Thesis: Morality Drama is a play that aims to communicate the message of morals and values of right living as dictated by the Christian teachings.
Morality Drama has arisen due to the desires of religious playwrights to express their wishes and have certain Christian principles taught to the society in so far as the Bible stories of Mysteries are concerned.
As a student intending to pursue this module: it is important to go into detail paying attention to different kinds of Plays that were staged during the middle Ages, focusing on the themes depicted in the plays.
It is important to take note of the three types of vernacular dramas that were produced in the middle Ages. These plays centred more on heroes such as Man whose weaknesses were mainly assaulted by diabolic forces that comprised the Seven Deadly Sins of the world and whose redemption came through the intervention of the truth, mercy, temperance and justice.
The thematic concern in this play as demonstrated by the personified characters is morality. The main virtue depicted in the play are vice or charity.
Conclusion: it is indeed worth concluding that this drama is the finest of its time. It reaches out to the audience with the aura of expressions laden with teachings of right living.
Introduction
This paper examines a few online publications and their take on medieval morality drama. They explore the origins of morality plays and their relationship to earlier forms of medieval drama such as mystery plays, common characteristics of morality plays and their lasting effect on modern types of drama and fiction. The publications however differ on the number of types of morality plays. This paper therefore, lays focus on medieval;
Morality plays are known to be common in England for the periods between late medieval up to the end of the Shakespeare time. The word points to the genres of central issues that entails dramatization of simple events and stories in such a manner that they reinforce or simply manifest morals as drawn from the Christian teachings. Morality can generally infer to matters that are mainly of evil versus good, and right versus wrong. In a nutshell, such plays laid focus on the war between evil and good (Kennedy, X. J., & In Gioia, 2012).
Medieval Morality Drama
Medieval Drama was a play staged on religious beliefs. It was during that time that the mysteries of god were brought into focus by way of studies and then presented to the society through plays in a bid to educate them in a rather pleasurable manner portraying themes and morals.
Morality plays were a genre of drama which was popular in medieval Europe and arguably originated from the preceding miracle plays. The medieval era refers to a time period between the 5th and fifteenth centuries. Morality plays, in particular, were popular between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Along with folk plays, mystery plays and interludes; morality plays formed part of medieval drama. According to the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, a morality play is an allegorical drama in which the characters personify moral qualities such as chastity or vice or abstractions such as death or youth and in which moral lessons are taught. The protagonist is usually confronted by personifications-by way of the supporting cast- of different moral values portraying good and evil. Usually, they focus on good versus evil and try to instil good moral virtues amongst the audience. Also, according to The Panther Country, by personifying vices and virtues, stories of temptation were meant to have easy access and readily open for those with reading difficulty (Kennedy, X. J., & In Gioia, 2012).
Morality plays can trace their roots back to the mystery plays of the eleventh century. Notably, they are plays that are marked and characterized by the medieval times. They represented a switch from these type of plays which were inclined towards religion; whereas morality plays were more secular and were performed in theatres. The earliest known example is “Castle of Perseverance” and the most known is “Everyman”. As time went by, moving into the sixteenth century, morality plays would become more and more secular, incorporating topics such as governance and academics (Adu-Gyamfi, & Schmidt, 2011).
The Panther Country noted that morality plays usually have three main themes as follows: the protagonist begins in innocence, the protagonist falls into temptation and finally, the protagonist repents and is saved. The focal point is usually the struggle of the protagonist against sins or evil. These sins are usually personified into real characters. Also, the allegorical application of theatre to Christianity was intended to help the audience in understanding both virtue and sin. (Schmitt, 2013). Two forms of morality plays existed, according to Schmitt (2013). First off, there are episodic versions where the main character’s various life stages were presented to the audience. They could see them go from birth, through life’s ups and downs up until their death and judgment day. An example is “The Castle of perseverance”. The other kind of play deals with a specific journey or age in a character’s life, a good example being the play “Everyman”.
However, there exists another type of morality play known as ‘interludes’ emerged about the end of the fifteenth century. Earlier plays had no restrictions in terms of time and number of actors but as the plays moved into indoor theatres, there arose a need to limit both and this in turn gave birth to interludes. Interludes only dealt with portions of the protagonist’s life and the ethical teaching was mainly limited to warnings against certain sins (Kennedy, X. J., & In Gioia, 2012).
Despite there being arguably different types of morality plays, there were obvious common characteristics which identified them, as noted by the Panther Country (Young, 2012).
First off, there was a protagonist who represented humanity either as a whole or as a smaller social structure. Besides, there were supporting characters who were personifications of good and evil. The main objective of these plays was to provide the audience with moral guidance. Finally, morality plays encouraged men to live a righteous life. These four characteristics are the easiest identifiers of a morality play (Adu-Gyamfi, & Schmidt, 2011).
According to Lester, (2014), morality plays acted as an intermediate step in the transition from liturgical or religious- based to professional secular drama, and combined elements of both. In fact, it was morality plays that preceded English renaissance theatre. The type of plays witnessed during the Elizabethan era borrowed heavily from morality plays.
Morality plays can still be seen even in modern culture, as noted by Bevington, (2011). Some churches have emphasized the horrific aspects of the plays, with an aim to teach values. There is also little doubt that morality plays have most certainly influenced modern fiction and drama. This influence can still be seen today, ingrained in European and American drama.
Conclusion
As compared to their mystery plays, Moralities had a number of benefits for the writers of the Renaissance as well as the modern ones who had their spirits waned besides having special revivals amidst them. The morality plays can be said to have arose due to the desires of the religious writers to express their wishes and have certain Christian principles taught to the society in so far as the Bible stories of Mysteries are concerned.
References
Adu-Gyamfi, Y., & Schmidt, M. R. (2011). Literature and spirituality. Boston: Longman.
In Kennedy, X. J., & In Gioia, D. (2012). Backpack literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing.
Young, K. (1933). The drama of the medieval church (Vol. 2). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bevington, D. M. (1962). From Mankind to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Schmitt, N. C. (1978). The Idea of a Person in Medieval Morality Plays. Comparative Drama, 23-34.
Lester, G. A. (Ed.). (2014). Three Late Medieval Morality Plays: Everyman, Mankind and Mundus et Infans: A New Mermaids Anthology. Bloomsbury Publishing.
