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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR idiosyncratic morality play — a work of Gothic dramatic architecture that takes premises, structure and characterizations from medieval precedent and makes of them something utterly unprecedented.”*° Research on Tudor drama in the 1990s refines the rather casual claims of earlier scholarship when developing the generic notion of the interlude. This umbrella term denotes different pieces of drama ranging from short plays to any sort of entertainment in Early Modern texts.*” However, Greg Walker’s introduction to an anthology of Medieval playtexts offers a more crystalized definition and refers to the “Tudor interlude” or “household drama” as a subgenre of morality plays characterized by at least five distinctive elements: these plays were written to be performed indoors in “the great hall of a royal palace or noble manor house;”*’ they all show “interest in secular and political concerns,” as opposed to moralities, which focus on “the welfare of the human soul;”*® they circulated in printed form throughout the sixteenth century; they were performed by more professional players, “perhaps members of the household chapel or traveling troupes;” and due to these better skilled actors, new dramatic elements could appear in the interludes, for example “the increasingly sophisticated tumbling and word-play which is the crucial element of the characterization of Vices.”* As for the particular texts that belong to this genre, Greg Walker lists eight plays: Henry Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres; John Skelton’s Magnyfycence; The Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester; John Heywood’s The Four PP and The Play of the Weather; John Bale’s Johan Baptystes Preachynge and The Three Laws; and Sir David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis. Of these, Skelton’s Magnyfycence, which was printed in 1530, seems to bear the strongest resemblance to Shakespeare’s King Lear as far as its dramatic structure is concerned, so it appears to be the ideal choice to show how the general dramaturgical patterns of morality plays appear in King Lear.” Robert Potter: The Summoning of King Lear, in Robert Potter: The English Morality Play, London-Boston, Routledge-Kegan Paul, 1975, 152. The difficulty of giving a proper definition is described well in the following article: Jean-Paul Debax: Complicity and Hierarchy: a Tentative Definition of the Interlude Genus, in Peter Happé — Wim Hiisken (eds.): Interludes and Early Modern Society. Studies in Gender, Power and Theatricality, Amsterdam—New York, Rodopi 2007, 23-42. Greg Walker: Politics and Morality: The Interludes. Introduction, in Greg Walker (ed.): Medieval Drama: An Anthology, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 2000, 305. 59 Ibid., 301. 60 Ibid., 302. 61 Ibid., 302. The thematic similarity is easily seen even when reading Greg Walker’s summary ofthe plot: “The play concerns the fortunes of a prince, the Magnyfycence of the title, who, despite his claim to have set his court perpetually to rights under the guidance of his wise counselor Measure, is eventually tricked into abandoning that prudent arrangement. Two fools, Fansy and Foly, persuade him to admit into his service a number of ne’er-do-well suitors, Crafty Conveyance, Clokyd Colusyon, Counterfet Countenaunce and Courtly Abusyon. These vices, by posing as virtues, lead him to banish Measure, and adopt the lifestyle and mannerisms of + 24e
