Morality Play

Morality Play
Author: Barry Unsworth
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2017-08-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525434097

A New York Times Notable Book In medieval England, a runaway scholar-priest named Nicholas Barber has joined a traveling theater troupe as they make their way toward their liege lord’s castle. In need of money, they decide to perform at a village en route. When their traditional morality plays fail to garner them an audience, they begin to stage the “the play of Thomas Wells”—their own depiction of the real-life drama unfolding within the village around the murder of a young boy. The villagers believe they have already identified the killer, and the troupe believes their play will be a straightforward depiction of justice served. But soon the players soon learn that the details of the crime are elusive, and the lines between performance and reality become blurred as they discover, scene by scene, line by line, what really happened. Thought-provoking and unforgettable, Morality Play is at once a masterful work of historical fiction, a gripping murder mystery, and a literary work of the first order.

The English Morality Play

The English Morality Play
Author: Robert A Potter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2023-07-14
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1000928624

First published in 1975, The English Morality Play is the extended history of the English morality play, its persistence and flourishing as a dramatic tradition. The book sheds light on the intellectual and social origins of the morality play, its relationship to the medieval Corpus Christi cycle plays, its subject, purpose, conditions of original staging, and the abstract characters of its dramatis personae. The changing tradition is revealed within Renaissance drama, in the works of Skelton and Medwall, and the Reformation plays of Lindsay, Bale and Udall, as the morality play altered under the pressure of political events, escaped from the general suppression of religious drama, and in complex ways came to influence the dramatic conceptions of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Contemporary parallels to the English morality tradition in European drama are investigated, as is the rediscovery of the texts of the plays by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century critics. In the final chapter, Dr. Potter examines the revival of the morality tradition on the twentieth-century stage and its influence on such dramatists as Bernard Shaw, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats and Bertolt Brecht. This book will be of interest to students of literature and drama.

Theater of the Word

Theater of the Word
Author: Julie Paulson
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0268104646

In Theater of the Word: Selfhood in the English Morality Play, Julie Paulson sheds new light on medieval constructions of the self as they emerge from within a deeply sacramental culture. The book examines the medieval morality play, a genre that explicitly addresses the question of what it means to be human and takes up the ritual traditions of confession and penance, long associated with medieval interiority, as its primary subjects. The morality play is allegorical drama, a “theater of the word," that follows a penitential progression in which an everyman figure falls into sin and is eventually redeemed through penitential ritual. Written during an era of reform when the ritual life of the medieval Church was under scrutiny, the morality plays as a whole insist upon a self that is first and foremost performed—constructed, articulated, and known through ritual and other communal performances that were interwoven into the fabric of medieval life. This fascinating look at the genre of the morality play will be of keen interest to scholars of medieval drama and to those interested in late medieval culture, sacramentalism, penance and confession, the history of the self, and theater and performance.

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre
Author: Richard Beadle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2008-07-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139827928

The drama of the English Middle Ages is perennially popular with students and theatre audiences alike, and this is an updated edition of a book which has established itself as a standard guide to the field. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, second edition continues to provide an authoritative introduction and an up-to-date, illustrated guide to the mystery cycles, morality drama and saints' plays which flourished from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. The book emphasises regional diversity in the period and engages with the literary and particularly the theatrical values of the plays. Existing chapters have been revised and updated where necessary, and there are three entirely new chapters, including one on the cultural significance of early drama. A thoroughly revised reference section includes a guide to scholarship and criticism, an enlarged classified bibliography and a chronological table.

