Editing Morality play (section)

=== Use of language and poetic technique ===
All of the morality plays, especially the Macro plays, show not only a mastery of language but also a light-hearted delight therein.
 
All of the plays are written in some sort of end-rhymed verse, but with much variation, not only between the plays but in individual plays as well. Often verse is used to contrast the personalities of good and evil characters. For example, in ''Wisdom'' the characters Wysdom and Anima speak in "dignified, regular rhythm, almost always with four stresses" and the [[rhyme scheme]] ABABBCBC whereas "Lucifer prefers a tripping measure with two to five stress and only two rhymes."<ref>Eccles, Mark. ''The Macro Plays'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Early English Text Society 262, 1969): xxxii.</ref> Other characters speak like Wisdom when under his influence and like Lucifer when under his.<ref>Eccles, Mark. ''The Macro Plays'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Early English Text Society 262, 1969): xxxiii.</ref>  This system of contrastive verse is further refined in ''Mankind'' (Ramsay cxxxix). This is not the only use of variation in meter. For example, even without having to contrast with a good character's manner of talking, when Mankind ascends to World's scaffold in ''The Castle of Perseverance'', Mundus, Voluptas, and Stultitia briefly switch from a four stress line to a faster and more excited two stress line (ll. 610–646), before returning to the four stress line after a scene change.<ref name="KlausnerCastle"/>
 
[[Alliteration]] is put to wonderful effect in ''The Castle of Perseverance''. It appears in every stanza of more than four lines,<ref>Eccles, Mark. ''The Macro Plays'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Early English Text Society 262, 1969): xvii.</ref> though this is not evenly distributed, with later debate scenes employing less alliteration and the characters World, Belial, Flesh, and the seven sins alliterating nearly all of their lines, a habit the character Mankind learns from them.<ref>Eccles, Mark. ''The Macro Plays'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Early English Text Society 262, 1969): xvi-xvii.</ref>  This is not to imply that alliteration is purely the mark of an evil character, for the bad angel alliterates very little and the neutral flag bearers who provide a summary of events at the beginning of the play script make extensive use of alliteration. At many points this is for ornamental effect: Michael R. Kelley places this in the context of a flamboyant style originating in Franco-Burgundian culture.<ref>Kelley, Michael R. "Fifteenth-Century Flamboyant Style and ''The Castle of Perseverance''." Comparative Drama 6.1 (1972): 14-27.</ref> But that is not all the playwright does with the effect. Clare Wright argues convincingly that alliteration among other formal structures encourages the actors to perform with a "devilish corporeal register."<ref>Wright, Clare. "Empathy with the Devil: Movement, Kinesthesia, and Affect in ''The Castle of Perseverance''." ''Theatre Survey'', vol. 60, no. 2 (2019): 179-206, at 190.</ref> She uses Belyal's first speech as an example:<blockquote>Now I sytte, Satanas, in my sad synne, (Now sit I, Satan, steadfast in my sin,)

As devyl dowty, in draf as a drake. (As devil doughty, like a dragon on my sack.)
 
I champe and I chafe, I chocke on my chynne, (I champ and I chew and I thrust out my chin;)
 
I am boystous and bold, as Belyal the blake. (I am boisterous and bold as Belial the black!)
 
What folk that I grope thei gapyn and grenne, (The folk that I grasp they gasp and they groan,)
 
Iwys, fro Carlylle into Kent my carpynge thei take, (From Carlisle to Kent, my carping they take!)
 
Bothe the bak and the buttoke brestyth al on brenne, (Both the back and the buttocks burst burning unbound,)
 
Wyth werkys of wreche I werke hem mykyl wrake. (With works of vengeance, them wretched I make.)<ref>Wright, Clare. 
"Empathy with the Devil: Movement, Kinesthesia, and Affect in [http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ajohnsto/cascomp.html "The Castle of Perseverance."] ''Theatre Survey'', vol. 60, no. 2 (2019): 179-206, at 196-203. Translations from Alexandra F. Johnston, The Castle of Perseverance: A Modernization (1999):</ref></blockquote>
 
In this speech, many of the alliterated phonemes are "aggressively [[plosive]]" and the /tʃ/ of "I champe and I chafe, I choke on my chynne" "requires the speaker to part his lips and bare his teeth, bringing them together in an expression that resembles the clenched-tooth grimace of the devil in contemporary iconography."<ref>Wright, Clare. "Empathy with the Devil: Movement, Kinesthesia, and Affect in ''The Castle of Perseverance''." ''Theatre Survey'', vol. 60, no. 2 (2019): 179-206, at 191.</ref> 
 
