ABSTRACT
Supporting an acting troupe gave an aristocratic patron status, but it also offered him the opportunity to prosecute a political agenda. Tudor interludes often retained the morality play structure (the prosperous protagonist succumbs to temptation, despairs but just in time repents, recovers and returns to moral health) but were usually more political in their implications. The politics of the time of course was rooted in religion, which provided the ideological underpinning for much political action. But some interludes were neither particularly political nor particularly religious.
