Kaitlin Steiner, 2006
Morality plays, first introduced in the early fifteenth century and employed as a instrument of the church, were staged productions rich in Christian values in which moral lessons could be taught to the audience by means of Vice and Virtue characters and abstractions who would struggle for possession of man’s soul, thus determining his eternal salvation or damnation. The plays were concerned with man’s temptation, his fall and his repentance and punishment (or salvation), first focusing on man’s religious and eternal salvation after death and gradually, as time passed, gearing more towards man’s earthly redemption and prosecution. There was a divine plan of which God was the author, and once disturbed, needed to be repaired and equalized once again before life could continue. As the age of Shakespeare approached a shift of characterization (mainly the Vice) of play and plot structure, and the fading away of religious voice and symbolism is observed as the characters become more humanized and less metaphorical, giving the plays the flexibility and freedom to branch out and explore various plots and characters. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a strong example of one such Morality play in which the hero, Macbeth, is tempted, falls from grace, and must be brought to justice for order to be restored and for life once again to regain its delicate balance.
Early Morality plays stemmed from the Mystery and Miracle plays and were didactic in nature, employing such characters as the individual Seven Deadly Sins as Vice characters—those whose only want and purpose is tempting man and damning his soul. The characters in the plays “personify moral qualities (such as charity or vice) or abstractions (as death or youth)…in which moral lessons are taught” (Encyclopedia Britannica) and “focused on the religious and moral themes that dominated the Christian imagination during the Middle Ages” (Blue). Early Morality plays were thought by scholars to have been originally written by preachers and clergymen as an extension of their sermons and were much like the sermons of the day, as the “sermons and plays share the same matter: the moralized lives of saints, exhortations to repentance and good living, and the Salvation history of the New and Old Testaments” (Briscoe 151). They were written “in terms of the optimistic Christian humanism of the early Renaissance which stressed always the dignity of man and the providence of God” (Ribner 2). The characters themselves, with names such as “Idleness, Envy, Sloth, Shame, and Riches” (George 6) were unmistakable in their character representation, and the hero of the play in most cases was used to represent the human race and mankind in its entirety.
The Castle of Perseverance is the earliest known Morality play in existence (written in the earth fifteenth century), and along with Everyman is one of the most common and well-known Morality plays even today. The hero became caught in what is known as the Psychomachia of the play, or the symbolic struggle between good and evil (through Vice and Virtue characters) for the possession of man’s soul. Even though the play circles around his spiritual conflict, Man’s or Mankind’s ultimate concern and goal was indeed his own salvation. “[Morality plays] view life as a process of discovery, focusing particularly on the inevitability of sin, and on the cure to be found in repentance and forgiveness” (Briscoe 47). They use allegorical characters and place Mankind or representatives of Mankind in different, often unrealistic, situations in which the hero is tempted, chooses poorly, and must come to a realization and repent his sins. In doing so, he and the audience learn a moral lesson through the downfall of the hero. For example,
The main characters in “Everyman” are God, a Messenger, Death, Everyman, Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, Goods, Knowledge, Beauty, Strength, and Good Deeds. Everyman is immersed in worldly pleasures when Death summons unexpectedly him. He soon finds that none of his supposedly loyal companions (Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin) will go with him. His treasured Goods also desert him, and at the grave the qualities of the flesh (Beauty, Strength) also fade away. Only Good Deeds stays with him to help him get into Paradise, which is accomplished with the help and guidance of Knowledge, by means of Confession and Priesthood” (Blue).
Due to the fact that many of the early Moralities were written by clergymen strictly to stress spiritual righteousness and strongly discourage sinful behavior, “in many cases the author is unknown,” the “quality of writing in the moralities is uneven” and “characterization is also crude and naďve, and there is little attempt to portray psychological depth” (Blue). This was in part attributed to the preachers and religious figures at the pen who “controlled narrative to point out morals,” (Briscoe 160) which were always pointed at the audience. Morality plays get the audience involved by allowing them to identify themselves “in a unique way with the center of the action on stage, with the Human Race, Everyman, the Crowd of Souls” (Taylor, 270). It is said of these early Morality plays that “when these familiar medieval infestations have been removed…, the sick man is cured. He promises to reform his life, a counsel which he also recommends to those in the audience who may be suffering themselves from such hidden afflictions” (Briscoe 47). Briscoe also emphasizes that “the plays have instruction in faith and morals as a primary end” (151). It was only with time and with Shakespeare at the helm that the plays began to change and shift from profoundly religious and sermon-like in nature to sources of popular entertainment, and with it take on profundity and complexity both in character and in plot.