While mostly written in [[Middle English]], some of the plays employ [[Latin]] and [[French language|French]] to wonderful effect, both thematically significant and just plain humorous. Latin, of course, as the language of the [[Roman Catholic Church]], was naturally important for the sort of religious discourse these plays engaged in. That does not mean that the playwrights were unwilling to play with Latin. For example, in ''Mankind'', the character Mercy has a highly Latinizing manner of speech: in terms of vocabulary and meticulously tidy versification and sentence structure, all of which culminates in what one scholar calls "[[inkhorn]] and churchily pedagogical." (Johnson 172). Mercy ends his first speech saying "I besech yow hertyly, have this premedytacyon" (l. 44),<ref name="ReferenceD">Ashley, Kathleen M. and Gerard NeCastro, eds. [https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/ashley-and-necastro-mankind "Mankind"]. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010</ref> ending with a cumbersome Latin loanword. The first vice character on stage, Mischief, immediately picks up on Mercy's excessive Latinisms and continues with this end rhyme in order to mock Mercy's ornate speech:<blockquote>I beseche yow hertyly, leve yowr calcacyon.
 
Leve yowr chaffe, leve yowr corn, leve yowr dalyacyon.
 
Yowr wytt ys lytyll, yowr hede ys mekyll, ye are full of predycacyon (ll. 45-47).<ref name="ReferenceD"/></blockquote>
 
Shortly thereafter Mischief fully switches to a nonsense mixture of Latin and English to continue mocking Mercy's Latinizing, as well as to mangle Mercy's earlier reference to the parable of the wheat and tares: "Corn servit bredibus, chaffe horsibus, straw fyrybusque" (l. 57, translated: Corn serves bread, chaff horses, straw fires).<ref name="ReferenceD"/> The result of this is not only to show that the formal structures of Latin are nothing more than formal structures that can be [[wikt:Special:Search/spoof|spoofed]] and misused, but also to create a tone shift from stuffy seriousness to an amusement that "is central to the contemplative logic of the play" by showing how even Latin can be "dragged from the reaches of the church and into the mess of everyday life."<ref>Johnson, Eleanor. ''Staging Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018): 173-74.</ref>  There are many such examples of amusing nonsense Latin throughout the play.

In what is possibly most memorable of the vices' use of puns to twist good into bad, at one point in ''Mankind'' belt out a vibrant ditty on [[defecation]] that concludes, in a clear echo of 'holy holy holy,' with "Hoylyke, holyke, holyke! Holyke, holyke, holyke!", quite possibly a pun on 'hole-lick' or 'hole-leak'.<ref name="ReferenceD"/> Because of how this spoofs liturgical call-and-response worship as well as Nought's invitation, "Now I prey all the yemandry that ys here / To synge wyth us wyth a mery chere" (ll. 333–4), this is likely a moment of audience participation to highlight their own "susceptibilities to seduction by frivolity."<ref>Johnson, Eleanor. ''Staging Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018): 175-76.</ref>

Finally, a peculiar trait that one will likely notice while reading these plays is the tendency of characters to describe in speech the actions they are (presumably) simultaneously performing as a way of verbally encoding stage directions. For example, in ''Mankind'', the character Mankind says, "Thys earth wyth my spade I shall assay to delffe" (l. 328);<ref name="ReferenceD"/> this line, meaning, "This earth with my spade I will attempt to dig," appears to serve as a stage direction for Mankind's actor to literally dig. Besides simple actions, the same thing occurs in slapstick comedy or action scenes: when Mankind fights the vice-characters Nowadays, New Guise, and Nought, Mankind threatens to hit them with his shovel, saying, "Go and do yowr labur! Gode lett yow never the! / Or wyth my spade I shall yow dynge, by the Holy Trinyté!" (ll. 377–376); in response, New Guise says, "Alas, my jewellys! I shall be schent of my wyff!" (l. 381), directly indicating that Mankind has hit him as or right after he was threatening.<ref name="ReferenceD"/> This is not a trait restricted in the period to morality plays: a reason for the existence of this trait suggested by one scholar while discussing the Chester plays is that "A spectator who could see the action without hearing the lines would not have a significantly different experience from someone who could hear them."<ref>Sergi, Matthew. ''Practical Cues and Social Spectacle in the Chester Plays'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020): 3.</ref>