conflict resolution in the medieval morality plays

Conflict Resolution in the Medieval Morality PlaysAuthor(s): Dorothy WertzSource: The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1969), pp. 438-453Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/173563 .

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Conflict resolution in the medieval morality plays

DOROTHY WERTZ Behavioral Science Department, State College at Bridgewater, Massachusetts

From the dawn of history the drama has been one of society's principal mechanisms for resolving social and psychological conflicts. Dramatic narrative straightens out and simplifies a confused situation; it puri- fies and channels the release of conflicting emotions. Drama addresses itself to three general types of conflicts: 1) conflicts between socioeconomic classes or political factions; 2) conflicts between the individual and society or god; 3) intrapsychic conflicts. Although "theater for the elite," staged indoors and employing themes of interest only to the well-educated, may deal successfully with the second and third types of conflicts, a truly "popular theater" whose audience is comprised of all segments of the community has a more far-reaching practi- cal effect in treating social or political conflicts.

In England, the last great age of popular theater was the late Middle Ages. The mystery plays, vernacular presentations of the Biblical history of the world from the Creation to Doomsday, staged in the streets of scores of towns by members of the craft guilds, attracted large audiences from about 1350 until suppressed by the Reformation in about 1575 for political reasons. This universal popularity with all segments of the population over a period of two hundred years, without any change in the scripts, is unsurpassed by any other form of drama in English.

The morality plays enjoyed a similar pop-

ularity from about 1400 to 1600. These moralities centered on the life of the individual Christian, portrayed as a generalized type-figure such as "Mankind" or "Every- man," and emphasized his fall from grace, his death, and his eventual salvation through the intercession of a divine figure, usually Christ or the Virgin. Unlike the mystery plays, which employed amateurs and did not charge admission, the morality plays, were acted by troops of wandering professional players who performed in innyards or on specially-constructed outdoor stages before paying audiences of country people, sometimes running as large as four thousand (Southern, 1958, pp. 58-59). Both the mystery and morality plays are interesting vehicles for the solution of both social and intrapsychic conflicts among the un- educated or partially-educated bulk of the population.

I. Ambiguities in the Plays The official intent of the mystery plays

was to inculcate reverence, while the morality plays preached contrition and the moral life. Yet strange ambiguities present themselves, showing underlying currents of feeling quite opposed to the official intentions of church supervisors. These ambiguities appear in three forms: (1) the irreverent and extremely popular portions of the mystery plays; (2) the immoral moralities; (3) the doubled-faced nature of the Summons of Death, which could also proclaim a sum-

CONFLICT RESOLUTION VOLUME XIII NUMBER 4



CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN MEDIEVAL PLAYS 439

mons to "enjoy life while you may." All three ambiguities exemplify the weird mix- ture of the devotional and the grotesque, the noble and the vulgar, the divine and the obscene, pathos and brutality, found throughout medieval art (Rossiter, 1958, pp. 52-53). The bloody crucifixions, which featured the torturers as favorite characters, present one example. The York "Flagella- tion" was a twenty-minute "hit Him again" contest amid ribald jokes, and at the crucifixion the torturers had to stretch Jesus' arms and legs with ropes to fit the holes they had drilled, all with great humor. The nailmakers and ironmongers used this as an opportunity to advertise their skill in making beautifully horrible nails.1 In the Hegge "Trial of Joseph and Mary," Mary is treated like a servant girl who has slipped up, and Joseph consoles himself that "there have been cuckolds ere now" (LaPiana, 1936, pp. 171-211). In the Towneley Cycle, Abel looks like a pompous stuffed-shirt for whom the audience does not feel sorry, while Cain, a vicious but enjoyable country bumpkin counting sheaves for sacrifice, sud- denly stops in disgust: God will get no more from him-

Not so much, great or small, as He might wipe his ass withall.

[Salter, 1955, p. 104]

Presumably this line brought down the house.

The morality plays also exhibit a "double- ness of action." While officially designed to

1 "Two spirits are at variance: one focuses on the pathos emphasized by the simplicity of Christ; the other takes a cruelly humorous delight in the different epitomes of derision in the hard and mocking faces that imprison Him." The result may be "negation of the faith to which the piece is ostensibly devoted"; martyr- dom is denied by making a game of it (Rossiter, 1956, pp. 69-70).

encourage morality, the major part of the action often demonstrated uproariously funny scenes of immorality followed by a deathbed repentance. "The moral play tends to split into 'layers' rather as slate does, one set of laminae still concerned with morality, the other with mirth and immorali- ties, or mere farce and horseplay" (Rossiter, 1958, p. 91). Vice is far more attractive on the stage than virtue, which appears rather stuffy and dull. The comic, undignified devils of the mystery plays become the "vices" of the moral play, who degenerate from supernatural demons into riotous clowns, with so much audience sympathy that in the end, when sound church doctrine demands their punishment, they often es- cape.

The final medieval ambiguity is the double nature of the Summons of Death. Increasingly dominant in mendicant preach- ing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially after the Black Death of 1348, the symbol of the skull incited men to immediate confession and a moral life, since death might come at any time and bring the sinner before the awful judgment of God. But overemphasis on death could re- bound into the opposite: pluck the flower of today, never trust tomorrow.2

I. Possible Interpretations

The existence of these ambiguities points to some of the conflicts underlying what at first appear to be straight presentations of the Church's view. There are several different possible explanations of these ambiguities, which may be interpreted (1) from a literary-dramatic point of view; (2) theologically; (3) sociologically, in terms of class

2 "The memento mori must, in fact, often be taken as an amphoteric symbol. . . . As such, presumably, skull-rings were popular with English whores" (Rossiter, 1958, p. 93).



