"Take example, all ye that this do hear or see..." The Morality Play was popular in England between 1400 and 1600. It offers moral instruction and spiritual teaching with personal abstractions representing good and evil. Surviving plays from that period number about sixty and the three in this edition were among the first ten. Mankind is a plain, honest farming man who struggles against worldly and spiritual temptation. The bawdy humour and violent action in the play serve to make the moral point and instruct by example. Everyman portrays a man's struggles in the face of death to raise himself to a state of grace so that he may experience everlasting life. It is exceptional among the Moralities for this narrow focus on the last phase of life, and conveys its message with awe-inspiring seriousness. Mundus et Infans is more typical of the Morality genre. It shows an arrogant, bullying protagonist led astray by a single evildoer into a life of debauchery, before the inevitable conversion to virtue. In showing the whole of man's life it is the antithesis of Everyman, the action of which seems to take place in a single day.

"Take example, all ye that this do hear or see..." The Morality Play was popular in England between 1400 and 1600. It offers moral instruction and spiritual teaching with personal abstractions representing good and evil. Surviving plays from that period number about sixty and the three in this edition were among the first ten. Mankind is a plain, honest farming man who struggles against worldly and spiritual temptation. The bawdy humour and violent action in the play serve to make the moral point and instruct by example. Everyman portrays a man's struggles in the face of death to raise himself to a state of grace so that he may experience everlasting life. It is exceptional among the Moralities for this narrow focus on the last phase of life, and conveys its message with awe-inspiring seriousness. Mundus et Infans is more typical of the Morality genre. It shows an arrogant, bullying protagonist led astray by a single evildoer into a life of debauchery, before the inevitable conversion to virtue. In showing the whole of man's life it is the antithesis of Everyman, the action of which seems to take place in a single day.

Everyman and Mankind are morality plays that mark the turn of themedieval period to the early modern, with their focus on theindividual. Both plays are modernised here with full on-pagecommentaries, a detailed, illustrated introduction and all thescholarly qualities associated with Arden editions

Song-writer and rock 'n' roll singer Carl Phillips comes home to Middleville, Virginia, shattered by the breakup of a love affair. In a local bar he meets Mac, who, clad in a white safari jacket, invites him to a pig roast at his big old house overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains where he meets many people.

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1 (A), Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (Instiute anglisitc linguistics), course: The Medieval Drama - Texts and Cultural Backgrounds, language: English, abstract: There are some obvious differences between the morality and the miracle plays. The latter did stress moral truths besides teaching facts of the bible, but on the whole did not lend themselves to allegorical formulation except when there was no well – defined Bible story to be followed. A good example in this case is the life of Maria Magdalen, before she was converted. The miracle play dealt with what were believed to be historical events and its main characters were for the most part ready- made for the playwright by the Bible and inherited tradition. The morality play on the other hand, stood by itself, unconnected to a cycle, and the plots were extremely stereotyped. “They afforded less scope for original creation than those of the miracles, which were crowded with major and minor characters, Herold, Pilate, Pharaoh, Noah’s wife, Satan, Adam and Eve,” (Kinghorn 1968: p.116) and a host of others, both scriptural and non-scriptural. As far as the characters in the morality plays are concerned one could say that these characters, like for instance the Seven Deadly Sins, did only offer very limited opportunities for development. “Gluttony could hardly be other than a fat lout, Sloth a half- awake lounger, Luxury an overdressed woman, Avarice a grasping old man and Anger continually in a rage”( Kinghorn 1968: p.116). As far as allegorical formulations are concerned it has to pointed out that the morality play characters were always personified vices and virtues, producing a conflict of sorts and providing enough material for a plot. The Christian Virtues, the Seven Deadly Sins, Pride of Life, World, Flesh Youth, Age, Holy Church, Wealth, Health, Mercy, Learning and, of course, Mankind are just a few examples for personages which were made to behave as though they were human by the didactic aim of the author ( Kinghorn 1968: p.116), but all these characters are always contained within their own narrow definition. Since these allegorical personages were not characters but walking abstractions, they provided the playwright only very limited opportunities for development. Everything that was said and done by these characters showed clearly the moral truth which was of course the subject of the plot. The late medieval morality plays mark a well - defined movement away from the religious drama towards the completely secular drama in England. [...]

The drama of the English Middle Ages is perennially popular with students and theatre audiences alike, and this is an updated edition of a book which has established itself as a standard guide to the field. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, second edition continues to provide an authoritative introduction and an up-to-date, illustrated guide to the mystery cycles, morality drama and saints' plays which flourished from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. The book emphasises regional diversity in the period and engages with the literary and particularly the theatrical values of the plays. Existing chapters have been revised and updated where necessary, and there are three entirely new chapters, including one on the cultural significance of early drama. A thoroughly revised reference section includes a guide to scholarship and criticism, an enlarged classified bibliography and a chronological table.

Everyman and Mankind are morality plays which mark the turn of the medieval period to the early modern, with their focus on the individual. Everyman follows a man's journey towards death and his efforts to secure himself a life thereafter, whilst Mankind shows a man battling with temptation and sin, often with great humour. Both texts are modernised here and edited to the highest standards of scholarship, with full on-page commentaries giving the depth of information and insight associated with all Arden editions. The comprehensive, illustrated introduction argues that the plays signal the birth of the early modern consciousness and puts them in their historic and religious contexts. An account is also given of the staging and performance history of the plays and their critical history and significance. With a wealth of helpful and incisive commentary this is the finest edition of the plays available.

Winer of a 1994 Time Out Theatre Award and TMA/Martini Award for Best UK Touring Production Lucie Cabrol is a wild, tiny woman born into a peasant family in France in 1900. Abandoned by her lover, Jean, and banished by her family, she becomes an outcast. She survives her second life by smuggling goods across the border. But it is not until her thrid life, her afterlife, that she discovers the survival of something more than bare human existence - the survival of hope and love. "In Simon McBurney's exhilarating production the story becomes an unsentimental evocation of peasant life, a hymn to the tenacity of love and a Brechtian fable about the world's unfairness...Complicite's brilliant technique is used to express Berger's ideas...Complicite have matured into greatness." (Michael Billington, Guardian)