Shida Chen Mr.

Stachura AP Literature and Composition 8-29-11

A Play on Morality

Morality Play introduces an interesting conundrum through its setting, medieval England. The culture the characters find themselves in consists of a strict and unrelenting paradigm. The harshness of life for the people and their resulting profound faith harbor an almost militaristic view towards how one should live, ultimately providing a plot for life with little leeway. Those who stray off this path are persecuted, but it is those who skirt its edges that take center stage and assume the leading roles in this work. The traveling players assume the role of societys outcasts with a natural propensity. They are vagrants, practically sacrilegious and certainly unsavory. Their constant fight for survival with meager supplies and narrowly appreciated talents forces them to bend the constraints that so comfortably surround their more sedentary counterparts, all while representing the very ideals they are forced to defy. It is within these struggles with morality, an entity so ironclad to others, yet malleable to them, that the barriers of complacency are shattered and the path to deeper meaning is revealed. A player in the world of Morality Play is barely tolerated. His profession does not fit into the narrow confines of the common world view, and in many ways this is for the common good. A person of theater in this era is more bandit than artisan, a wanderer whose prospects change from minute to minute, in step with moods and behaviors that are equally aberrant. Tricks, lies, and threats are as much a part of a players arsenal as props and words, all only useful to the extent that they provide the daily bread, chosen when opportune, with few regards for heaven or hell. For a holy man to be among such ranks is a twist that adds a unique perspective to this work, and thus comes the character of Nick. In many ways Nick embodies the prospective

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player. He is jaded, desperate, and bored. In a crisis of character motivated by hunger, he abandons his piety and past life in the house of another man, whose wife he had seduced. He leaves behind is his cloak, the physical manifestation of the mantle he had worn as a priest, the responsibilities and the innocence. In the events that would follow, Nick slowly learns the nature of his fall from grace, and how truly small that fall was. Initially, the dichotomy between priest and player seems as jarring as any. One role was mired in deception and sin, while the other was filled with the prospect of good deeds and morality. Nicks eventually realizes that the two positions are not as they seem to be, and his original perceptions are flipped. For in his time as a player he experiences the corruption and evil of the priesthood, and his own self-redemption and acceptance of his occupation. The conclusion he made stemmed from the answering of a question: What is the basis of mans morality? Initially, Nick believes that the rules of conduct that govern man spring wholly from the font of God. To defy social morays was to offend God and his emissaries on earth, starting from the first link of the Great Chain of Being, and ending with the last one above him. As he began performing, however, he realized how ill-defined the rules actually were. He, the failed priest, could for a short time become the physical embodiment of Truth in the eyes of the masses. For the duration of his mummers farce every word he uttered would be taken as law. Suspension of disbelief briefly gave his troupe the power that the original writers of the Bible never realized they had, and that lawmakers themselves are so conscious of. The peek into the source of power was enough to change his views entirely. The enthralling of the masses, his new trade, was repugnant to him, but the thrilling rush of power and the goading of his fellows, pushed him on. Of course, the minute the play was over, the illusion was destroyed. Truth and Hope are immaterial, but their avatars still needed to eat. It is for this need that the Play of Thomas

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Wells was created, a revolutionary play that was designed for attracting a bigger audience. The gimmick being that the plays events were not from the days of yore, but rather recent, and controversial. It is this event that finally answers Nicolas Barbers question. The members of the troupe all pitch in to research the actual murder, in an effort to add authenticity to the play. Initially, their depicted events follow the official story. However, as they delved further in the mystery the official events started to contradict each other. The people they ask begin to shirk away from answering, and the denial of the accused begins to ring true. By the second performance, the truth had sunk in, unconsciously, into the minds of the performers. As they continue their play, the collective results of their investigation piece themselves together, and the truth is drawn out without their knowledge or consent. They had conducted a de facto trial, judged by their own performances as aspects of morality, and had concluded that the official results were false. The answer was presented to Nick on a silver platter. Morality stemmed from the divine, to be sure. Murder and stealing were repulsive to the basest human nature, an aspect of God. After that, things became less simple. The fallibility and downright manipulative nature of his better man was placed clearly before him. The deeds of holy men could be obscene and the actions of nobility could be quite ignoble. As the story draws to a close, Nick chooses to remain with his peers, saved from unjust execution by an uncaring higher power, whose mercy was purely coincidence. Poor Nick, who never really understood the events that swirled around him, had finally reached his own conclusion, and with that conclusion came his decision to stay on the fringes of society, avoiding entity now seen as monstrously unfair. A morality play is a theatrical production wherein the actors assume the personified forms of popular morals. This novel is not one of them. Rather, it is an exploration on the

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concepts and nuances of morality, and how the term itself may be twisted, shaped, and misinterpreted. A play on words is a clever arrangement of language that belies a deeper meaning. And so this work is a play on morality.