440 DOROTHY WERTZ

conflict; (4) anthropologically, in the light of ancient ritual drama; or (5) psychologi- cally, along lines similar to the focus of this paper.

A. LITERARY-DRAMATIC

The interpretation most popular among medieval scholars (Cawley, 1958; Cham- bers, 1933; Craig, 1955; Salter, 1955; Wil- liams, 1961) is basically literary. Plots, characters, and symbols evolve and change for internal reasons of their own; artistic changes have a certain autonomy from social changes. If the evil characters have not only more lines, but more physical action on stage than the good characters, as content analysis seems to show,3 this is simply because bad guys are more interesting to watch than good guys and four-letter words (usually the only words available to cover the subject under discussion for a medieval audience) are spicier than theological sermons. Anti-clericalism in the plays simply reflected the rotten state of the clergy. If a certain symbol, theme, or character disap- peared from the stage, we can speak of its exhaustion from over-use; the audience became tired of it and wanted something new. Similarly, the appearance of the morality play itself as a new literary form in about 1400 can be explained as the result of the dramatist's search for something different from the Biblical mystery plays and the actors' wish to portray characters less stereo- typed than Biblical personages. If the professional strolling players who performed moralities had to depend on paying audiences on the same circuit route every year, they certainly needed new additions to their repertories in order to survive. What, if anything, the playwright (usually a clergy-

3In a sample of the texts of sixteen moral plays taken from those listed by MacKenzie (1914), evil had 27 percent more stage time than good.

man or schoolteacher) gained monetarily from his efforts in the absence of copyright laws we do not know.

The literary interpretation has the merit of preserving the autonomy of artistic crea- tivity. No sociological or psychological interpretation will ever exhaustively explain the whys and wherefores of medieval literature. Unfortunately, this view leaves too many questions unanswered. It does not tell us why bad characters are inherently more exciting than good characters, why there are more bishops and lawyers in hell than weavers and tanners, or why Mankind always gets saved even if he does not de- serve it. It is too simple to explain every- thing as "dramatically interesting."

B. THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS

Historians have examined closely the theological sources of the plays. According to Owst (1933) and Prosser (1961), both mystery and morality plays arise from the missionary motive of Dominican and Fran- ciscan friars. Plays not actually authored by friars often take much of their plots or imagery from sermons preached in the graveyard or marketplace (Owst, 1933). The missionary point of the authors of both sermons and plays was "confess while you may, tomorrow you may be dead and damned." If the theological point of the plays was to lead people to sacramental confession followed by a moral life, it seems strange that they had to portray so much immorality to do it, and even stranger that most protagonists are saved, not by their confessions, but by special divine intercession after a life of sin.4 In the sermons of

4Everyman is an exception. He is the only morality play hero saved by his good deeds rather than by divine grace. Recently, Taka- hashi (1953) discovered that Everyman's un- orthodox emphasis on self-salvation stems from a Buddhist source.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION VOLUME XIII NUMBEIR 4




the time, such late repenters are always damned. It is quite possible that the emphasis of the plays on special grace stems from the uncertain relations between the wandering players and the church. Actors were often refused church burial and thus had to depend on divine intervention for their salvation rather than on the sacraments. In any case, the plays seem to carry a double mes- sage not entirely explicable by their relations to missionary sermons.

The preeminence of the themes of sin and death is often explained (Chambers, 1933; Williams, 1961) by the Black Death of 1348-49, which killed one-third of the population of Europe, and the recurrent epidem- ics of the next century, which killed at least another sixth. The presence of death, however, does not necessarily force its portrayal on the stage. Playwrights could have chosen to ignore death and to write musical come- dies about King Arthur's Court. Instead, they showed death in its full horror. Here the plays reflect another common sermon theme. It is not enough to say that playwrights copied from sermons, however. Other material was available, and the choice of death must have reflected a need to deal with an overriding psychological conflict by means of the stage.

C. SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS

It is possible to analyze the plays sociologically and to demonstrate the effects of the rise of the burgher class on the order of precedence among the Seven Deadly Sins. The form of sin portrayed is primarily greed (Avarice or Covetousness), the sin of the land-owning, newly-rich burgher, rather than pride, the sin of a feudal nobility. Hell is populated with clergy and lawyers, who were notoriously corrupt. The oppressed but honest husbandman, presumably the bulk of the audience, is most often vindi-

cated at the expense of the wicked burgher. The man of middle or lower status could get satisfaction out of the downfall of the sinful upper-class man, while the higher classes could look down on the more earthy, but equally damning, sins of the poor, and all could see that they were equal in damnation and had no right to despise each other as unrighteous. Mankind finally became classless before Death the Leveller. When he finally sat on the right hand of God, Mankind had no class identification and wore a white robe like the angels. Thus the moralities had a definite function in recon- ciling social factions.

D. ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEWS: RELATIONS

TO ANCIENT RITUAL DRAMAS

The morality play may be further interpreted anthropologically, as a form of ritual drama. To -achieve a semblance of mastery over the future and assure the continuance of the cycle of the seasons, men of the ancient Near East tried to assist the cosmic forces by imitatively acting them out. The purpose of ritual plays is not to relate what is past, but to dominate what is to come by participating in the unseen power that rules the world. Ancient Near Eastern people enacted the regular changes of nature, clearly intending to bring under their control elements that they did not dominate, and if necessary, to correct them. The oldest ritual dramas, those of the Babylonian New Year, tried to preserve the cosmic cycle by killing the old king (winter) and installing the new king (summer) (Hunningher, 1955, pp. 16-52).

Drama reinforces the values that a society believes are fundamental to its survival; in the Middle Ages, only religious values held enough universal validity to unite people of all social degrees and to provide a common base for drama. The liturgy, which was the same for all classes in Christendom, became



442 DOROTHY WERTZ

the starting-point for religious drama.5 The liturgy also provided an excellent form of assurance, like the ancient ritual plays, that life is, after all, the master of death, and that the Creator has a purpose for human beings.

The world of legal conflict provided another source for the moral play:

Morality draws on the semi-dramatic field of debate or estrif: a formal contest in words between two persons who are opposed like the two counsels in a law case or the contestants who held open debate or logical disputation in ancient universities or schools. The forensic pattern of accusation and defense or argument and rejoinder has the elements of the dramatic in it; and it is possible that some medieval pieces in this pattern may have been performed by minstrels each taking a "side" [Rossiter, 1958, p. 82].

Only a contest with the dark forces of evil could enable the good to show its real power and could assure man that the Passion of Christ really sufficed to conquer the Devil, who seemed to be omnipresent. In ancient ritual dramas of the contest between the powers of light and darkness, there was always a small moment of doubt, a suspen- sion of opposing forces when it looked as if the combat could go either way. Such a moment of doubt, however meager, is necessary for the preservation of dramatic tension, which would be lost if the outcome

5 Social recreation may be another source of drama, but in the Middle Ages it divided social classes. "In medieval society, religion by unit- ing people of high and low degrees located an audience universal to Christendom which was open to exploitation by actors if, by their talent, they could help to reveal the particular pattern of creation which Christianity asserted. Being hierarchical in form, however, medieval society could not offer, within terms of social recreation, a similarly universal audience. Here power and wealth served to create a variety of potential audiences faithfully reflecting the hierarchical orders of society" (Wickham, 1959, p. 260).

were absolutely certain. The conflict must not remain unresolved too long, however, for it must contain an implicit assurance that good will emerge victorious.6

In ancient ritual drama, the important thing was to win the contest, whether by fair play or by fraud. Winning and losing were more important than right and wrong, and the one who won, won all (Huizinga, 1955, p. 78). In medieval drama, the Devil or his representative as "Trickster" usually perpetrated the frauds by trying to outwit God or man by sleight-of-hand, just as in a morality play called The Castle of Perse- verance (ca. 1420, text in Furnivall and Pollard, 1904) the chief burgher sin, Covet- ous, refuses to do battle with the Seven Heavenly Virtues and sneaks in the back door of the Castle with false promises. The trickster-figure may represent a lower order of society that has been outgrown but still lingers on as a potentiality for action. Law and order have replaced cheating in official morality, but there remains the temptation to disregard the law and to win by fraud, since only the completed win or loss really

counts, not the intention or means by which it was accomplished. This level of morality

is represented in Christian tradition by the

Devil and his minions.

One purpose of putting the trickster-figure on the morality stage was to present the

conflict between two levels of social moral-

ity: fraud, represented by Covetous, and law and order, represented by the Virtues.

For a while it looks as if fraud has won, and the ethical "Generosity" who declines to

6 "The opposing forces are given equal weight, but not equal value; it is only in and through the struggle with evil, darkness, and death that good, light, and life can be given their proper place in a universe put together out of these essential but conflicting elements" (Weisinger, 1953, p. 91 ).





fight Covetous with his own means looks rather stupid. Part of fraud's significance at this point may be a commentary upon the actual conditions of social morality in the fourteenth century, when law courts more often used bribery and trickery than legal process, and "law and order" in the country- side were a brutal farce, with those in charge of keeping order themselves acting as the worst lawbreakers and brigands. Thus the Virtues and preachers might extol fairness and legal process ad nauseam, but the real power lay in the hands of those who cheated, the rent-gouging landowners, the crooked merchants, and those who bribed their way into a town guild. Abiding by the rules of the game had little benefit.

Perhaps the Devil's use of trickery may have yet another measure of social commentary: both the hereditary knightly class and the poor workman hated the merchant for his business methods, which did not accord with ancient Christian prescriptions about buying, selling, and the taking of interest. The burghers not only were open- ing up a niche for themselves in the social order, but were creating a new set of rules for effective action, which were out of line with the old knightly morality of honor and gamesmanship and with the supposed humil- ity required of the laboring classes. What is more, they were surprisingly successful in earning money this way. Thus Covetous may be the ideal burgher who outwits the stupid Christian virtue of Generosity by a method reprehensible to the knightly honor of the battlefield, but with amazing success, which is all that counts in the end.

The foregoing interpretation is highly sug- gestive, but the relations between the moralities and ancient ritual dramas explain only interclass conflicts, not the attempt to resolve conflicts between the individual and society or within the individual.

E. PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS

There remains the possibility of a psychological interpretation; while allowing the validity of preceding interpretations, we pro- pose to enrich them by hypothesizing that medieval drama resolved conflicts by means of two basic psychological mechanisms: catharsis and cognitive processes. Before launching into a psychological interpretation, however, we must describe the kinds of evi- dence that have survived. Unfortunately, we have no writings by actors, amateur or professional, and no eyewitness accounts from audiences tellling how they reacted. Nei- ther do we have any information about the authors beyond some names and occupa- tions. What survives is (1) texts, sometimes in several versions of varying corruption; (2) occasional stage diagrams or instruc- tions for costuming; (3) writings of reform- ist clergy who disliked theater; (4) account books of the guilds, listing expenditures and properties for performances. We can reconstruct stage and costumes and estimate the size of the audience from the size of the stage. We also know how often a performance was repeated. The fact that people came year after year to see the same plays means that some need was being fulfilled. From modern experiments with psychodrama (Moreno, 1959) and a comparison with Greek drama (Burke, unpublished) we can hypothetically reconstruct the mechanisms of conflict resolution, but will never be able to prove our assertions since no "reviews" or other audience reactions exist.

(1) Catharsis. Catharsis always presup- poses a tension or conflict between asocial or forbidden emotions that may potentially lead to antisocial acts if released and the forces of society that demand that these emotions be kept in check or at least chan- neled harmlessly. Socially effective catharsis resolves the tension by a relatively harmless



444 DOROTHY WERTZ

release of some of the bottled-up emotions, usually in vicarious form. In successful dramatic catharsis the audience participates vicariously in forbidden acts portrayed on the stage, acts presumably in accord with some of their own asocial desires. The actor, however, does not succeed in his antisocial behavior, for he undergoes punishment on the stage, atoning vicariously for the desires of the audience and providing a certain catharsis of the catharsis. Thus cartharsis, if effective in conflict resolution, helps in the preservation of social order by allowing asocial desires to vent themselves harmlessly within the socially-accepted realm of art (Fenichel, 1954, II, p. 352). The emotions of "pity" and "fear" are most prominent in Aristotelian catharsis. Pity grows from the audience's empathy with the protagonists, who are always somewhat generalized characters, and fear may be related to the origin of both Greek and medieval plays in a religious ritual with an official intent to increase reverence for the gods and for the laws of established morality.

"Pity" can have a double function: it can either be a rebellion against the organized forces of society, or a demonstration of su- periority over that which is pitied (Burke, unpublished, pp. 57-62, 73). By pitying a stately figure of high social position reduced to meager circumstances by tragic fate, the man of low social status elevates himself, and his pity becomes pride. Much of ancient tragedy provides catharsis of social envy by humbling the proud man of high status, thus neutralizing the inherent resentment of the lower classes against the upper. Drama may be an antidote to social revolution or class warfare by promoting surrender to fears that have a social sanction or social incen- tive; the individual learns to fear the viola- tion of what is socially correct. The dramatist attempts to replace hatred by anger,

anger by fear, and fear by pity (Burke, pp. 225, 273).

Effective catharsis seeks to allow the ex- pression of unacceptable impulses within acceptable limits. Unfortunately, catharsis often has exactly the opposite effect, allowing release outside socially-safe limits. Ca- tharsis may lead to a purgation and exhaustion of the dangerous emotions and hence may remove any tendency to act them out in reality. On the other hand, catharsis often leads to a need for more catharsis, since the emotions, once released, are not satisfied until they have acted out their full potentialities in the real world. Thus the virtues of dramatic catharsis for conflict resolution in self and society are rather du- bious, for an audience that sees a forbidden action on the stage may be just as well tempted to act it out themselves as to feel adequately relieved by the stage performance alone. That catharsis may be potentially dangerous for a stable personal and social order is shown by the strict controls that the state or religious hierarchy usually exercises over drama in traditional societies, lest it become a focus of social insurrection or lest the lower classes get revolutionary ideas.7

Christianity has special additional problems with regard to dramatic catharsis, for God's justice often balances His mercy too evenly. Only if there is a final imbalance on the side of mercy can drama achieve

7 Examples of "failures of catharsis" were evi- dent in the protests of church reformers from the thirteenth century onward. A letter of Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln (1235-1253) prohibited clerical acting in religious plays. The author of the fourteenth-century Handlying Sinne forbade a cleric to witness mystery plays and took St. Isadore as witness that a man re- voked his baptismal vows if he did so. In 1352 the Bishop of Exeter forbade a "scandalous" play. Wycliff's Treatise on Miracle Playing disapproved of religious drama altogether. (See Gardiner, 1946, pp. 11-13.)





catharsis; even then, the resolution of the conflict may not correspond with the outcome desired by official theology.

(2) Cognitive processes. Catharsis only partially resolves social and psychological conflicts. The rest of the answer lies in the cognitive processing and structuring of these conflicts. So far the only experimental evi- dence that an inner conflict can be restruc- tured by dramatic externalizing is the work of Moreno with psychodrama (Moreno, 1959). Here the main therapeutic value lies in the realignment of conflicting elements by representation, simplification of motives, attribution of only one or two motives to any one actor, and a narrative sort- ing out of an otherwise confused situation. By presenting what was formerly a vague and confused relationship in visible form, where it is open to criticism by an audience that may have had similar experiences, the actors make conflicts manageable.

