A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 01

In Short

This volume serves as a time capsule of the English stage in its infancy, collecting rare morality plays, interludes, and pedagogical dramas that define the transition from medieval liturgical performance to the secular theater of the Renaissance. Through allegorical characters—like Everyman, Humanity, or Sensual Appetite—the works explore the tension between worldly desire and spiritual reckoning. These plays have endured because they capture the primal, often rowdy, human impulse to turn abstract ideas about life, death, and duty into a spectacle that can be danced, sung, and argued upon a stage.

The Story

The collection begins with The Interlude of the Four Elements, a didactic work where Humanity, guided by Studious Desire, seeks to reconcile his intellectual curiosity about the natural world with his baser, more sensory instincts. The play’s arc is one of constant interruption; just as Humanity begins to grasp the nature of the firmament and the earth, Sensual Appetite and a host of dancers arrive to pull him away to the tavern. The struggle between the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of pleasure remains the central tension, ending with Humanity yielding to the call of the tavern, leaving his intellectual duties behind.

The narrative shifts to the tragic and cautionary Calisto and Melibaea, where the protagonist Calisto falls into a desperate, obsessive love. He employs the elderly go-between Celestine to win Melibaea’s affection, a path that forces his servant Parmeno to decide between his moral truth and the ease of complicity. As Calisto’s obsession deepens, he ignores all warnings, leading to a downward spiral where the characters weigh their own short-term gains against the ultimate cost of their integrity.

This gravity intensifies in Everyman, a quintessential morality play. God, observing that humanity has become "drowned in sin" and blinded by worldly prosperity, sends Death to summon Everyman for a final accounting. Everyman’s journey is a stark, linear descent into the grave. He desperately calls upon his friends—Fellowship, Strength, Beauty, and Discretion—to accompany him on his final pilgrimage, but each abandons him as his life force wanes. The story ends with the sobering recognition that while all worldly supports inevitably fade, the soul must face its reckoning alone, finding salvation only through repentance and divine grace.

The tone pivots to the satirical in Hickscorner, The Pardoner and the Friar, and Thersites. Here, the arc moves away from solemn allegory to the rowdiness of the streets. Hickscorner depicts a clash between the virtuous Pity and the chaotic, irreverent figures of Imagination, Freewill, and Hickscorner, who embody the corruption and lawlessness of the age. Similarly, The Pardoner and the Friar is a comedic debate where two fraudulent religious figures compete to swindle an audience, their petty squabbling highlighting the hypocrisy of their respective claims to sanctity. Finally, Thersites offers a mock-heroic finale, featuring a braggart knight whose "deeds of chivalry" consist of challenging a common garden snail to a duel, a comedic arc that effectively lampoons the vanity and false bravado of the era’s warrior class.

How It Unfolds

The intellectual inquiry begins Humanity is introduced to the mysteries of the natural world, attempting to grasp the placement of the earth within the firmament. He is quickly distracted by the arrival of Sensual Appetite, who turns the serious lesson into a dance, leading the group off to the tavern.

The descent into obsession Calisto initiates a reckless pursuit of Melibaea, enlisting a manipulative intermediary to satisfy his desires. His servant Parmeno observes the folly but ultimately abandons his moral convictions to flatter his master, sealing their collective descent into corruption.

The final summons The scene shifts to the universal plight of the human soul, as Everyman receives his divine mandate to prepare for death. He experiences the painful stripping away of his earthly comforts, discovering that his strength and beauty cannot follow him into the grave.

The collision of chaos and virtue The story enters the realm of social satire, where Pity attempts to warn the unruly trio of Hickscorner, Imagination, and Freewill. The play exposes the rampant immorality of the day, as these figures mock justice and celebrate their own unchecked vices.

The comic confrontation The collection closes with the absurdity of a braggart knight, Thersites, who bellows threats and prepares for battle. His "heroic" struggle against a simple snail exposes the pathetic emptiness of his vanity, punctuating the volume with a moment of sharp, self-aware ridicule.

The People

The characters in these plays are often embodiments of abstract virtues or vices, yet they possess distinct, recognizable appetites. Humanity serves as a vessel for the average man, caught between his desire for higher learning and his vulnerability to Sensual Appetite, a charming, disruptive force that represents the distracting pull of the physical world.

Calisto is driven by an all-consuming, destructive romantic fixation, while his servant Parmeno occupies the tragic middle ground. Parmeno initially sees the truth, but his desire to "speed as well as bawdry" leads him to mirror the corruption he once criticized. Everyman acts as the universal proxy, moving from a position of prideful, worldly ignorance to a state of humble, solitary vulnerability as his companions—Beauty and Strength—forsake him in his hour of greatest need.

In the more satirical works, Pity stands as the beleaguered voice of reason, constantly overruled by the loud, cynical trio of Hickscorner, Imagination, and Freewill, who revel in their own moral bankruptcy. Thersites rounds out the group as the ultimate caricature of false nobility, a man whose insecurity is so immense that he treats his own garden pests as existential threats, highlighting the dissonance between his self-perception and his actual worth.

In Its Own Voice

The plays use an archaic, direct language that blends religious solemnity with the rough, idiomatic speech of the period's streets.

"Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet, / Which in the end causeth thy soul to weep, / When the body lieth in clay."

(The Messenger describes the inevitable, bitter trajectory of a sinful life in Everyman.)

"Why, whoresons, I say, will ye not come? / By the mass, the knaves be all from home: / They had better have fet me an errand at Rome."

(Thersites loudly complains to his absent servants before his ridiculous battle with the snail.)

"Truth is put back, and taken for folly. / Therefore now I will change my copy."

(Parmeno decides to abandon his principles in Calisto and Melibaea to better align with the corrupt world around him.)

What It's Really About

These plays grapple with the definition of the "good life" in an age where the boundary between the sacred and the profane was constantly shifting. The works explore the danger of excess—whether it is the intellectual hubris of trying to understand the heavens, the romantic obsession of a lover, or the moral laxity of the corrupt. At their heart, they question what remains of a person once their external markers—wealth, status, physical vigor, and company—are stripped away. The plays argue that human life is inherently transitory and that the only enduring value is found in a clear conscience and a preparation for the inevitable conclusion that every person must face.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy the roots of literature, particularly those fascinated by the evolution of the English language and the history of ideas, will find this a deeply rewarding, if challenging, collection. Reading these plays feels like uncovering the bare scaffolding of later, more sophisticated drama; you can see the ghosts of Shakespeare’s clowns in these early rogues and the seeds of Hamlet’s existential dread in the solitary journey of Everyman.

The language, filled with archaic syntax and specific period dialects, requires patience. It is not a book for a casual, fast-paced read; the footnotes are essential, as they explain the local customs, religious legends, and political allusions that would otherwise remain opaque to a modern reader. However, the reward for this effort is a vivid, often surprising window into a world that is fundamentally different from our own, yet deeply relatable in its anxieties. You will walk away with a sense of the human spirit’s perennial struggle: the attempt to balance our "high points of cunning" with our equally powerful, and often chaotic, "sensual appetite." The sight of a medieval knight losing his dignity to a snail remains as sharp and funny as it was five hundred years ago.