Abstract
The morality play is a genre of English allegorical drama from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries consisting of five surviving texts. Moralities typically feature an archetypal human figure called Mankind, Everyman, or Soul caught in a struggle between personifications of assorted vices and virtues. The plays follow the protagonist on a course from innocence through temptation and fall to redemption, although some of the extant plays focus only on parts of this trajectory. Once valued primarily as the predecessors of the Tudor interlude and as even more remote precursors of the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, these plays rely on distinctly medieval techniques of versification, characterization, and staging in promoting orthodox beliefs to audiences of mixed socioeconomic backgrounds through performances that are noteworthy for their spectacular nature despite their primarily didactic function.
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