資料彙整   /  概念  /  [英]中世紀戲劇:6. 道德劇 Morality Plays
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提供者:劉雪珍/ Cecilia Liu
            

Morality Plays

Moralities apparently evolved side by side with the mysteries, although they were composed individually and not in cycles.  The mysteries endeavored to make the Christian religion more real to the unlearned by dramatizing significant events in biblical history and by showing what these events meant in terms of human experience.  The moralities, on the other hand, employed allegory to dramatize the moral struggle that Christianity envisions as present in every individual: the actors are every man and the qualities within him, good or bad, and the plot consists of his various reactions to these qualities as they push and pull him one way or another--that is, in Christian terms, toward heaven or toward hell.   The intent of the morality is more overtly didactic than the mystery, but most of the moralities share with the mysteries a good deal of rough humor
 

Sense of inevitability:  Everyman is stripped, one by one, of those apparent good on which he had relied. First he is deserted by his patently false friends: his casual companions, his kinsmen, and his wealth.  Receiving some comfort from his enfeebled good deeds, he falls back on them and on his other resources--his strength, his beauty, his intelligence, and his knowledge--qualities that, when properly used, help to make an integrated man.  At the end when he must go to the grave, all desert him save his good deeds alone. 
Allegory: each actor has his allegorical significance defined by his name and behaves entirely within the limits of that definition. 

 

 

 

 

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