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The 1522 cover of Mundus et Infans, a morality play. The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts (most often virtues and vices, but sometimes practices or habits) alongside angels and demons, who ...
Vice is a stock character of the medieval morality plays.While the main character of these plays was representative of every human being (and usually named Mankind, Everyman, or some other generalizing of humanity at large), the other characters were representatives of (and usually named after) personified virtues or vices who sought to win control of man's soul.
The Valenciennes Passion Play. Morality plays emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished until 1550. One notable example is The Castle of Perseverance which depicts mankind's progress from birth to death.
The play was written in Middle English during the Tudor period, but the identity of the author is unknown. Although the play was apparently produced with some frequency in the seventy-five years following its composition, no production records survive. [1] There is a similar Dutch-language morality play of the same period called Elckerlijc.
It is the earliest morality play by more than a century, and the only medieval musical drama to survive with an attribution for both text and music. A short version of Ordo Virtutum without music appears at the end of Scivias, Hildegard's most famous account of her visions.
Elckerlijc (also known as Elckerlyc) is a morality play from the Low Countries which was written in Dutch somewhere around the year 1470. It was first printed in 1495. The play was extremely successful and may have been the original source for the English play Everyman, as well as many other translations for other countries.
Skelton also wrote three plays, only one of which survives. Magnificence is one of the best examples of the morality play. It deals with the same topic as his satires - the evils of ambition. The play's moral, namely "how suddenly worldly wealth doth decay," was a favourite with him.
The term everyman was used as early as an English morality play from the early 1500s: The Summoning of Everyman. [4] The play's protagonist is an allegorical character representing an ordinary human who knows he is soon to die; according to literature scholar Harry Keyishian he is portrayed as "prosperous, gregarious, [and] attractive". [6]