Three Late Medieval Morality Play: A New Mermaids Anthology
- ISBN-10
- 0713666617
- ISBN-13
- 9780713666618
- Category
- Drama
- Pages
- 208
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2002-12-20
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
- Author
- G.A. Lester
Description
"Take example, all ye that this do hear or see…" The Morality Play was popular in England between 1400 and 1600. It offers moral instruction and spiritual teaching with personal abstractions representing good and evil. Surviving plays from that period number about sixty and the three in this edition were among the first ten. Mankindis a plain, honest farming man who struggles against worldly and spiritual temptation. The bawdy humour and violent action in the play serve to make the moral point and instruct by example. Everyman portrays a man's struggles in the face of death to raise himself to a state of grace so that he may experience everlasting life. It is exceptional among the Moralities for this narrow focus on the last phase of life, and conveys its message with awe-inspiring seriousness. Mundus et Infansis more typical of the Morality genre. It shows an arrogant, bullying protagonist led astray by a single evildoer into a life of debauchery, before the inevitable conversion to virtue. In showing the whole of man's life it is the antithesis of Everyman, the action of which seems to take place in a single day.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Titus Andronicus: Revised Edition
By Jonathan BateA pioneering study by Philip Timberlake, long ignored by mainstream scholarship, revealed the huge difference in the number of lines with feminine endings ...
-
Winter Hill
By Timberlake WertenbakerQuestioning the lengths people should go in the name of a cause, Timberlake Wertenbaker's Winter Hill premiered at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in May 2017.
-
The Love of the Nightingale
By Timberlake WertenbakerThe Love of the Nightingale
-
Our Country's Good
By Timberlake WertenbakerBased on a historical incident.
-
Imaginary Betrayals: Subjectivity and the Discourses of Treason in Early Modern England
By Karen CunninghamKaren Cunningham looks at contemporary records of three prominent cases in order to demonstrate the degree to which the imagination was used to prove treason: the 1542 attainder of Katherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, charged with ...
-
A Private Function
By Alan BennettThis classic collection contains a new essay by Alan Bennett, besides the original introductions to A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears and The Madness of King George.
-
Invisible Friends
By Alan AyckbournWhen Lucy, an ordinary teenager, feels ignored by her family, she brings her childhood fantasy friend Zara back to life, only to have her materialize and bring with her a dream family for Lucy
-
Performing King Lear: Gielgud to Russell Beale
By Jonathan CroallIts greatest pleasure comes from Mr Plummer's taking you step by step through Lear's enormous changes in temperament and insight, and justifying every turn on both an intellectual and gut level. I have never seen an audience so ...
-
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
By William ShakespeareCast: Matte Osian (Richard), Barry Smith (Bolingbroke), Frank O'Donnell (Gaunt), Kadina de Elejalde (Queen), Robert F. McCafferty (Northumberland), David W. Frank (York). Running time 93 minutes. An independent film shot on a disused ...
-
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two: The Official Playscript of the Original West End Production
By J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John TiffanyThis edition also includes useful background information including the Potter family tree and a timeline of events from the Wizarding World prior to the beginning of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.