Morality Play - History

History

The morality play developed during the Medieval period. The morality plays attempted to educate via entertainment. It is thought that the Dominican and Franciscan orders of Christian friars developed the morality play in the 13th century by adding actors and theatrical elements to their sermons. By doing so, the (mainly illiterate) masses could more easily learn the basics of Christianity through dramatic spoken word. This made complex topics such as original sin and atonement more easily understood. By personifying vices, virtues, the Devil and the Good Angel, stories of temptation were made accessible to those who were unable to read them themselves.

The main theme of the morality play is this: Man begins in innocence, man falls into temptation, Man repents and is saved. The central action is the struggle of Man against the seven deadly sins that are personified into real characters (prosopopoeia). It is believed that the allegory of vices and virtues fighting over Man’s soul goes back to the 4th century Roman epic, Psychomachia. This allegorical application of theatre to Christianity is intended to help the audience understand the greater concepts of sin and virtue. The three greatest temptations that Man faces in morality plays are The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. It is stressed that “Sin is inevitable” but that “repentance is always possible”. Morality plays were not holiday-specific; they could be performed at any time of the year, as repentance occurs at any time of the year.

Read more about this topic:  Morality Play

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.
    Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)

    No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)