Who originally performed by clergy later servants or wandering players Where indoors halls of great households inns When in between courses at household feasts and banquets ID: 1046998
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1. MankindEN121: Medieval to Renaissance English Literature
2. Who?: originally performed by clergy, later servants or wandering players Where?: indoors – halls of great households, innsWhen?: in between courses at household feasts and banquets – interlude literally means ‘in-between play’Interludes and morality plays
3. Morality playsAllegorical: not directly dramatising Bible stories as mystery plays did‘Everyman’ figure, Virtues and Vices; psychomachiaMankind was probably performed during the winter festive season, c. 1470, somewhere in East Anglia – very possibly a small tour.Interludes and morality plays
4. Earliest recorded example of a play for professional actors (compare last week’s civic dramas)Six actors (Titivillus could double with either Mischief or Mercy)References to East Anglian towns (Bury, Sauston, Hauston, Trumpington, Walton, Gayton, Fullburn, Massingham, Bottisham, Swoffeham) suggest performance near Cambridge and Lynn.Who’s in the audience? The text gives some clues:“O ye soverens that sitt, and ye brothern that stonde right uppe…” (29)Nought refers to “all the yemandry [yeomanry] that is here” (333)Mankind: performance
5. From David Bevington’s introduction:“When […] they performed in an innyard, they probably erected their booth stage up against one wall of the inn. The paying guests of the inn could then watch from balconies facing on the innyard, while humbler spectators stood in the yard around the stage as they did later in the Globe or Swan theaters. …” (2012: 902)Mankind: performance
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7. From David Bevington’s introduction:“When, on the other hand, the actors performed in a banqueting hall, they probably acted at one end of the room in front of the curtained doorways, with a musicians’ gallery visible over their heads – a physical arrangement not unlike the stage façade of later Elizabethan theaters.” (2012: 902)Mankind: performance
8. The Medieval Hall
9. NOWADAYS. Make rom, sers, for we have be longe!We will cum gif yow a Cristemes songe. (331-2)However, it is possible that this was performed during the Shrovetide festival (i.e. just before Lent), as Pamela M. King argues:“The texts that Mercy quotes from Job are part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy, whereas the activities of the minor vices have more in keeping with the carnivalesque revels of Shrovetide (335), the climax of the Christmas revels. That they make the audience sing a very bawdy ‘Christmas song’ is in no way incongruous, as the celebration of Christmas traditionally continued right up to the beginning of Lent.” (1994: 250)Festivity, carnival and misrule
10. Carnival and Lent (Pieter Bruegel, 1559)
11. Carnival and Lent (Pieter Bruegel, 1559)
12. Mercy is evidently dressed as some kind of priest or friar:NOUGHT. Cum forth, goode fader, I yow prey!By a lityll ye may assay.Anon, of[f] with yowr clothes, if ye will play. (86-8)MANKIND. I shall go to yondyr man, and asay him I will.I trust of gostly solace he will be my bote. (207-8)Opening speech sets up voice of moral authority:MERCY. Mercy is my name, that mo[u]rneth for yowr offence.Diverte not yowrsilffe in time of tem[p]tacion,That ye may be acceptable to Gode at yowr going hence. (18-20)Mercy
13. Performers cast in Vice roles were often expected to ad-lib (Wiles 2005: 4-5).The Vice would often wear a motley coat and carry a wooden dagger.New Guise, Nought and Nowadays are not deadly but worldly sins; they seem relatively harmless upon their first appearances, though Mercy warns us “Ye betray many men” (118).It is worth noting in this play, and in other morality plays, the order in which the Vices appear to the protagonist. Here, “New Guise”, “Nowadays” and “Nought” introduce Mankind to “Mischief”.Vices
14. They are associated with music, initially appearing as minstrels on their first entrance and singing as they exit:NOWADAYS. Leppe about lively! Thou art a wight man.Lett us be mery w[h]ill we be here. (76-7)Vices often “set up carnivalesque freedom as an alternative to ecclesiastical discipline” (Wiles 2005: 3).It becomes clear that they are not just amoral hedonists, but highwaymen, church-robbers, murderers and rapists.Vices
15. Like many of the audience Mankind is a farmer; his spade also gives him echoes of Adam.This is in many ways a play about the relationship between labour, holiday, virtue and sin (especially relevant given the festive context).Mercy to Mankind: “Do truly yowr labure, and be never idyll” (308).Mankind to the Vices: Leve yowr derision and yowr japing!I must nedys labure—it is my livinge. (349-50)Mankind
