Miracle Plays, Morality Plays & Interludes PDF

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By Nicholas Franklin...

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Miracle Plays A later development from Mystery plays. They dramatised saints’ lives and divine miracles (especially those relating to the Virgin Mary). Few English Miracle plays have survived. Traditionally, there has been a lot of confusion between Mystery Plays and Miracle Plays and, in the English context, we can assume that we are talking more or less about the same thing. While the distinction is useful for modern academics, ‘mystery’ is French in origin and contemporary mediaeval writers prefer to refer to: Corpus Christi plays Whitsuntide ( = de Pentecostés) plays pageants or occasionally miracle plays - for any type of public drama.

The Wife of Bath says that she enjoys going to “pleyes of miracles”. Morality Plays “The dramatization of a spiritual crisis in the life of a representative mankind figure in which his spiritual struggle is portrayed as a conflict between personified abstractions representing good and evil”. David Bevington in Medieval Drama Morality Plays developed out of the Hellfire sermons of the Dominican friars. In Morality Plays a man’s pride was a sin against God and led inevitably to his downfall. The wheel of Fortune carried a man up to the heights of material success, and carried him inevitably down to the depths of deprivation and death. Morality Plays can be seen as the precursors of Elizabethan tragedy.

Psychomachia Easily the most popular form was the psychomachia1, in which the characters battled for the possession of a representative man (Humanum Genus). You will find it easy to understand psychomachia if you have seen the Disney movie Inside Out (2015). This central image of conflict makes for good drama (according to Aristotle). Psychomachia is the predecessor of the good and bad angels (cf. Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, The Simpsons, etc.) Basically, psychomachic characters represent the battle between good and evil for the human soul and/or treatise on the nature of the Seven Deadly Sins (cf. Langland). They were an attempt to externalise internal drama, i.e. to act out what is going on in the human brain. Morality plays are allegories in dramatic form. The characters of allegory are personifications: they are  impulses,  moods,  attitudes and  states of mind,  qualities,  virtues and vices,  physical and mental conditions, such as old age and youth personified. But the moral conflict is not just of concern to the man in whose mind it takes place. Powers from the outside – supra-natural powers – meet in his mind and contend for his soul. The main enemy of Mankind is a character called the Vice, an instrument of the Devil, or the Devil himself, who tries to insinuate himself into the confidences of the subject, thus corrupting him. Vice in his more villainous aspect heavily influenced Shakespeare’s Richard III and Iago (in Othello). Vice in his more comic facet heavily influenced Feste (in 12th Night) and Falstaff (in Henry IV). However, Shakespeare’s Falstaff is unable to corrupt Prince Hal, who is always in control of the situation.

1 the name comes from Prudentius’s Psychomachia or The Battle for the Soul (c. 400CE)

Types of Morality Play There are about 60 surviving Morality plays that divide into two types: 1. large-scale plays mounted by the community in the same way as the mystery plays (e.g. The Castle of Perseverance); 2. small-scale ‘moral interludes’ performed by companies of c. 6 travelling actors, often at banquets (e.g. Mankind). The earliest extant Morality Play – King of Life (a.k.a. Pride of Life) dates from c. 1350. So the traditions of Morality, Mystery and Miracle Plays were developing simultaneously in the late Middle Ages. The Play of the Paternoster (a.k.a. Play of the Lord’s Prayer) was performed at York from c. 1380 to 1572 (Shakespeare was 8). Morality Plays have their origins in sermons and can be considered in the same allegorical tradition as Piers Plowman. As the ecclesiastical authorities lost control over the Mystery/Miracle Plays in the 15th Century they began to promote Morality Plays as a substitute.

