This kind of catch-question was known in England, under Elizabeth, as "selling a bargain," and it is not infrequent in the plays of the time. It will be found more than once in earlier plays of Shakspere; for example, when his "clowns" (as the low-comedy characters were then called) were allowed to run on at their own sweet will. Not a little of the dialog of the two Dromios is closely akin in its method to the interchange of question and answer between the Interlocutor and the End-man. We may be sure this method of evoking laughter was employed also by the improvising comedians of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with which negro-minstrelsy has other points of resemblance. It must have been popular with the wandering glee-men of the rude Middle Ages; and now that negro-minstrelsy is disappearing and now that our circuses have burgeoned into three rings under a tent too vast for any merely verbal repartees, it has not departed from among us, since it still survives as the staple of the so-called "sidewalk conversationalists" who swap personalities in our superabundant variety-shows.
We do not know with historic certainty how soon the First Part crystallized into the form which has long been traditional--the opening overture, the catch-questioning of End-man and Middleman, the comic songs of Bones and Tambo in turn, the sentimental ballads by the silver-throated vocalists, and the concluding walk-around. The rest of the evening's entertainment never took on any definite framework, altho the final item on the program was likely to be a piece of some length, often a burlesque of a serious drama then popular, and this little play "enlisted the whole strength of the company." Between the stately First Part and the more pretentious terminating sketch, the minstrels presented a variety of acts in which the several members exhibited their specialities. A clog-dance was always in order--altho the mechanical precision of this form of saltatorial exercise was wholly foreign to the characteristics of the actual negroes whom the minstrels were supposed to be representing. A stump-speech was certain of a warm reception--altho this again departed from the true negro tradition, and, in fact, often degenerated into frank burlesque, wholly unrelated to the realities of life. Sketches, like those which Rice had earlier composed for his own acting, were likely to have a little closer relation to the genuine darky.