16. Mankind’s spade thus takes on enormous symbolic value: it is significant that it is the weapon he uses to beat away the Vices.It is when he loses his work ethic that the Vices start to win, and, tellingly, the point at which he loses his spade:MANKIND. Alasse, my corn is lost! Here is a foull werke!I se well, by tillinge lityll shall I win. [He throws down the spade in disgust.] Here I giff uppe my spade, for now and forever!To occupye my body I will not put me in dever. Here Titivillus goth out with the spade. (548-51)Following this, Mankind confides, “Of labure and preyer, I am nere irke of both” (585)Mankind’s spade
17. MANKIND. My name is “Mankinde.” I have my composicionOf a body and of a soull, of condicion contrarye—Betwix them tweyn is a grett division.He that shulde be subjecte, now he hath the victory. (194-7)Mankind laments the instincts of “my flesch, that stinking dungehill” (204).Mercy confirms: The temptacion of the flesch ye must resist like a man,For ther is ever a batell betwix the soull and the body:Vita hominis est militia super terram. [“The life of man on earth is a battle, a struggle”, Job 7: 1] (226-8)Body and soul
18. Mercy exhorts the audience to “Beholde not the erth, but lifte yowr ey[e] uppe!” (31)The Vices, on the other hand, are associated with the pleasures of the flesh and the earthly world:NEW-G[U]ISE. Cristys curse hade [ye] therfor! for I was in slepe.NOWADAYS. A[nd] I hade the cuppe in my honde, redy to goo to met[e]. (99-100)Body and soul
19. The philosopher and critic Mikhail Bakhtin made a study of “festive laughter” – the celebratory laughter of festivals and carnivals when normal social order is inverted.In carnivalesque imagery, says Bakhtin, the human body “is presented not in a private, egotistic form, severed from the other spheres of life, but as something universal, representing all the people. […] This is why all that is bodily becomes grandiose, exaggerated, immeasurable.” (1965: 19)“…the theme of mockery and abuse is almost entirely bodily and grotesque. The body that figures in all the expressions of the unofficial speech of the people is the body that fecundates and is fecundated, that gives birth and is born, devours and is devoured, drinks, defecates, is sick and dying.” (1965: 319)The grotesque body
20. Bakhtin: “The people’s laughter which characterized all the forms of grotesque realism from immemorial times was linked with the bodily lower stratum. Laughter degrades and materializes.” (1965: 20)MANKIND. … with my spade I shall yow dinge, by the holy Trinité! (377)NEW-G[UISE]. Alas, my jewellys! I shall be schent of my wiff[e]! (381)NEW-G[UISE]. Alasse, master, alasse, my privité! (429)NEW-G[UISE]. Ye shall not choppe my jewellys, and I may. (441)NOUGHT. I am doinge of my nedingys! (783)Slapstick comedy: New-Guise accidentally hanging himselfThe grotesque body
21. Mischief mocks official modes of speech, bringing them down to the physical: when Mercy talks metaphorically about corn and chaff, for example, Mischief takes the metaphor literally.Likewise, Nought brings the spiritual Mercy down to the level of the physical world by tripping him up.Mercy warns us that the Vices are “wers then bestys” [beasts], since “A best doth after his naturall institucion” but the Vices’ behaviour “is in derision / Of [t]her owyn Criste, to his dishonour” (165-9).“Laughter degrades and materializes”
22. It is both funny and significant that Titivillus uses Mankind’s bodily needs to interrupt his prayers:TITIVILLUS. Arise and avent the[e]! Nature compellys. [Mankind rises, and excuses himself to the audience.]MANKIND. I will into thi[s] yerde, soverens, and cum ageyn son[e].For drede of the colike, and eke of the ston[e],I will go do that nedys must be don[e]. (560-3)Later, Mankind is presumably snoring very conspicuously (Titivillus tells us we can “here him snore”, 592). It is thus the grotesque, sleeping body that lets in the devil.Upon being corrupted, his first thoughts are for the ale-house and a mistress/prostitute.“Laughter degrades and materializes”
23. You might recall the target of the satire in Chaucer’s Pardoner in the following lines:NOUGHT. Lo, master, lo, here is a pardon bely-mett—It is grawntyde of Pope Pokett:If ye will putt yowr nose in his wiffys sokett,Ye shall have forty days of pardon. (143-6)Parody and satire
24. Mercy repeatedly quotes scripture, which was of course known to the audience only in Latin.The Vices mock Mercy’s use of such Latinate terms as “denominacion” and “communicacion”, with their connotations of education and divinity:NEW-G[U]ISE. Ey, ey, yowr body is full of Englisch Laten! (124)NOWA[DAYS]. Ye are a strong cunning clerke;I prey yow hertily, worschipp[f]ull clerke,To have this Englisch mad in Laten:"I have etun a disch-full of curdys,Ande I have schetun yowr mowth full of turdys."Now, opyn yowr sachell with Laten wordysAnde sey me this in clericall manere! (128-34)Parody: Latin
