Empathy with the Devil: Movement, Kinesthesia, and Affect in The Castle of Perseverance

In 1997 Claire Sponsler argued that, contrary to conventional interpretations, the anarchic, disruptive bodies of sin in medieval morality plays do not “unproblematically and unilaterally lead to the ratification of virtue over vice.” Instead, “the memory of the pleasures of misbehavior, of the satisfactions that come from unruly bodies allowed free rein” lingered with spectators to the extent that any “attempts made by these plays to bring misbehavior to a halt look highly unsatisfactory and incomplete.” For Sponsler, the powerful allure of vice performed was such that morality plays would have been unable fully “to negate the charms of misgovernance” they enacted. In this article, however, I want to argue against Sponsler's assumption and investigate how one English morality play, The Castle of Perseverance, understood very well the allure of performed sin and actively cultivated it as part of its dramaturgical and didactic strategies. All morality plays, as Sponsler observes, use representations of “disorderly behavior grounded in the misuse of bodies and commodities,” investing these figures of sin “with remarkable energy, interest, and vitality, so much so that the vices are … very seductive.” The Castle is no exception, and the vast majority of its roughly three thousand lines are spoken by the Three Enemies of Man and their affiliated Sins. In addition, the playtext also provides unusually rich, detailed descriptions of how these spiritual enemies and sins should move around the performance space. Drawing on the theory of kinesthetic empathy, I examine the kinesic dimension of these “unruly bodies” and argue, contrary to Sponsler, that it is their presence, and the audience's own embodied responses to them, that deepens and enhances, rather than detracts from, the play's moral message.

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XIV.—The Exemplum of the Penitent Usurer

PMLA ◽

10.2307/456932 ◽

1918 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 409-428

Author(s):

Mary E. Barnicle

Keyword(s):

Commonplace Books ◽

Morality Plays ◽

Morality Play

It has been generally recognized by students of the mediæval drama, that certain of the moral tales found in collections of exempla and in commonplace books influenced indirectly the morality play. This inference seems to be drawn as much from evidence of the dramatic possibilities inherent in specific exempla as from evidence of their widespread popularity. An example of a didactic story with such dramatic adaptability is offered by the tale of the penitent usurer. Its theme, the struggle between demons and angels for the soul of man, seems to foreshadow the conflict-between-the-vices-and-virtues type of morality. The number of mss., moreover, which have survived, proves that the tale was disseminated throughout England and the Continent, and therefore would be easily accessible to playwrights in search of dramatic material. Furthermore, the same inference may be drawn from the analogy between plays embodying favorite miracles or fabliaux and morality plays probably based upon popular exempla. For, although no scholar has hitherto shown the dependence of any extant morality play upon a specific exemplum, yet it is almost inconceivable that well-known didactic tales, obviously suited to dramatic purposes and extensively circulated in collections of exempla and in commonplace books, should not have been used by the makers of moral plays.

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Modernist Medievalism and the Expressionist Morality Play: Georg Kaiser’s From Morning to Midnight

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Film and Media Studies ◽

10.2478/ausfm-2019-0005 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 81-101

Author(s):

Leanne Groeneveld

Keyword(s):

English Translation ◽

Late Medieval ◽

Film Version ◽

Morality Plays ◽

Morality Play

Abstract This article examines the modernist medievalism of Georg Kaiser’s From Morning to Midnight (Von morgens bis mitternachts), discussing the influence of the morality play genre on its form. The characterization and action in Kaiser’s play mirrors and evokes that of morality plays influenced by and including the late-medieval Dutch play Elckerlijc and its English translation as Everyman, in particular Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann, first produced in Berlin in 1911. The medievalism of Kaiser’s play is particularly evident when it is compared to Karl Heinz Martin’s film version of the text, produced in 1920. The play’s allegory and message, though contemporary, are less specifically historically contextual than the film’s, while its central protagonist is more representative of generic capitalist subjectivity. The detective film shapes Martin’s adaptation, obscuring the morality play conventions and therefore medievalism of Kaiser’s earlier text.

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Morality Plays

10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0177 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

18Th Century ◽

Sustained Use ◽

Morality Play ◽

Good Advice ◽

Life Journey ◽

Specific Stage ◽

And Performance ◽

The Individual ◽

The Devil ◽

Cosmic History

The “morality play” is one of the most recognizable medieval European dramatic genres, yet much about this term, including the form’s status and influence, remains contested. While the label morality play is a useful one for modern scholars, its origins lie in 18th-century antiquarianism rather than in medieval categorizations. The idea of a distinct morality play genre or tradition is further challenged by the vast array of staging and dramaturgical conventions and techniques displayed by extant playtexts; in the range of different audiences, occasions, and spaces for which they were designed; and in the extent to which they overlap with other dramatic and performance modes (saints’ plays, biblical plays, sotties, debates, mummings, and interludes, for example). Nevertheless, a distinct collection of plays from premodern Europe share characteristics and conceptual and dramaturgic frameworks, justifying their analysis as a group. What links these plays, whether they are written in Latin or in the vernacular, is their sustained use of personification allegory and the clear exposition of a moral sentence. At the core of any morality play sits a central figure, a personification of, say, a universalized concept of “mankind” (Humanum Genus, Everyman, Mankind), an aspect of human nature (Man’s Desire in Menschen Sin en Verganckeljcke Schoonheit), or a specific stage in life (like Youth or the Child). Such figures often also act as a mirror or an avatar for the audience. French moralités often have two central figures who represent opposing moral paths. The plays’ central figures are accompanied by an array of abstract personifications representing virtues, sins, vices, temptations, moral distractions, bad and good advice, and facts of life. These could be faculties or qualities of humankind, such as Flesh, Raison, Wit, or Ignorance; temptations and forces in the external world, such as New Guise, Custom, or Goods; facts of human existence, such as Life, Death, and Kinship; human behaviors, such as Flattery or Deceit; social groups, such as Nobility and Clergy; personifications of God’s qualities, such as Mercy; as well as supernatural beings, such as God and the Devil or Good and Bad Angels. Every part of the performance is enlisted into the allegory, from staging, props, and costumes to the actions of and between performers. Whether the protagonist is saved at the end of the play varies, but often an alignment is explicit between the life journey of the mankind figure and that of Adam, connecting the life of the individual with the great scheme of cosmic history.

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