The morality play is a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries in medieval and early Tudor England that staged personified abstractions alongside supernatural characters engaged in moral conflict, typically angels and demons attempting to influence a human protagonist. Its narrative structure commonly follows what scholars describe as the temptation, fall and redemption of the protagonist, a conventional arc built around moral struggle and spiritual consequence.
Facts
Place of OriginEngland; the morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama that flourished from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. 1 Notable ExampleEveryman, a late fifteenth or early sixteenth century English morality play by an anonymous author, printed around 1530. 2 Defining TraitA morality play presents personified concepts, most often virtues and vices alongside angels and demons, engaged in a struggle to persuade a protagonist representing a generic human being toward good or evil. 1 FAQs
Did medieval writers call these plays morality plays?
No. The name was applied later by scholars, and the play texts do not call themselves morality plays.
Not in the way modern readers use the term. Scholars apply morality play to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, but the play texts do not refer to themselves as such. The genre and its name were conceived afterward by scholarship, as a way to understand texts that share enough in common to be read together. Only Everyman describes itself as a moral play, in its incipit and through a character called Messenger, and even that does not confirm a medieval genre label. The split between moralities, which Robert Dodsley treated as allegorical plays, and mysteries, which he treated as biblical plays, dates from the eighteenth century.
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Source Morality Play (Wikipedia)tier 2
Sources
1. Morality Play (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Lead section
The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama.
Definition paragraph
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 are engaged in a struggle to persuade a protagonist who represents a generic human character toward either good or evil.
View the Source 2. Everyman (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Opening sentenceQuote, Opening sentence
The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century or early 16th-century morality play by an anonymous English author, printed circa 1530.
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