25. Nowadays’ use of Latin is somewhat cruder: “Osculare fundamentum!” (142)Later, we see Nought use similar tactics to bring Mankind’s citation of scripture down to the mundane:MANKIND. Yit this instrument, soverens, is not made to defende.Davide seyth, “Nec in hasta, nec in gladio, salvat Dominus.” [Neither with the spear nor with the sword does the Lord save.]NOUGHT [over his shoulder]. No, mary, I beschrew yow, it is in spadibus! (396-8)Parody: Latin
26. The Vices parody the formalities of a manor-court session:NOWADAYS. Oy-yt, oy-yit, oyet! All manere of men and comun womenTo the cort of Mischiff othere cum or sen! (667-8)Nought, we learn, has illegible written Latin:NOUGHT. Holde, master Mischeff, and rede this!MISCHEFF. Here is [reads] "Blottibus in blottis,Blottorum blottibus istis." (679-81)Mischief also (deliberately?) mistranslates “Curia tenta generalis” [“The general court having been held”] as “In a place ther goode ale is” (687-8).Mankind is made to swear oaths promising to commit adultery, steal, murder, eat and drink to excess, skip religious worship and become a highwayman.Parody: Law
27. In Medieval England, the Latin term ludus was used to refer to both drama and game:the Prolucutor for the mid-fourteenth-century Anglo-Irish play The Pride of Life announces that “this oure game schal gin and ende / Throgh Jhesu Cristis swete grace” (ll. 111-12); the Durham Prologue requests its spectators to fall silent for “Oure gamen” (l. 3); the Epilogue from the late fifteenth-century Reynes Extracts likewise refers to its audience as “Ye that arn come to sen oure game” (l. 24);a character in the roughly contemporaneous Fulgens and Lucrece tells the audience at the end that the aim of the play, at least in part, has been “to make folk mirth and game” (l. 2320).Play as game
28. Mankind uses the word to mean more than simply “play”…MISCHEFF. I say, ser, I am cumme hedyr to make yow game. (68)MISCHEFF. I, Mischeff, was here at the beginninge of the game,Ande arguyde with Mercy—Gode giff him schame! (417-18)Wiles: ‘He [Mischief] is at once the villain, whom the audience learn to shun, and the welcome game-maker who makes the play possible.’ (2005: 1-2)Play as game
29. Nowadays says to Mercy, “Men have lityll deynté of yowr pley, / Because ye make no sporte” (267-8).The Vices’ song makes their modus operandi clear:NOUGHT. Now I prey all the yemandry that is hereTo singe with us, with a mery chere! [He sings a line at a time; New-Guise and Nowadays lead the audience in singing after him.] It is wretyn with a cole, it is wretyn with a cole…Having seduced the audience into joining in, Nought leads them first into obscenity:NOUGHT. He that schitith with his hoyll, he that schitith with his hoyll……and then into blasphemy:Cantant omnes: Hoylyke, holyke, holyke! holyke, holyke, holyke! (333-43)Play as game
30. All the characters in morality drama appeal directly to the audience, offering advice, injunctions, suggestions etc.Note how each character addresses the audience on first entrance:MERCY. O soverence, I beseche yow yowr condicions to rectifye…O ye soverens that sitt, and ye brothern that stonde right uppe,Prike not yowr felicites in thingys transitorye! (13, 29-30)Dramaturgical pattern of sinning and redemption
31. MERCY. The corn shall be savyde, the chaffe shall be brente.I besech yow hertily, have this [in] premeditacion. [Enter Mischief]MISCHEFFE. I beseche yow hertily, leve yowr calc[ ul]acion!Leve yowr chaffe, leve yowr corn, leve yowr daliacion!Yowr witt is lityll, yowr hede is mekyll, ye are full of predicacion. (43-7)Audiences probably enjoy the disrespectful treatment of an authority figure at first…Dramaturgical pattern of sinning and redemption
32. When Mercy attempts to stop the Vices’ merry dance, he comes across as a spoilsport:[MERCY.] Do wey! do wey this rev[e]ll, sers, do wey! (82)He warns us against the Vices while they are still enormous fun, lecturing us:“Beware therof! It is wers than ony felony or treson.” (171)“To perverte yowr condicions, all ther menys shall be sow[gh]te.Gode son, intromitt not yowrsylff in ther cumpeny!” (296-7)Dramaturgical pattern of sinning and redemption
33. Do we listen?For an audience at a feast or in an inn-yard, Mercy’s advice might not be the most welcome:Distempure not yowr brain with goode ale nor with win[e].“Mesure is tresure”; I forbid[d]e yow not the use.Mesure yowrsylf ever. Beware of excesse. (236-8)Dramaturgical pattern of sinning and redemption
34. Mercy bids us “Beware of Titivillus” (301)Titivillus was, explains Wickham, “a devil armed by Satan with a cloak of invisibility, a net and a satchel to help him in the specific task of collecting men’s sinful thoughts and utterances to be stored against them and counted on the Day of Judgement” (1976: 3).Titivillus
35.
