The morality is, by the most recent and most exact definition (W. R. Mackenzie in The English Moralities) a play allegorical in structure, which has for its main object the teaching of some lesson for the guidance of life, and in which the principal characters are personified abstractions or highly universalized types." It will be readily seen that the morality differs from the miracle in several important respects. Whereas in the typical miracle, the writer found his material arranged to his hand and took his plot, his chief characters, and sometimes the basis for his dialogue, from the Bible narrative, the author of the morality, though he frequently had recourse for plot to the moral allegories of which the Middle Ages were so fond, was compelled to rely more upon his own invention. The purpose of the miracle was to familiarize the audience with Bible history and the doctrines of the church; the morality was equally didactic but its teaching was more abstract. The people of the miracle were historical and real, in the sense that they stepped straight out of the Bible to the stage, where, to be sure, they were sometimes joined by such thoroughly English figures as those of the Second Shepherds' Play; the personages of the morality were virtues and vices acting in accordance with their names, or types of humanity in general, and thus by nature had somewhat less of individuality and human appeal. In one respect, however, the conception of character in the morality is stronger than that in the miracle. The morality is based on the idea that character is not static, but subject to change and development; the element of conflict between vice and virtue, wisdom and folly, at the heart of the morality, is of the very essence of drama.

Though the morality is a younger type than the miracle, it must not be thought of as an evolution from the older didactic drama. It was in all probability of independent origin, springing up apparently about the beginning of the fifteenth century. The oldest surviving example is The Castle of Perseverance, dating from about 1400. Four other moralities are assigned to the fifteenth century; during the sixteenth the type attained considerable popularity, and the middle fifty years of that century may be called the morality's heyday.

The morality plays may be classified in several groups on the basis of allegorical

structure, as follows (the classification is Mackenzie's): 1, those which depict a conflict between virtues and vices for supremacy, or for the possession of man; 2, those which illustrate a special text; 3, those which give warning of the summons of death; 4, those which take one side of a religious or political controversy. Of the first and largest class, The Castle of Perseverance is a good example: the seven cardinal virtues defend the castle and its lord Mankind against the attack of the seven deadly sins. Not all the warfare of the morality stage symbolized the struggle everlasting of man's spiritual nature; John Redford's excellent Wit and Science, wherein Science (Learning) and Idleness are at odds over the young gallant Wit, is one of several plays in which the strife is intellectual rather than spiritual. Such plays, in their purpose to popularize the new learning, show the spirit of the Renascence; advocates and opponents of the Reformation also discovered that the stage could be made to serve for propaganda, and there result such moralities, in the fourth of our classes, as Lyndsay's political Satire of the Three Estates and Bishop Bale's violently anti-papal Kyng Johan. The second class, (which may be typified by All for Money, illustrating the text

The love of money is the root of all evil"), is small and unimportant; the third is even smaller, comprising but two plays, but of these one is the finest of all the moralities, Everyman.

sacra

To revert to our definition, it is evident that Everyman is allegorical in structure, and that it teaches a lesson for the guidance of life. Apart from the general didacticism, there are passages upholding specific doctrines and practices of the church- - e.g., Everyman's confession and penance (pp. 40-1), the enumeration of the seven ments, the praise of the priesthood immediately following. These passages, which convey the specific ecclesiastical moral of the efficacy of the sacraments, doubtless point to clerical composition. Of the characters, God is individual, with nothing of the typical or abstract about him, Everyman is a highly universalized type, Friendship, Kindred and Cousin are also types, while the others are abstractions. Only Everyman himself possesses much vitality, but the development of his character is done with force and skill. The way in which his first gay nonchalance shades into a dawning compre

Here beginneth a treatise how the High Father of Heaven sendeth Death to summon every creature to come and give account of their lives in this world and is in manner of a moral play.

Messenger. I pray you all give your audi

ence,

And hear this matter with reverence,
By figure a moral play:

The Summoning of Everyman called it is,
That of our lives and ending shows
How transitory we be all day.
This matter is wondrous precious,
But the intent of it is more gracious,
And sweet to bear away.

The story saith:-Man, in the beginning, Look well, and take good heed to the ending,

Be you never so gay;

Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet, Which in the end causeth the soul to weep,

When the body lieth in clay.

Here shall you see how Fellowship and Jollity,

Both Strength, Pleasure, and Beauty, Will fade from thee as flower in May. For ye shall hear, how our heaven king

1 in form.

Calleth Everyman to a general reckon

ing:

Give audience, and hear what he doth say. God speaketh.

God. I perceive here in my majesty,

How that all creatures be to me unkind, Living without dread in worldly prosperity;

Of ghostly 2 sight the people be so blind, Drowned in sin, they know me not for their God;

In worldly riches is all their mind. They fear not my righteousness, the sharp rod;

My law that I showed, when I for them died,

They forget clean, and shedding of my blood red;

I hanged between two, it cannot be denied;

To get them life I suffered to be dead; I healed their feet, with thorns hurt was

For and I leave the people thus alone
In their life and wicked tempests,
Verily they will become much worse than
beasts,

For now one would by envy another up eat;

Charity they all do clean forget.

I hoped well that every man
In my glory should make his mansion,
And thereto I had them all elect;
But now I see, like traitors deject,
They thank me not for the pleasure that
I to them meant,

Nor yet for their being that I them have lent.

I proffered the people great multitude of

mercy,

And few there be that ask it heartily; They be so cumbered with worldly riches, That needs on them I must do justice, On every man living without fear.

Where art thou, Death, thou mighty messenger?

Death. Almighty God, I am here at your will,

Your commandment to fulfil.
God. Go thou to Everyman,
And show him in my name

A pilgrimage he must on him take,
Which he in no wise may escape;

And that he bring with him a sure reckoning

Without delay or any tarrying. Death. Lord, I will in the world go run over all,

And cruelly out search both great and small.

Every man will I beset that liveth beastly Out of God's laws, and dreadeth not folly.

He that loveth riches I will strike with my dart,

His sight to blind, and from heaven to depart,5

Except that alms be his good friend,
In hell for to dwell, world without end.
Lo, yonder I see Everyman walking;
Full little he thinketh on my coming;
His mind is on fleshly lusts and his treas-
ure,

And great pain it shall cause him to endure

Before the Lord, Heaven King.

Enter Everyman.

Everyman, stand still! Whither art thou going

Thus gaily? Hast thou thy Maker for-
got?
Everyman. Why askest thou?
Wouldest thou wit? 6

Death. Yea, sir, I will show you;
In great haste I am sent to thee
From God, out of his majesty.
Every.
What, sent to me?
Death. Yea, certainly.

Though thou have forgot him here,
He thinketh on thee in the heavenly
sphere,

As, ere we depart, thou shalt know.
Every. What desireth God of me?
Death. That shall I show thee:

A reckoning he will needs have, Without any longer respite. Every. To give a reckoning longer leisure I crave;

This blind matter troubleth my wit. Death.

On thee thou must take a long journey;

Therefore thy book of count with thee
thou bring,

For turn again thou can not by no way;
And look thou be sure of thy reckoning,
For before God thou shalt answer, and
show

Thy many bad deeds and good but a few,
How thou hast spent thy life, and in what
wise,

Before the chief lord of paradise.

Have ado that we were in that way,

For, wit thou well, thou shalt make none attorney."

Every. Full unready I am such reckoning to give.

I know thee not; what messenger art thou?

Death. I am Death, that no man dreadeth. For every man I rest, and no man spare;