeth Palace
Lambeth Palace is the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is situated in north Lambeth, London, on the south bank of the River Thames, south-east of the Palace of Westminster, which houses Parliament, on the opposite ...
.
Medieval drama
British plays
1550s plays
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