36. But the audience is actively required by the dramaturgical structure of the play to ignore Mercy’s advice:NEW-G[U]ISE. Ye, go thy wey, we shall gather mony ontoEllys ther shall no man him se.[To the audience.] Now gostly to owr purpos, worschipfull soverence,We intende to gather mony, if it plesse yowr necligence,For a man with a hede that [is] of grett omnipotens— (457-61)Titivillus
37. Starting with “the goode-man of this house” [the master of the feast? the innkeeper?], the Vices collect money from the audience; presumably the play will not continue if the actors are not paid (467).Titivillus has a big, spectacular entrance (since he doubles with either Mercy or Mischief and is described as having a head “of grett omnipotens”, he presumably wears some kind of mask).Titivillus
38. Titivillus wastes no time in co-opting his audience into his nefarious plans (in this, we might see a forerunner of characters like Shakespeare’s Iago, Edmund and Richard III)TITIVILLUS. To speke with Mankinde I will tary here this tide,Ande assay his goode purpose for to sett aside.The goode man Mercy shall no lenger be his g[u]ide.I shall make him to dawnce another trace! (525-8)He tells us that “befor his ey thus I will hange my nett” and that “This borde shall be hid[d]e under the erth prevely” (530, 533), before requesting that we keep his secret: “Yondyr he commith. I prey of cownsell” (539).Audience complicity
39. He maintains this complicity as his plan is underway: “Qw[h]ist! Pesse! I shall go to his ere and tityll therin” (557).For Titivillus, this is all still part of a game: “Ye shall a goode sport, if ye will abide” (576):TITIVILLUS. Ande ever ye dide, for me kepe now yowr silence!Not a worde, I charge yow, peyn of forty pens!A praty game shall be schewde yow, or ye go hens. (589-91)By the end of this sequence, how is the audience feeling about the “game”?TITIVILLUS. For-well, everychon, for I have don my game,For I have brought Mankinde to mischeff and to schame! (605-6)Audience complicity
40. When Mercy finally reappears, perhaps his relationship with the audience has changed. Now, he confides that MERCY. My minde is dispersyde, my body trymmelith as the aspen leffe!The terys shuld trekyll down by my chekys, were not yowr reverrence. (734-5)He exits, heartbroken, crying “My predilecte son, wher be ye? Mankinde, ubi es?” (771)Mischief re-enters, mocking Mercy’s grief:MISCHEFF. My prepotent fadere, when ye sowpe, sowpe out yowr messe!Ye are all to-gloriede in yowr termys – ye make many a lesse.Will ye here? He crieth ever “Mankinde, ubi es?” (772-4)Dramaturgical pattern of sinning and redemption
41. When Mankind falls into despair, the Vices bring on a rope and gallows; Mercy scares them away and offers, “Dispose yowrsylff mekly to aske mercy, and I will assent” (816). Mercy and the Bible, having been roundly mocked and subverted, finally come to the rescue:MERCY. Nolo mortem peccatoris, inquit [“I do not wish the sinner’s death, he said”; Ezekiel 33:11)The play ends, like a church service, with a religious blessing:MERCY. Dominus custodit te ab omni malo!In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. [“The Lord preserve you from all evil! / In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.]Dramaturgical pattern of sinning and redemption
42. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1965) Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Bevington, David (2012) Medieval Drama, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.King, Pamela M. (1994) ‘Morality Plays’ in Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher [eds] The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, Cambridge: C. U. P. Wickham, Glynne (1976) English Moral Interludes, London: Dent.Wiles, David (2005) Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse, Cambridge: C. U. P.References