“The Castle of Perseverance” is a good model for how the basic morality play worked. It’s among the earliest allegorical plays written in English, possibly predating the ban on use of English Bible quotations. It’s also the only play that includes the stage plan with the manuscript. This suggests that even more than most plays, it was conceived as drama in a physical space, rather than a story adapted to dialogue.
The story isn’t very exciting to a modern audience; it’s an allegorical tale of a human soul sinning and asking for mercy. Briefly: Mankind is born and gets a Good Angel and a Bad Angel assigned to him. They make their pitches for his listening to their advice, and he decides to go with the Bad Angel. He joins World and World’s chief deputy, Greed. World, Greed and the Devil have seven servants (Flesh, Sloth, Gluttony, Lechery, Pride, Wrath, and Envy) and they dress up Mankind in fine clothes and take him to sit in Greed’s station. But God’s servants Confession and Penitence (“Schryfte”) prick Mankind with a lance and tell him to repent, and he does. Now comes the best part, in medieval eyes.
The play was staged with a small wooden castle in the center of the space. God, the Devil, World, Flesh, and Greed all had platforms in a circle around the castle. Moreover, the sketch makes clear that the Castle of Perseverance has a ditch around it, like a dry moat. Some have speculated that it wasn’t dry, and I guess that would depend on the event’s budget for extra work to put in water.
The castle was like a child’s playhouse, but it had to be large enough to fit nine people at once. It was built on a stilts, like a “treehouse” with no tree. It may have been framed up with timber, but the spaces covered with canvas, which was lighter and could be painted to look like stones. It had crenellations around the top, indicating that it was a serious fighting castle, not just a gentleman’s house. Under the castle, there was a bed. This bed was essentially the home of Mankind’s soul: it’s where he showed up when he was born, and where he died. I wonder if the bed had a hidden compartment so that Mankind could be “born” without walking on stage.
When Mankind agreed to leave World and Greed, he went into the Castle of Perseverance with his Good Angel and the seven virtues as knights: Meekness, Abstinence, Chastity, Charity, Patience, Generosity, and Busyness. Then World, Greed and the Devil scold their servant sins for losing Mankind, and they set out to besiege the castle. The first allegorical play in medieval Latin, “Psychomachia,” had shown duels between paired vices and virtues. Here too, Pride fought against Meekness, Abstinence against Lechery, and so on. When the seven duels had been fought out, the Devil himself attacked the castle with fireworks!
The twist in this play is that after the Virtues succeed in holding the castle, Mankind listens to Greed and just walks out, back into sin. Mankind is an old man by now; he wants to live a soft life with his riches. Just before he dies, a young man called “I Don’t Know Who” (I-Wot-Nevere-Whoo) takes his money, so he dies poor. And the Bad Angel takes him to Hell, to the Devil’s platform.
But this was the Middle Ages still, when hearts had not yet hardened to condemnation by the bloody battles and massacres of the Reformation era. They didn’t want Mankind to die condemned. Mankind got one more shot: on his deathbed, he had asked for God’s mercy. And now, the Four Daughters of God stepped forward to argue his case. Truth and Justice argued that he blew it, a deathbed confession isn’t worth a bus ticket, let alone heaven. But Peace and Mercy argued that a deathbed confession plus Christ’s redemptive death has sufficient value, and they succeed in persuading God to rule in Mankind’s favor. He is brought over from hell to heaven, and the play ends with a speech by God to the audience: consider your ways while you are still alive!
To save you fro synnynge
Evyr at the begynnynge
Thynke on youre last endynge!
The entire play is 3650 lines long and used 36 roles. Some of them might perhaps be doubled up, but the siege of the Castle of Perseverance kept most of them together on the field. The play’s demanding requirements must have made it costly to stage, but it appears to have been very popular, so apparently it was staged fairly often.
The part that puzzles modern drama scholars is where the audience stood. It’s easy to see how the play could be staged in a stadium, with the viewers able to look down on the action from all sides. But we don’t think most productions had that sort of equipment. Some have wondered if the castle’s ditch acted as a gate to keep out non-paying viewers, and the audience stood inside this large circle, near the platforms and even the castle. But it’s more likely that the ditch was simply part of the staging for the siege. In the end, the audience probably just stood around and saw what they could. I wonder if some towns had a natural amphitheater, a hillside that could help raise up viewers. Maybe anyone who was putting the investment into a production of Castle of Perseverance just dug deep and found the cash to build risers. We know so much about the staging and costumes—and yet the most basic fact, the audience, is passed over.