The Vice character, although slow to change, was also the character to undergo the most literary and contextual changes. The quality of the Vice in the Morality plays is what truly set them apart from other plays and in part what has made the Morality plays so appealing and successful during their reign. The Vice character went through many changes, both physical and symbolic, from the time of the early Moralities to the time of Shakespeare’s writing. As previously stated, the early Vice character was given simply-stated allegorical names such as “Death” or “Sin” and was man’s ultimate tempter, engaging in constant temptation of man and struggle for his soul. Due to the fact that most of the early Morality plays were extremely Christian in nature, the Vice character most often represented evil incarnate—not the Devil, per se, but a servant or extension of a Devil figure whose eminently evil nature was fundamentally enough to justify his wishes to destroy mankind.
With the onset of the Renaissance, the “stage conflict between the Vices and Virtues was a thing of the past” (George 28). The plays became a lot less sermon-like, the characters moving from allegorical in nature to actual characters with human names and attributes. They ceased to be metaphors. The plays became less about eternal after-life salvation and more about “being brought to earthly justice,” (George 30) the mindset of the hero dramatically shifting, “and his concern was now the world” (George 30). George also comments that “the playwrights were beginning to put evil where it really exists—in the mind of man. By the time of the Tudor Interludes, the Vice character was becoming a man with an evil nature, and his old allegorical name and nature were being concealed” (28).
With the shift away from religion- and moral-centered thinking from the Medieval to the Renaissance periods, the Vice character changed from an “outward manifestation of evil to an inward one” (George 8). He steps out of from behind his metaphorical mask and into the clothes of an everyday man, appealing to then-modern audiences who found themselves engaged in plays that no longer read like church but like popular theatrical entertainment, though the plays still retained a moral undertone. Playwrights were able now to bend the character of the Vice to fit a wider range of roles to which the Vice was easily fitted for and manipulated. He was called “half man, half metaphor” (George 30) because of the excellent ability his multi-faceted personality allowed him, easily able to change modes in order to play the various roles playwrights desired. The Vice was a two-sided character, possessing two faces or two natures, and “his two-fold nature allowed him to take an active position in both comedy and tragedy” (George 80).
“The Vice was the means through which the tediousness of the moral lesson was broken” (George 16). In fact, most of the appeal of the Vice character wasn’t his evil nature, but the way in which he tricked the hero and “[carried] out his plans” (George 4). The audience was intrigued by the series of events playwrights would concoct and the ways in which the hero would fall, tragic. The Vice character typically would blame the hero’s downfall on the hero himself, not taking much, if any, responsibility for the matter (George 40). Much often was the case in which the Vice character would provide the comic relief for the play as well and the Vice character, according to George, ended up in the later Morality plays becoming two types of Vice characters stemming from a hybrid-Vice character: the “comic-hybrid vice” and “villain-hybrid vice” (George 47).
The comic-hybrid vice was, as suggested by name, the more comical of the two, never intending much harm, being more of a teasing and fooling nature than of a malicious one. These were the characters such as Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV (Parts I and II) and Twelfth’s Night’s fool Feste that provided the comic relief and amused the audience with their foolery and antics. George commends that this was the character “noted for carrying out bawdy, rough antics” (48). Shakespeare was the playwright who most influenced the development of the comic-hybrid vice, equipping the character with wit and merriment that provoked comical reaction from the audience. He took the comic-hybrid vice from center stage and made him more of a background character that provided the comic relief through mocking and ridiculing the other characters (George 50). Also, “Shakespeare did not allow his comic-hybrid Vice to dominate the play and control the action through scheming” (George 50) nor “are Shakespeare’s comic-hybrid Vice characters vicious; he leaves maliciousness to his villains” (George 51).
The villain-hybrid Vice was a character of a different breed entirely from the comic-hybrid Vice. Not usually one for providing comic relief, the villain-hybrid Vice was malicious in nature and inherently evil—he most often had no motive for his actions and genuinely delights in the turmoil he causes. George calls the villain-hybrid Vice “a designing monster whose outstanding characteristics lie in his ability to plot evil by means of deceit and in his relative lack of motive for doing so” (59). The character of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello is a perfect example of a villain-hybrid Vice--the embodiment of the concealed evil in a Vice character. Unlike the allegorical Vice characters of the early Morality plays, Shakespeare creates a Vice who hides his dual, diabolical nature behind a disguise of seeming goodness in order to trick Othello and damn his soul. Iago’s motives are only to destroy—mainly Othello, but also anyone else who should stand in his way.
