Christian Humanism in the Late English Morality Plays

 

by Dorothy H. Brown
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Dorothy H. Brown takes a new look at the morality plays of the late 16th century as vehicles of Christian humanism. Linking theories put forth by the privileged classes with evidence in plays performed for popular audiences, she shows how these ideas became a part of everyday life for many English citizens by the end of the century.


Brown pays close attention to a group of plays from the 1560s through the 1580s (Like Will to Like Quoth the Devil to the Collier, Tide Tarrieth No Man, Three Ladies of London, and others) that comprise a "theater of commitment" for reform. She explores the pedagogical methods employed in these plays, their lively stagecraft, and the wide-ranging social issues touched on, as well as how this genre of drama may have been used to undercut dominant social hierarchies in English Renaissance society.


Ultimately, Brown shows how comedies designed to "teache, to delight, and to persuade" in the old morality mode became a vehicle for bringing to the broad public stage Thomas More’s ideas for reform in education, politics, religion, and personal morality.


Dorothy H. Brown is professor emerita of English at Loyola University, New Orleans. She was associate editor of Explorations in Renaissance Culture from 1984 to 1994 and coedited Louisiana Women Writers: New Essays and a Comprehensive Bibliography.


1999. 208pp. 6 X 9.


ISBN 0-8130-1701-7 Cloth, $55.00

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"Undergraduates will find the book to be a succinct introduction. . . , and more experienced readers will appreciate the author's grasp of primary sources."-- Choice

 

"A useful study that does not duplicate previous scholarship in any noteworthy way." -- Christianity and Literature

 

"No one has so thoroughly and systematically shown how the ideals and beliefs of Christian humanists, associated traditionally with aristocratic intellectuals and courtiers, permeate and even shape the popular late moralities in England. The book thus significantly contributes to Renaissance scholars’ understanding of one of the ways that new ideas and recast old ideals and moral principles jumped the gap from one level of a culture to another."—James Sims, University of Southern Mississippi



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