Three Late Medieval Morality Play A New Mermaids Anthology

This modern-spelling edition sets three late medieval morality plays into their religious, literary and theatrical contexts. Unlike the civic mystery plays, their purpose was not to present scenes from the Bible to the townspeople, but to dramatise Christian Man's spiritual crises as he strives to withstand temptation and to find grace. Mankind is temporarily affected by Mischief, who has laid a bet with Mercy for Mankind's soul. Close to despair, the ultimate sin, he is nonetheless saved and lives on a chastened man. Everyman is a more sober vision of dissolute Man's preparation for death: to his dismay he finds that none of his former associates, like Fellowship, Goods or Beauty, will accompany him on his last journey; only Good Deeds is ready to follow him to the grave. In a series of soliloquies Everyman submits to God's Knowledge and dies a good death. Mundus and Infans is broader in scope and more raucous in humour: Folly, an early example of the sixteenth-century Vice, leads the Child astray when he enters the service of the World; it is only when the Child has grown into Age and been transformed by Perseverance into Repentance that his life's journey comes to a good end.