Morality Plays
Alyssa Zack
Professor Charlotte McIvor
Cultures & Ideas
12 February 2012
Morality Plays: The Necessity of Elaborate Theatre After reading about medieval morality plays for the last couple of weeks–by reading I mean painstakingly combing over the small print of several different books I discovered in the library–I came to a realization. All of these books said the same basic thing just in a large variety of ways. Stage production and theatrics were an important contributing factor to performing the morality plays, but one above all others was invested in the showmanship of theatre: The Castle of Perseverance. The elaborate, extensive and theatrical stage production that was involved in the performance of the medieval morality play The Castle of Perseverance was not essential to the audience’s viewing of the actual play. The morality play has its roots in the miracle and mystery plays of the eleventh century. Miracle plays were dramas that revolved around the lives of Saints or the Virgin Mary. Mystery plays revolved around stories from the Bible and were also known as Pageants or as Corpus Christi plays. Mystery plays were performed across Europe during the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.[i] Morality plays represent a transition between religion-based plays to secular, professional theatre. “These moralities centered on the life of the individual Christian, portrayed as a generalized type-figure such as “Mankind” or “Everyman,” and emphasized his fall from grace, his death, and his eventual salvation through the intercession of a divine figure, usually Christ or the Virgin.” [ii] The concept of the plays were all the same, there was just a dissonance in the approach each play took. The differences in the plots of the plays reflects the evolution of this genre of play and the time they were written in. An example of the evolution of these plays based on the events surrounding their time is the fact that The Castle of Perseverance ended with Mankind being
Professor Charlotte McIvor
Cultures & Ideas
12 February 2012
Morality Plays: The Necessity of Elaborate Theatre After reading about medieval morality plays for the last couple of weeks–by reading I mean painstakingly combing over the small print of several different books I discovered in the library–I came to a realization. All of these books said the same basic thing just in a large variety of ways. Stage production and theatrics were an important contributing factor to performing the morality plays, but one above all others was invested in the showmanship of theatre: The Castle of Perseverance. The elaborate, extensive and theatrical stage production that was involved in the performance of the medieval morality play The Castle of Perseverance was not essential to the audience’s viewing of the actual play. The morality play has its roots in the miracle and mystery plays of the eleventh century. Miracle plays were dramas that revolved around the lives of Saints or the Virgin Mary. Mystery plays revolved around stories from the Bible and were also known as Pageants or as Corpus Christi plays. Mystery plays were performed across Europe during the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.[i] Morality plays represent a transition between religion-based plays to secular, professional theatre. “These moralities centered on the life of the individual Christian, portrayed as a generalized type-figure such as “Mankind” or “Everyman,” and emphasized his fall from grace, his death, and his eventual salvation through the intercession of a divine figure, usually Christ or the Virgin.” [ii] The concept of the plays were all the same, there was just a dissonance in the approach each play took. The differences in the plots of the plays reflects the evolution of this genre of play and the time they were written in. An example of the evolution of these plays based on the events surrounding their time is the fact that The Castle of Perseverance ended with Mankind being