Editing Morality play (section)

==English morality plays==

[[Hildegard von Bingen]]'s ''[[Ordo Virtutum]]'' (English: "Order of the Virtues"), composed c. 1151 in Germany, is the earliest known morality play by more than a century, and it is the only medieval musical drama to survive with an attribution for both the text and the music. Because there are many formal differences<ref>Potter, Robert. "The Ordo Virtutum: Ancestor of the English Moralities?" ''Comparative Drama'', vol. 20, no. 1 (1986, at 203)</ref> between this play and later medieval moralities, as well as the fact that it only exists in two manuscripts,<ref>Fontijn, Claire. [http://ftp.baroqueflute.com/musicwordmedia/Hildegard/04.html "The Vision of Music in Saint Hildegard's Scivias: Synthesizing Image, Text, Notation, and Theory."] Music Word Media Group, 2012:</ref> it is unlikely that the ''Ordo Virtutum'' had any direct influence on the writing of its later English counterparts.

Traditionally, scholars name only five surviving English morality plays from the medieval period: ''[[The Pride of Life]]'' (late 14th century), ''[[The Castle of Perseverance]]'' (c.1425); [[Wisdom (play)|''Wisdom'']], (1460–63); [[Mankind (play)|''Mankind'']] (c.1470); [[Everyman (15th-century play)|''Everyman'']] (1510).<ref>King, Pamela M. "Morality Plays." In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, edited by Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008: 235-262, at 235.</ref> ''The Pride of Life'' was the earliest record of a morality play written in the English language; the text (destroyed by fire in 1922, but published earlier) existed on the back of a parchment account roll from June 30, 1343, to January 5, 1344, from the Priory of the Holy Trinity in Dublin.<ref name="ReferenceB">Klausner, David N. [https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/two-moral-interludes-the-pride-of-life-and-wisdom-introduction "Introduction."] In ''Two Moral Interludes: The Pride of Life and Wisdom''. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2008</ref> However, this textual record was incomplete. The play cut off mid-line, when the character Messenger, at the command of the King, called upon Death; the plot summary provided by the introductory banns, featured at the beginning of the play, indicated that the action continued.

''The Castle of Perseverance'', ''Wisdom'', and ''Mankind'' are all part of a single manuscript called the [[Macro Manuscript]], named after its first known owner, [[Cox Macro]] of Bury St Edmunds.<ref>King, Pamela M. "Morality Plays." In ''The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre'', edited by Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008: 235-262, at 238.</ref>  A second copy of the first 752 lines of ''Wisdom'' is preserved in MS Digby 133. It is possible that the Macro version was copied from the Digby manuscript, but there is also the possibility that both were copied from elsewhere.<ref name="ReferenceB"/>  Unlike ''The Pride of Life'' and the Macro plays, all of which survive only in manuscript form, ''Everyman'' exists as a printed text, in four different sources.<ref name="ReferenceC">King, Pamela M. "Morality Plays." In ''The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre'', edited by Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008: 235-262, at 253.</ref> Two of these four sources were printed by Pynson and two were printed by John Skot.<ref name="ReferenceC"/> Pamela King notes how Everyman's status as a printed text pushes the boundaries of the medieval morality genre; she writes, "It was also one of the very first plays to be printed, and in some respects belongs more to the early Tudor tradition than that of the late Middle Ages."<ref>King, Pamela M. "Morality Plays." In ''The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre'', edited by Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008: 235-262, at 252.</ref>

Other English moralities include the fifteenth-century plays ''Occupation & Idleness'' and Henry Medwall's ''Nature'', as well as an array of sixteenth-century works like ''The World and the Child'' and John Skelton's ''Magnificence''.  Additionally, there are other sixteenth-century plays that take on the typical traits of morality plays as outlined above, such as ''Hickscorner'', but they are not generally categorized as such. The characters in ''Hickscorner'' are personified vices and virtues: Pity, Perseverance, Imagination, Contemplation, Freewill, and Hickscorner.<ref>Everyman and Other Miracle and Morality Plays. Ed. Stanley Appelbaum and Candace Ward. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. 60. Print.</ref>

The French medieval morality play tradition is also quite rich: for an explanation of French medieval morality plays, visit [[:fr:Moralité (théâtre)|the French Wikipedia page]].