In the decades when the Bubonic Plague visitations were thinning the European population, churches found themselves short of priests. Other skilled trades were just as hard-hit, and for stonemasons it was even worse. But the people cared about having enough priests since they sincerely believed that their souls lived or died based on the sacraments. In England, unlicensed preachers called Lollards stepped in to fill some of the vacuum, using John Wycliffe’s English translation of the Gospels. It wasn’t yet the historical Reformation, but this early movement was a proto-Reformation. Lollardy was especially strong in the West Midlands shire of Hereford.
During the reign of King Henry IV, the Lollards briefly became a political force. Prince Henry was leading a riotous youth with his friend, Sir John Oldcastle, the model for Shakespeare’s Falstaff. But Oldcastle was a devout supporter of Lollards and the High Sheriff of Herefordshire. After his third marriage to an heiress, he owned Cooling Castle in Kent and manor houses in five shires. The churches on their manors were often allowing unlicensed preaching.
In 1409, Lollardy was firmly and by name banned in England. Both unlicensed preaching and use of the Bible in English were singled out. Oldcastle’s manors in Kent were placed under interdict, and he was investigated personally. His friend King Henry V held off prosecution, but in 1413, Oldcastle was convicted of heresy. Henry V imposed a forty-day suspension of his execution. During that time, Oldcastle escaped.
For the next four years, Oldcastle was in hiding in Herefordshire and a political conspiracy formed to support him. It’s known as Oldcastle’s Revolt or Rebellion. It was a serious enough revolt that it came to open battle in 1414, where the rebels were defeated on St. Giles’ Fields. When Oldcastle was finally captured, he was quickly executed and the rebellion ended.
The open revolt had weaponized the Archbishop of Canterbury’s “Constitutions,” the strictures against Lollardy. The Constitutions outlawed, first, unlicensed preaching in any language or place. It certainly banned preaching things contrary to church doctrine, such as the Lollard’s belief that confession to someone other than a priest was good enough. Further, any Biblical material translated into English or any other language could not be presented in public unless they had been inspected and approved in writing by church officials.
All this may not have mattered as much in devoutly orthodox Yorkshire, where the Corpus Christi plays went on undisturbed until the actual Reformation during Henry VIII’s reign. But in Lollardy’s heartland of Herefordshire and Kent, crown officials were on high alert for anyone using Bible verses in English, as it might be an attempt to sneak Lollardish preaching into….for example….a play.
All during the medieval period, there had been another dramatic option, apart from Bible or saint stories: allegories. An allegory could show theological principles at work without actually quoting the Bible directly. The first dramatic allegory had been written in Latin in the 400s, as an alternative to naughty secular Roman plays. “Psychomachia,” the Battle of the Soul, became the model for more allegorical plays. “Psychomachia” presents a series of duels between opposing virtues and vices: Anger vs. Patience, Greed vs. Love.
Another option to avoid prosecution was to just switch into Latin when the Bible needed to be quoted. During the 1400s, there was an increase in this type of hybrid-language play. The problem, of course, was that while educated people understood without difficulty, the most common people knew only the Latin phrases used most often at church. Perhaps this problem accounts for the strange (to us) mix of serious theology and ribald clownery in “Mankind,” a popular allegory of salvation. “Mankind” uses Latin freely, avoiding English for scripture.
“Mankind” shows us how a pious message and liberal use of Latin could be offset by equally liberal use of that favorite medieval character, the devil. The protagonist, a farmer named Mankind, is plagued by devils who successfully tempt him to sin. They involve the audience at various points. When they first arrive on stage, they get the audience to join in a bawdy song, and later, they take up a collection that will supposedly allow them to call up an even worse devil. At times, the audience is asked to keep quiet about a secret, and at other times, the figure of Mercy asks the audience to pray for Mankind’s soul. The devils make Mankind swear an oath to join their criminal gang. Their crimes may not have been shown on stage—rape, jailbreaking, bank robbery—but they provided colorful dialogue.
Perhaps the most famous Morality play in our time is “Everyman,” another play in which the protagonist stands for any and all humans. Everyman is summoned by Death to stand before God, but he begs for more time, and he uses that time for a pilgrimage. He seeks companions, but Fellowship, Kindred, and Cousin must all be busy on their own accounts. Good Deeds, who is weak through neglect, takes Everyman to see Knowledge and Confession. Good Deeds, depicted as a woman, becomes stronger after Everyman confesses his sins. When other friends finally leave Everyman at death, Good Deeds is allowed to rise with him, and the narrator explains that only your good deeds accompany you after death. It’s a pretty sober story, but it had room for wit and slapstick. In 2002, the play was made into a modern straight-to-video movie, also called Everyman.
We’ll look next at one of the most popular and colorful Morality plays, “The Castle of Perseverance.” I’m focusing on this play because it had some notable staging requirements.
with thanks to “Morality Plays and the Aftermath of Arundel’s Constitutions” by Charlotte Steenbrugge in The Routledge Research Companion to Early Medieval Drama and Performance.