What is typical of all Vices, old or new, is that they feel “no pain and no remorse for the trouble [they cause]” (George 17). Whereas the Vice character of the old Morality plays was a direct descendent of some religious evil, the Vice character of Shakespeare’s era was evil just to be evil. The new Vice was seemingly “part man and part evil…[having] very little or no motive to justify the cause of the action he pursued” (George 49). The majority of the time the character lacked any real oblige for wreaking the havoc that he does, and in all instances feels no obligation or responsibility to the pain and disruption that he has caused. “At will he causes discord…gulling victim after victim and causing friends to be at war against each other” (George 41). Although the playwrights had considerable more flexibility to create a reason or a multitude of reasons for the Vice character’s disdain and seemingly irrational behavior, most of the Vices were left without motive, perhaps much adding to the appeal of the character.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth has basic contextual elements of a Morality play, with Macbeth being the historical figure who is, in a sense, representing Mankind and teaching the audience a moral lesson through his “Innocence, Temptation and Fall, Life in Sin, and Realization and Repentance” (Taylor, 289). Macbeth isn’t, however, a Morality play in the strictest terms of what has been described above, but an extension, exploration and experimentation by Shakespeare of the genre of the Morality. I have discussed how Shakespeare redefined the Vice character through a schism, which produced two different Vices: the comic-hybrid Vice and the villain-hybrid Vice. It seems to me that in creating these two characters from the old morality Vice, Shakespeare revolutionized the world of the Morality play, adding flexibility to a once stoic character and paving paths for the evolution of the Vice character into a more humanized and multi-dimensional being, capable of simultaneously being a comedian and a destroyer of man.
Macbeth is a departure from the old Morality plays in that it has a few characters that one may consider “Vices,” though, unlike most other Moralities, there is no one definitive Vice character who causes the chaos and pursues bloody ends. One could interpret these vices to include the three witches who entice Macbeth and evoke from within him greed and lust with prophetic visions of his future, and Lady Macbeth, who tempts and ultimately convinces her husband to commit the crime of murder. I argue that Macbeth himself could also be viewed as a Vice character, for, although he is brought to action by another Vice, he finds himself unable to stop committing crimes against man and nature and as a result is directly responsible for his own downfall. In this we can see how Macbeth differs from Shakespeare’s “traditional” Vice characters; “where Othello struggles against the poison of Iago’s lies, Macbeth struggles dreadfully against his own nature and wins the terrible victory of his damnation” (Ornstein 230).
Shakespeare uses his Vice characters very effectively in Macbeth, for he leaves his audience in a state of confusion over who exactly the evil is in the play and what is his purpose. This is a further extension of the earlier discussion regarding evil becoming a part of the human Vice instead of the Vice character being simply an obvious allegorical symbol for evil. Not only is the evil hidden now inside the Vice character but there are multiple Vice characters who possess fragmented villainous qualities and complement each other to elicit the evil in the story. Like the traditional Morality play, however, the resolution of the play must contain the cleansing of evil, a reconciliation and restoration of order, which in this case is the death of Macbeth (and Lady Macbeth), to allow for an earthly justice and absolution and for the validation of moral life to continue once the sin has been purged.
From its birth in the fifteenth century through its early allegorical and religious stages, schism, finally to its evolution and freedom of character interpretation, the Morality play has been an important stepping stone in the history of theater and literature. Always rich in Christian values, its purpose ultimately is to stress the importance of unconditional morality through the fall and consequent bringing to justice of tragic heroes who represented Mankind. Through its use of Vice and Virtue characters, the genre’s pioneer playwrights have shaped and reshaped the Morality play, adding texture and depth to both the characters and the plot and fashioned many of the characters that are found in modern theater, novels, and screenplays. The most important of these pioneers is Shakespeare, who broke the Morality play from its religious chains and by his own creative modifications transformed the genre into plays like Macbeth—plays that still ultimately show the struggle between good and evil and restoration of moral order, but do so while captivating and intriguing audiences and revolutionizing modern drama.