EVERYMAN

A Morality Play
 ORIGIN OF DRAMA

work story drama

 SHAPING WITH A PURPOSE
“the drama is but an old story retold to the eye, a story put into action by living performers,
who for the moment "make believe" or imagine themselves to be the old heroes.”
W. J. Long
• Great deeds of great people (gods, legends and heroes)
• Life of Christ
• Gospels of Bible
• Religion and its conversion into literature and art
• With purpose to propagate people in general & children in particular
• For people who could not read
• Life of Christ→ Old Testament→ a complete cycle of the life from creation to final judgement.
 GROWTH
• Religious age of drama
• Stories and characters are drawn from New Testament
• With an aim to do church service and induce moral lesson
• Greek Roman and French influence on early drama
• In 1110 first recorded miracle play
• For two centuries it grew and flourish in church compounds
• By 1300 it came out of ecclesiastical hands and adopted by town guilds
• For the next two centuries church criticized the enjoyment and entertainment of dramas
• By 14th century there was a complete cycle of plays beginning with birth and creation and
ending with final judgement
• In 16th century these dramas were replaced by Elizabethans plays
 MYSTERY AND MIRACLE PLAYS
• Miracle- any play representing the lives of the saints
• Mystère- the life of Christ or stories from the Old Testament associated with the coming of
Messiah.
• In England the name Miracle was used indiscriminately for all plays having their origin in
the Bible or in the lives of the saints.
• The earliest Miracle play in England is the Ludus de Sancta Katharina (in french), which
was performed in Dunstable about the year 1110.
• Cycle of plays- at Christmas plays connected with the birth of Christ; and at Easter, the plays
relating to his death and triumph.
• The complete cycle was presented every spring, beginning on Corpus Christi day
 CONTINUED…
• Four recorded cycles-
• The Chester plays- 25 plays
• The York plays- 48
• the Towneley or Wakefield plays- 30
• the Coventry plays- 42
• Since they were religious plays, no changes are allowed to the story, no originality was
possible except songs, jokes and pranks of devil
• They were important because
• Tells about the imagination of the people
• Throws lights over the dramatic conventions
 MORALITY PLAYS
• the characters were allegorical personages: Life, Death, Repentance, Goodness, Love, Greed, and other
virtues and vices
• Only 5 surviving till now- The Pride of Life, The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom, Mankind, Everyman
• gave free scope to the imagination for new plots and incidents
• Offered moral instruction
• Allegorical
• Set in no time, outside historical time
• Mixing eternal with contemporary
• Protagonist is the symbol of humanity
• Theme- temptation→ alienation form god→ return to god,
• Belief in complete free will of human, one can control the future in other world by the deed in this world