Medieval Morals

As our instructor was out for the week, our class watched a video about Medieval theatre. The video discussed various aspects of medival theatre such as how it was composed of three types of plays: mystery, miracle, and morality plays. Because I had previously researched this topic for a different assignment at the start of the year the video's information wasn't completely different from what I had learned.

Because I have already discussed the content of each of the three different types of plays in a previous entry I will only add on what new information I had gained from the video. One example that I remembered was an example of what I thought to be a morality play. Morality plays are more allegorical and function to point the character in the right path and direction. The morality play performed in the video involved a man stealing his neighbor's sheep. When the neighbor came searching for the sheep, the man lied to the neighbor saying that he did not have the sheep. The man told the neighbor that his wife was sleeping with their child which in fact was the hidden sheep. After much dialogue, it was eventually revealed that the man had in fact stolen the sheep. This morality play portrays the idea of how lying or telling untruths will usually lead a person to endure trouble rather than helping them to gain anything in return. It seems that the ideas conveyed in morality plays differ based on the audience member, but that all the morals seem to share a similar basis.