Everyman Everyman is based on a Dutch (or Flemish – depending on the source you want to believe!) play, Elckerlijc, published in 1495. Not a typical religious play for its time, being so focused on the coming of Death and lacking comic elements (none of the typical bawdy humour – the audience needed to be entertained if they were going to pay). Also not typical because the cast is large for a moral interlude. Everyman expresses sentiments that can be linked to the reform movements at the time. For example, the play echoes precepts of the treatises on the ars moriendi (= art of dying) that were written to enable Christians to face death, while it also contains critiques of the clergy for abusing Christ’s doctrine. We have no stage directions but we know that God was seated above and there was some kind of trap door that allowed the central figure to enter his grave. The main characters in Everyman [c. 1500] are: God, a Messenger, Death, Everyman, Fellowship, Good Deeds, Goods, Knowledge2, Beauty and Strength. Everyman is summoned by Death and finds that no-one (not Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, Five Wits3 or Goods) will go with him except Good Deeds. However, Good Deeds is so weakened by Everyman’s sins that she cannot stand. On her advice, Everyman approaches her sister, Knowledge, who leads him to Confession. After Everyman has shown due penitence, Good Deeds rises to accompany him to his judgement. We should be careful not to misinterpret these names; for instance, Knowledge is not scientific understanding but rather a grasp of divine law and God’s plan for the universe. The message of Everyman is that one should live in memento mori (= in remembrance of death). Everyman has an austerely dignified style – the dialogue can be rather stilted. It may have been written to be read not acted (it survives only in printed editions). It has the advantage over other Morality Plays that there is a definite plot. However, many Morality plays were very bawdy (= verde). While Everyman does not decry the relationships the protagonist has with his fellow human beings, the play demonstrates that it is the relationships within one’s self and with God that are most important and lead to the road of salvation. Everyman reminds the audience of the path to God according to the medieval Catholic Church. The allegorical tale turns every member of the audience into the protagonist, crossing boundaries of class and gender, to prove that all men are equal when they stand in judgment before God and that only an individual’s good deeds matter on the journey to salvation.

2 knowledge – acknowledgement of sin, divine understanding 3 Five Wits – sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell

From Morality Plays to Chronicle Plays The Castle of Perseverance (c. 1425) presents the struggle between Good and Evil as the siege of a mediaeval castle! The siege warfare takes up a third of the play. A stage direction from The Castle runs: “He that shall play Baal (= the Devil) look that he have gunpowder… in pipes in his hands, in his ears, and in his arse when he go to battle.’ – That should give you some idea of the sort of entertainment involved! This type of Morality Play influenced 1Henry VI, which has over 20 fight scenes and is a struggle between the forces of good (the English) and the forces of evil (the French). Women are presented as leading the forces of evil: Joan la Pucelle, the Countess of Auvergne, and Margaret of Anjou. They are much like the witch and temptress of Sir Gawain (Morgan le Fay and Lady Bertilak). Nearly all Morality plays are didactic commentaries on the war between God and the Devil. Typically, characterisation is crude and psychologically naïve. However, increasingly the later ones were more sophisticated in their analysis of character. The transition from Moral Interludes to History Plays (a.k.a. Chronicle Plays) can be seen in John Bale’s Kynge Johan (c. 1540). In this play King John is a proto-Protestant hero struggling again the Papal Antichrist. The important thing, however, is that abstract ‘Morality’ characters (Nobility, Clergy, Civil Order, Usurped Power) are mixed with individual characters (King John, the Pope and Stephen Langton). Remember that in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance it was believed that the primary purpose of history was to provide examples for moral instruction. Interludes Form a link between the Mys-, Mir- and Mor- Plays and the psychological dramas of the Elizabethans. Some are more or less indistinguishable from the morality plays (and you will find certain examples cited in both categories). They are often allegorical and didactic. While the Mystery Plays were for public performance, the Morality Plays and Interludes were mostly for private performance. Generally speaking, Interludes are shorter than Morality Plays.  Many are also farcical  Written in rough verse.

They were usually performed by professional actors but could also be performed (for a private audience) by villagers (see “Pyramus and Thisbe” in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Notice again that midsummer connection… Most are about a thousand lines long and were probably meant for entertainment at banquets at court, in noble houses, in University colleges or at the Inns of Court. There are two types:  popular (e.g. The Pride of Life [c. 1300-1325] and Mankind [1465-70]) and  aristocratic (e.g. Medwell’s Fulgens and Lucrece [1490-1500] and Appius and Virginia [c. 1567]). Notice that most of these can also be classed as Morality Plays. There is a temptation to consider mediaeval theatre as “primitive”. However, this is only true of the earliest phase; later mediaeval theatre was scripted with:  elaborate stage directions,  there was a director and  a vast array of props,  cranes,  machinery and  trapdoors. One “hell-mouth”, which opened and closed and produced smoke, dating from 1501 required 17 people to operate it. Mediaeval drama (in its four forms) can be characterized as comedy because it almost always has a happy ending. The first English tragedy play was Gorboduc (1561) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. Morality Plays are still alive and well in western culture. Helen Morris describes Westerns as the modern equivalent of Morality Plays. Besides, just think of Devil’s Advocate (with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves) or countless TV series for children and young people from Buffy the Vampireslayer to LazyTown....