INTRODUCTION

Only five medieval English morality plays survive: The Pride of Life (85, pp. 90-105), The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom, Mankind (83) and Everyman (86, 87), to give them their common titles, together constitute the entire corpus of an apparently influential native dramatic genre. The identification of the genre has been retrospective and depends largely on the perceived influence of these plays on the more abundantly surviving Tudor interlude. It is possible on the basis of the few surviving texts to construct a working definition of a characteristic dramaturgy for the morality play, yet their absolute cohesion as a group is bound to be questioned in any attempt to define that form in its individual manifestations and theatrical contexts, particularly as The Pride of Life is a corrupt Anglo-Irish text and Everyman a translation from a Dutch original.

What these plays have in common most obviously is that they offer their audiences moral instruction through dramatic action that is broadly allegorical. Hence they are set in no time, or outside historical time, though their lack of historical specificity is generally exploited by strategically collapsing the eternal with the contemporary. The protagonist is generally a figure of all men, reflected in his name, Everyman or Mankind, and the other characters are polarised as figures of good and evil.