PLOT

In outline the interlude entitled Hick Scorner is a simple tale in the morality tradition, in which a representative figure, Free Will, inclines towards vice but is eventually won for virtue by the actions of good advisers. The play begins with the meeting of three virtues: Pity, Contemplation and Perseverance. Each describes his role in the salvation of mankind. The theological and ethical system which they articulate is fundamentally conservative. Pity defines himself as the kind of love which motivated Christ to intercede for humanity and which offers everyone the prospect of redemption.

He governs the other two; Contemplation, ‘brother to Holy Church’ (line 43), whose adoption of the solitary, heremetic, ideal paradoxically equips him for the active life as warrior of the Church Militant, and Perserverance, the quality necessary to turn good intentions into a life of grace. The three lament the current parlous state of English society. People, Pity says, have no time for Contemplation. Priests ignore him and live ‘uncleanly’. Poverty grinds down the commons, but gentlemen and lords offer no charity, preferring to marry off their heirs and clients to rich widows in lucrative marriages of convenience.