Then by degrees poets got further and further away from
that, until poets like Spenser wrote with no such idea. But
while poets like Spenser wrote their stories to be read, another
class of poets was growing up who intended their poems to be
spoken and acted. These were the dramatists.
So you see that the minstrel stream divided into two. There was
now the poet who wrote his poems to be read in quiet and the poet
who wrote his, if not to be sung, at least to be spoken aloud.
But there had been, as we have seen, a time when the minstrel and
the monkish stream had touched, a time when the monk, using the
minstrel's art, had taught the people through ear and eye
together. For the idea of the Miracle and Morality plays was,
you remember, to teach. So, long after the monks had ceased to
act, those who wrote poems to be acted felt that they must teach
something. Thus after the Miracle plays came the Moralities,
which sometimes were very long and dull. They were followed by
Interludes which were much the same as Moralities but were
shorter, and as their name shows were meant to come in the middle
of something else, for the word comes from two Latin words,
"inter" between and "ludus" a play.
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