Similarly, it may be that medieval drama aided historically in the resolution of cognitive conflicts by ordering principles, recast- ing images, and representing symbolically economic, class, and religious conflicts. Cog- nitive processes include various mechanisms of the ego that make possible mastery of the inside and outside world and a firm and creative relation of the self to reality. These mechanisms include (a) the restructuring of problems by the use of myth and symbol, (b) the mastering of past and future time, (c) "test identification" with the role, and (d) the induction of guilt.

(a) Simplification through myth and allegory. The major use of cognitive processes in the Middle Ages was the representation of mythological and allegorical figures as characters on the stage. Many of these also had elements of social satire. By "mythological figures" we mean the cognitively- ordering elements in the world that the

medieval mind was trained to perceive and use to account for the inevitable conflicts between man and God, and man and man, and for the mysterious ways of nature and history. In other words, "myths" explain what is otherwise rationally inexplicable, and mythological language stands alongside scientific or poetic language as a form of human communication in its own right, though it is usually closer to the imaginative or literary than to the modern scientific language. Under the broad category of the "mythological" come the objects of religious belief and representation, in other words, the religious symbols validated by a living community of belief and worship. Myth and symbol always rest upon and participate in an invisible, mysterious, and unknowable power that is greater than any of its representations. Myth is never purely a conscious product of the human imagination, but is felt to be communicated from beyond the profane world by a "revelation" from the sacred world.

By representing the unknown and mysterious on the stage, the religious drama helped to structure and to change the popular attitude toward the forces governing the moral and religious spheres of existence. If one could see God and the Devil, they became less terrible and could be bargained with or addressed in petition (Bally, 1945). Similarly, human emotions could also be

represented on the stage by means of personification or allegory. The cognitive situ-

ation is much simplified if wrath, envy, avarice, and anger are represented as pure, unmixed emotions and are contrasted with the virtues of charity, chastity, meekness, and patience, which unfortunately are usu-

ally rather colorless characters lacking in dramatic interest. A dramatic contest, or Psychonachia, between good and evil elements within the soul, represented in the



446 DOROTHY WERTZ

trappings of popular theology, made understandable and manageable an otherwise confused situation. Thus the medieval drama performed an essential cognitive function: it made reality cogent.

(b) Mastery of the future. The religious drama also assisted in human mastery of anxiety and conflict over time, whether past or anticipated.8

In the dramatization of Death we have an excellent example of ego-mastery over the future with all its horrors and uncertainties. Death usually presents himself as "God's messenger," a title that stresses that Death is not the ultimate end, but is under the lordship of God himself and acts under God's command, even if remote. Unlike the average plague victim, Mankind can talk back to the figure representing Death, even though this proves useless. By placing Death on the stage in visible form, men were at least able to confront him as a known and recognizable concept and thus gained some badly-needed mastery over the inevitable future. The audience, facing to-

gether the figure that all of them must at some future time meet separately, perhaps gained a measure of assurance in the face of

8"The more highly-developed game is antici- patory. It creates tensions which might occur, but at a time and in a degree which is deter- mined by the participant himself, and which is therefore under control. Such playing is an anti-surprise measure. Both these types of 'playing' are also represented in acting on the stage. More frequently the actor acts by assuming emotions which he does not have but which he might have; or he displaces tensions, which he once experienced in the past, onto imaginary persons and abreacts 'unmastered' tensions in identification with them. 'Abreaction' is a term which originated in the world of the theatre. Thus acting provides for the actor either a belated getting-rid of anxieties, or a defensive anticipation of possible future anxieties" (Feni- chel, 1954, p. 353).

their own deaths, an assurance that vastly increased when they later saw Manssoul saved. The end result would be an increased ability to go about the tasks of daily life. Thus the morality play must have fulfilled some of the functions of the primitive mourning rite in strengthening the community by bringing all together in the face of Death the Leveller. The story of the ordinary man who, despite human foibles and great temptations, has nevertheless made the grade in the sphere where it ultimately counts assured the audience that, in spite of death and the lowest degradation of sin, the boundless mercy of God could still save them.

(c) Test identification. Drama also gives the individual the opportunity to participate in fantasies forbidden in ordinary walks of life. This is called "test identification," since the individual temporarily tries out social, religious, and psychological roles. Drama is a world "in-between" fantasy and reality, which allows a person to experience in the interpersonal situation of the stage and dramatic community the things he has. previ- ously had to reserve for individual fantasy. The danger of overidentification with a role is always present; like catharsis, ego-mastery may fail and may lead to an acting-out in reality of the very impulses that should have been saved for fantasy.

Successful test identification enables the actor to test out various possible roles in a way harmless to his own sanity and to society. The actor identifies with his role only partially and is constantly aware of the distance between himself and what he imitates. Thus he may be able to play a cruel role because he thinks that he is really not cruel; should he become aware that part of him really is cruel, the "test" aspect of identification fails, he becomes the character he acts, and what may be expressed





only within the limits of the stage extends into reality.9 This is possible because the actor plays potential selves, all undisclosed parts of his existing self. He plays himself "as he might have developed under different circumstances" (Fenichel, 1954, p. 353).