Everyman

Everyman
Author: Anonymous
Publisher:
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2021-11-27
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9781420978001

Written in Middle English during the Tudor period, "Everyman" is the most famous example of the medieval morality play. Popular in Europe during the 15th and 16th century, morality plays were allegorical dramas in which the protagonists are met with the personifications of personal attributes and tasked with choosing either a good and godly life or evil. "Everyman" is the archetypal morality play, as the main character, Everyman, represents all of mankind. God, frustrated with the wicked and greedy, sends Death to Everyman and summons him to account for his misdeeds and sins. It was believed that God tallied all of one's good and evil deeds in life and then one must provide an accounting before God upon one's death. During Everyman's pilgrimage to God, he meets many characters, such as Fellowship, Good Deeds, and Knowledge. Everyman asks them all to join him in his journey so that he may improve his reckoning before God. In the end, it is only Good Deeds that stays with him before God and helps Everyman find salvation and eternal life. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Mystery and Morality Plays - The Delphi Edition (Illustrated)

Mystery and Morality Plays - The Delphi Edition (Illustrated)
Author: Anonymous Playwrights
Publisher: Delphi Classics
Total Pages: 2941
Release: 2022-09-12
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1801700672

The mystery and morality play were two of the three principal kinds of vernacular drama in Europe during the Middle Ages. Mystery plays, usually representing biblical subjects, developed from dramas presented in Latin by churchmen on sacred premises, depicting subjects like the Creation, Adam and Eve and the Last Judgment. They were often performed together in cycles which could last for days at special festivals and occasions. The morality play is an allegorical drama, in which the characters personify moral qualities and undergo didactic lessons. The action centres on a hero, such as Mankind, whose inherent weaknesses are assaulted by personified diabolic forces like the Seven Deadly Sins, but who may choose redemption and enlist the aid of such figures as Mercy, Justice, Temperance and Truth. This eBook presents a comprehensive collection of mystery and morality plays, with numerous illustrations, rare medieval texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) Please note: due to the book‐burning zeal of the English Reformation, no English text of a ‘miracle play’ survives and so an example of this drama cannot appear in this edition. * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to mystery and morality plays * Concise introductions to the major cycles and plays * All of the plays of the four principal mystery play cycles (York, Wakefield, N-Town and Chester) * The plays appear in the form of their original Middle English texts * Many rare dramas appearing for the first time in digital publishing * All extant English morality plays from the Middle Ages * Excellent formatting of the texts * Special Middle English glossary of words to aid your reading of the plays * Special contextual section, with four essays charting the development of drama in the Middle Ages * Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Mystery Plays York Mystery Plays (c. mid-14th century) Wakefield Mystery Plays (mid-15th century) N-Town Plays (late 15th century) Chester Mystery Plays (15th century) The Morality Plays The Pride of Life (late 14th century) The Castle of Perseverance (c. 1425) Wisdom (c. 1460) Mankind (c. 1470) Nature (c. 1495) by Henry Medwall Everyman (1510) Contextual Works Miracle Plays and Mysteries (1913) by Georges Michel Bertrin English Miracle Plays (1914) by Arnold Wynne Moralities and Interludes (1914) by Arnold Wynne Rise of the Drama (1921) by Andrew Lang Glossary of Middle English Words Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks

Everybody

Everybody
Author: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Total Pages: 59
Release: 2018-06-18
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0822237229

This modern riff on the fifteenth-century morality play Everyman follows Everybody (chosen from amongst the cast by lottery at each performance) as they journey through life’s greatest mystery—the meaning of living.

Moral Play and Counterpublic

Moral Play and Counterpublic
Author: Ineke Murakami
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2011-02-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1136807101

In this study, Murakami overturns the misconception that popular English morality plays were simple medieval vehicles for disseminating conservative religious doctrine. On the contrary, Murakami finds that moral drama came into its own in the sixteenth century as a method for challenging normative views on ethics, economics, social rank, and political obligation. From its inception in itinerate troupe productions of the late fifteenth century, "moral play" served not as a cloistered form, but as a volatile public forum. This book demonstrates how the genre’s apparently inert conventions—from allegorical characters to the battle between good and evil for Mankind’s soul—veiled critical explorations of topical issues. Through close analysis of plays representing key moments of formal and ideological innovation from 1465 to 1599, Murakami makes a new argument for what is at stake in the much-discussed anxiety around the entwined social practices of professional theater and the emergent capitalist market. Moral play fostered a phenomenon that was ultimately more threatening to ‘the peace’ of the realm than either theater or the notorious market--a political self-consciousness that gave rise to ephemeral, non-elite counterpublics who defined themselves against institutional forms of authority.