The Interlude of the Clerk and the Girl (Latin: Interludium de clerico et puella) is one of the earliest known secular plays written in English, dating from about 1300.^[a]An interlude is a play designed as an indoor entertainment for festive or social occasions.^[1] The text is written in a “northern dialect” of vernacular English, although its title is given in Latin.^[2] Only 84 lines of verse in rhyming couplets have survived, now in the collection of the British Library; it is one of only two extant pre-1400 English dramatic texts.^[3][b]The other is a fragment of the morality play Pride of Life.^[3]

The text is written in a recognisably modern way, with each line attributed to one of the three characters. It begins abruptly with a clerk knocking on a girl’s door and enquiring whether her parents are at home. On being told that they are not, the clerk declares his love for the girl, but she rejects his advances, saying “I won’t love a delinquent clerk, nor will I harbor a clerk in house nor on floor, except his arse lie outside the door”.^[3]

Undeterred, the clerk persists, and seeks the aid of Mome Elwis. The old woman insists that whoever advised him to seek her assistance has lied, because she is a God-fearing woman who would never involve herself in such matters. The remainder of the play has been lost.^[3]