The actor usually imitates certain generalized "types" that most perfectly actualize certain human and social possibilities and allow the greatest range of identification on the part of the audience. Thus we find the perfect coward, the perfect hypocrite, the perfect corrupt judge, or the perfect proud king, all characters that are "typical" but by no means "average." On the one hand, the poor man could "test identify" with the stage king, while, on the other hand, the pious burgher could temporarily identify with roles disapproved by society and vicariously release some anti-social desires.

Men may also identify with the unseen, mysterious forces of the cosmos. Probably the earliest ritual form of identification was the priest's temporary symbolization of God (Hunningher, 1955, pp. 16, 52). This desire for ego-mastery of the unknown is part of the medieval desire to put God, Devil, Death, and Angels on the stage, where they could be seen and manipulated.

One important aspect of ego-mastery through test identification is the interpersonal situation of audience and actor in which the forbidden roles are enacted. A com-

munity of shared trespass and shared guilt arises, but this is more than a community of shared individual guilt; it is based on the release of civic tensions and enactment of civic roles, which, if successful in their con-

flict-resolving function, form a community

9 Thus several sixteenth-century commentators report that the Devil himself appeared on stage by taking "possession" of the actor (Rossiter, 1958, p. 16).

on the basis of a common realm of religious and civic values because the audience gives a common reaction to events on the stage (Burke, p. 54; Huizinga, 1955, p. 12).

Thus ego-mastery by identification with characters of fantasy brings hidden parts of the self into awareness and tries to establish equilibrium between them; it allows trial of socially-forbidden roles in a situation where they do no harm; and it even allows men to express their desires to become part of the cosmic forces.

(d) Guilt induction. Another cognitive process by which the ego relates to reality is by assuming guilt, induced either by the existing forces of conscience or by the con- frontation with social institutions and their sanctions. The conflict between moral behavior and instinctual behavior may be partially resolved when sermons and popular tales, the confessional, and the stage induce guilt in the individual by representing punishment. One function of the clergy in the whole intellectual structure of the church was to resolve conflicts by the issuance of threats of eternal damnation or of a lengthy stay in purgatory. The morality play, like the Dominican or Franciscan sermon, supposed that, if left to himself, man would act out all his instinctual impulses of the flesh. The conflict-resolving control here was an external form with an internal meaning: sincere sacramental confession was the antidote to the certainty of hell.

It is possible, however, that as the concept of man as an individual grew stronger, guilt became more internalized and therefore less capable of being decreased by punishment. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, external threats of hell in sermons and on the stage reached a peak and produced an almost unbearable load of guilt, leading to an increased frequency of confession and a general pessimism about the possibility of



448 DOROTHY WERTZ

salvation. A growing awareness of inward guilt replaced the external threats and produced an ever-harsher estimate of human capabilities unassisted by the grace of God. In the Reformation all calculation of sins and penitences was swept away and replaced by (1) an all-encompassing morass of sin, a thoroughly vitiated human nature incapable of any good without the aid of grace, and (2) the joyful sense of the compensating atonement of Christ removing the load of guilt from the believer. The morality plays represent an in-between stage, with the full representation of Hell and Devil, Good and Bad Angels, but often with the substitution of a good intention or a repentant conscience for the full sacramental confession.

III. Uses of Psychological Mechaninsms

As an example of the uses of catharsis and cognitive processes in the medieval moral plays, we shall take the earliest extant complete morality, The Castle of Persever- ance (ca. 1420), which depicts man's life from birth to death and salvation over a period of three and one-half hours. This drama was played by wandering players in the open on a round stage (the "plain") surrounded by five raised platforms or "scaf- folds" on which sat God, World, Flesh, Devil, and Covetous, the chief sin of the rising bourgeosie. Like Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Majus, the stage has tried to

create a "mirror of the moral world," which sorts out and simplifies varying human and

divine motives and includes the supernatural and natural worlds. Symbolically, the forces of evil stand divided around the periphery of the circle, for discord and infighting characterize the demonic, which always stands divided against itself. The Castle of Perseverance, symbol of refuge, stability, and rest in virtue, occupies the center of the "plain" or moral world, firm and undi-

vided. The circular stage itself fittingly rep- resents the totality of a world of conflict that it ultimately resolves.

Humanum Genus or "Mankind" has no scaffold; he is appropriately a homeless, floating being who wanders about the plain, never staying anywhere long, with four mighty powers of evil and a silent or hidden God towering over his pitiful and bewildered figure. The Evils cajole him from one scaffold to another, and, although the Virtues attest to his free will, the stage setting makes him a weak and paltry figure dominated by supernatural powers beyond his control. Yet, his central position makes him the most significant figure on the stage.

Ego-mastery of reality includes the ability to name and to conceptualize the hidden and mysterious so that men can maneuver them successfully. The placing and costum-

ing of the three enemies, World, Flesh, and

Devil, helped to visualize life as a conflict, but a conflict that placed the opponents in

full view and no longer hid them within

the recesses of the human mind. One

weapon men employed against the concep- tualized forces of evil was comedy, though no one ever laughed at damnation. The audience was saying both that they should in some sense not take the Devil seriously,

and that-on the other hand-they felt too desperate to do anything but laugh in his

presence. We have a similar attitude toward

the hydrogen bomb. Dr. Strangelove, sub-

titled "How I Stopped Worrying and

Learned to Love the Bomb," enabled many

people to do just that. But by providing peace of mind the movie lessened popular action against the bomb. Possibly the medieval portrayals of the Devil had similar results.

Catharsis explains the presence of anti- clericalism and vulgarity in the speeches of





Bad Angel, who says that Good Angel wears a louse-ridden cope and plays dice.

Yah! When the fox preacheth, keep well your geese!

He speaketh as it were a holy pope. Go, fellow, and pick off the lice

That creep there upon thy cope! Thy part is played all at the dice

That thou shalt have here, as I hope; Perforce, good boy, come blow

At my nether end. [11. 802-806]

Even if put into the mouth of a bad character, this must have been a caricature of the clergy with which many people sympa- thized. The Christianization of Europe had left many hidden resentments among the descendants of former pagans whose old beliefs lived on at the level of folkways. This resentment may explain some other vulgarities, including considerable swearing by parts of God's body, notably the blood and the eyes. The peculiar bloodiness and violence of the Flagellation and Crucifixion at York, with the Torturers as favorite characters, may enable a catharsis of hatred for the Christian God who required people to forgo so many of the pleasures of life. These very Torturers, along with Pilate and Herod, are then dragged off to Hell to satisfy the moral conscience of the audience, thus allowing outlets for both sides of a moral conflict. The moralities, like Mankind, often take a delight in making the clerically- garbed characters into stupid, pious fools. One beautiful example of hatred of God is put into the mouth of the Towneley Cain:

Hey, who is that hob-over-the-wall? Who was that who piped so small? Come go we hence for perils all; God is out of his wit. [Prosser, 1961, p. 16]

By attributing their own anti-Christian feelings to the bad men of antiquity or to the personification of evil, the audience could achieve a measure of catharsis of unacceptable desires that conflicted with the

morality officially desired by the preachers. Not only do the plays portray all those impulses considered evil, thus taking the pres- sure off individual fantasies, but the evil characters who perpetrate them undergo hideous punishment or have their perma- nent dwelling in hell, demonstrating that one cannot get away with it.

The end result of this catharsis is difficult to assess. A form of drama so long popular must have had some effect upon the audience's daily lives. On the one hand, the authors of most moral plays were clergy- men and the Church exercised some control over texts and licenses to play. On the other hand, some preachers complained that, after seeing a play, the townspeople would flock straight to the tavern, "haunt of the Devil" (Gardiner, 1946, p. 12), to go gambling or seeking female companionship.

Whether the audience flocked to the tavern or to the Church to confess probably de- pended upon two factors: (1) whether or not the text of the play had been corrupted from its original sermon form to include a number of ribald jokes; and (2) the nature of the particular performance. If the actors had an uncorrupted text and adhered strictly to it, the audience would feel morally up- lifted and some would amend their ways. If the actors decided to "liven up" the text in their possession by interjecting dirty jokes from time to time (many of which never reached written form), perhaps even adding scenes for which they took extra collections, it is very likely that many people took to

the tavern. These professional actors still

had memories of their vaudeville days before

they took up the acting of morality plays, and very likely a considerable resentment toward the Church, which had persecuted them. Hence they had several reasons for

interjecting vulgarities or anti-Church senti-

ments. Ideally, the performances should



450 DOROTHY WERTZ

have consummated the action by balancing man's sins with his death and damnation, then counterbalancing these with an unde- served mercy. Many performances, however, were so overbalanced with "immoral" actions that the death-salvation themes did not con- summate the action and the audience went away feeling a desire to continue or complete the action outside the theater.

There remains the problem of the relative ineffectiveness of the Virtues, which preachers so frequently listed as the perfect anti- dotes to the Deadly Sins. Perhaps this is their very trouble as conflict-resolving concepts: they are caught in the same concep- tual pattern as the sins, and become simply so many acts of goodness to be piled up and stored up to counteract one's pile of sin, real or contemplated. In an age that regarded sin as dirt rather than as separation from God, it was inevitable that sin became a quantity of acts that men could pile up, weigh, and count. Men could wipe these sins away by confession, and assure themselves a measure of salvation by piling up a measure of the opposite quantity, virtuous deeds. The Virtues thus participate in the dirty-clean dialectic of confession and satisfaction as a quantity of stuff that must out- weigh a quantity of some other stuff, as demonstrated by a verse from Bad Angel that silences the Virtues for the rest of The Castle of Perseverance:

Yah! go forth, and let the queens cackle! Where women are, are many words:

Let them go hopping with their hackle! Where geese sitten, are many turds.

[11. 2649-2652]

The Virtues do not really stand much closer to the love of God than the Sins, for both are fruits of man's own personal efforts to remove sin by his own moral power. This endless cleaning-off of sin through peni- tential exercises, to the point of obsession,

ultimately did not get Mankind to heaven, for it did not lead to love and mercy. Man- kind's sacramental confession accorded fully with medieval practice, and theoretically should have been sufficient for salvation, but its effects were only temporary. The Castle of Perseverance shows the beginnings of a dissatisfaction with confession as a conflict-resolving mechanism and an increased emphasis on the grace of God as the only ultimate solution.

Mankind's death and appeal for Mercy are followed by an argument between the "Four Daughters of God," Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace, in the form of a law court. The "Parliament of Heaven" implies a certain division within God himself in the form of a dispute between his attributes. When the argument resolves the argument between these concepts, God becomes recognizable as a unity in spite of his different appearances and actions in popular sermons, which must have somewhat confused the average man. The same God who damns is always willing to save the contrite sinner. The final conflict resolution is between God's justice and his mercy.

Failures of ego-mastery and catharsis can always occur. The successful outcome of Mankind's deathbed confession might so thoroughly assure the audience that this sufficed to insure salvation that they would not change their ways.

Everyman (ca. 1520) allows considerably more leeway for the ambiguities and sinuous

twistings and turnings of life's course than did the more static Castle one hundred years

earlier, with its neatly-encompassed round

stage limiting and defining the course of ac-

tion. In life, events do not progress by any ordered course along the shortest line be-

tween two points, but meander in round- about turns. Everyman does not restrict

any character to a specific locus except God,





who remains in heaven; all others move about at will. By the sixteenth century life had grown too complicated to appear as a pitched battle of virtues and vices on a round stage. Interest had shifted from the supernatural powers of good and evil fight- ing for the soul to the life of Everyman himself, who seems to be far from helpless in the face of death. Unlike Mankind, whom the Sins and Angels cajoled and led from scaffold to scaffold, Everyman is definitely running his own show and freely seeks out his own companions for the journey. Even Death gives him a respite, so that Everyman is finally able to face him with confidence. Everyman has simplified tangled events by putting the life of the average man into the narrative form of a journey and by representing certain concepts allegorically. Un- like The, Castle of Perseverance', which drew all characters as black or white except Man- kind, the later play allows for shades of gray, like Fellowship, Kindred, and Cousin, not really bad people, just unable and unwilling to accompany Everyman.

Everyman, like The Castle of Persever- ance, provides for the mastery of death, the simplification of concepts, and the reconcil- iation of social classes in a figure of the lowest common denominator. Unlike the earlier play, it does not allow much catharsis and omits any anti-Christian sentiments, perhaps because it contains no real personifica- tions of evil (the Devil is absent). Even Goods is not really a sin, just the result of a sin.

IV. Conclusions

In evaluating the effectiveness of the plays in resolving conflicts, we can say that the morality play provided some catharsis of anti-Christian and anti-Church sentiments, but, perhaps more importantly, helped to preserve a feeling of the basic

unity of society by portraying the figure of Mankind facing the perils of death and hell which were the common property of all social classes. The English morality play also provided an outlet for the resentments of various different classes, represented on the stage in historical and allegorical forms by traveling players who lived at the margins of society and could thus mirror the feelings of all classes or of none at all. Catharsis does not give the whole answer, however. Also important are those cognitive processes which simplify mysterious or confused situ- ations by visualizing unseen forces or by stretching out events into an understandable narrative. The plays attained ego-mastery over the future by the triumph of grace over death and hell, assuring the audience that they, too, had a chance for an ultimate salvation that otherwise seemed so uncertain.

By the sixteenth century, however, the political and Church authorities suspected the plays as possible foci of a popular up- rising by Catholics against the English Ref- ormation (Gardiner, 1946). Thus the answer to the question about conflict-resolving effi- cacy must be both yes and no: the morality plays did use many cognitive mechanisms to overcome problems between man and God, but ultimately their conceptualization of the world proved transitional. The increase of guilt through threats of punishment eventually led to a situation that the rubrics of sins, virtues, good deeds, Devil and angels could not adequately express and that the Sacrament of Penance could not fully answer unless reinterpreted.

The Castle of Perseverance points the way toward a new conceptualization, by demonstrating the final inefficacy of the virtues and by resolving its action through the grace of a distant but immediate God who allows man his free will. In succeed- ing centuries the realm of man's autonomy



452 DOROTHY WERTZ

was to increase yet further, and the supernatural figures would have less say in his life. In later moralities the emphasis evolved almost entirely toward the social or political, presenting man in his fallenness and inhu- manity to man, rather than as Adam about to fall. Religion had grown too internalized and too theologically complex for successful representation on the stage. The primary interest shifted to the realm of man's free will, since salvation resulted primarily from God's foreordination, over which man had no control.

Perhaps the thought of damnation, once internalized, too utterly horrified men for them to encompass it even by the goriest stage representations of hell-the burning hell-mouth did not suffice to portray the utter misery of eternal separation from God. Likewise, the stage Devil eventually grew so comic that he no longer represented the unformed Evil that lurked in the world and in the hearts of men. The Reformation regarded the Devil as a serious enough character to sweep him off the stage and to reserve him for men's private meditations. The classification of the Deadly Sins likewise became outworn, with all the new opportunities for sin in a changing society.

Besides, the local communal structures that gave life to the popular drama, such as the guilds and monasteries, lost their strength or were dissolved, and the new society no longer presented so much unity on the local level. The presentation of a figure of lowest common denominator, like Mankind or Everyman, grew more difficult. Later moralities had to present their type figures as historical personages or represent- atives of a definite social class or religious group. The morality plays had served their purpose as conflict-resolving mechanisms approved by society, but their success was

necessarily limited to the life-span of their socioreligious concepts.

Today we have no stage performances that approach the popularity of the medieval religious theater among all segments of the community; our theater is elitist in appeal. The closest analogue we can produce to popular drama is television, which unfortunately allows no living response from audience to actors or among more than a few members of the audience, though it may have considerable unexplored potential for resolving social conflicts through cognitive processes.

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