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Discussion Questions
1. Morality Play opens, "It was a death that began it
all and another death that led us on." There are four deaths
during the course of the book. How does each death "lead us
on"?
2. How does the language of signs work? Is it a private
language for the players or a tool of communication? Does it
bring people together or keep them apart?
3. Martin is a charismatic force in the novel. How does his
charisma affect the other characters? What happens when a
group of people are influenced by a visionary? How have
charismatic leaders affected contemporary history?
4. Why does Unsworth choose to write about an acting troupe?
5. The decision to play the murder is an important scene in
the novel, and the players continue to talk about the decision
even after they have done the murder play. Why are they so
reluctant to accept this innovation? What are their concerns?
How has murder become theater in our own time?
6. Many of the servants of God don't seem very faithful in
this novel. How does religion factor into the lives of the
players? What did you make of the scene where the actors think
they see "the Beast" coming up the hill toward the graveyard? Are any of the characters spiritual? What does it mean to lead a spiritual life?
7. What is Nicholas Barber able to see, and what doesn't he
notice? Did you ever have a sense of a difference of opinion
between Nicholas and Unsworth?
8. There are only two women with real parts in this book, and
one of them doesn't have any lines. Is it a book about men?
What are the women's roles? How do the characters in the novel
view the women? How does Unsworth view them? How do you view
them?
9. In Morality Play, there's sex traded for food, sex
in exchange for information, sex as a temptation to lead a
boy off a road, sex as part of a crime, and sex and the plague.
How do the characters think about sexuality? How do they act
it out? Why do you think Martin is first attracted to the
Weaver's daughter? Will Martin remain in love with her once
she is free?
10. At the end of the book, Nicholas says to the Justice,
"This is an example of the King's justice. What of God's?"
The Justice replies, "It is not the King that visits us with
pestilence." Is there any justice in this book? Is it the
King's or God's?
11. The use and abuse of power is seen throughout this novel
and in Unsworth's work in general. Who believes in power in
this book and who is cynical about it? Which of the characters
is powerful? What makes them powerful? Do they hold on to
their power or lose it? When does power become abusive?
12. Watching the knights at the tournament, Nicholas says that
"it came to me for the first time that this was the greatest
example of playing that our times afforded." What does this
say about the aristocracy? Stephen's admiration for the
nobility is evident at the tournament. What happens to Stephen
in the play before Lord de Guise? How do the players view
the wealthy? How does Unsworth?
13. Money keeps the players in town and money puts the
Weaver's daughter in jail. Money convicts the Monk, and money
concludes the players' play. How important is money as a
motivating force? Do other passions (pride, lust, loyalty)
turn out to matter more?
14. Morality Play begins with Nicholas Barber's
decision to temporarily become a player and ends with his
decision to remain one. Can the novel be read as the
narrator's progress from one life to another? Why does
Nicholas turn away from the priesthood?
Barry Unsworth on Fourteenth-Century Life and Theater
For ordinary people in England the fourteenth century was
probably one of the worst times to be alive since recorded
history began. It was a period of incessant war abroad and
banditry at home. Periodic outbreaks of the plague known as
the Black Death decimated the population and often wiped out
whole communities. The grip of the Church was relentless,
fear of hellfire universal, and the presence of death a daily
reality. Under the pressure of these violent and dislocating
events, the structure of society was breaking down and the gap
was widening between the ideal and the actual, between the
teaching of the Church and its practice, between the
professions of chivalry and the reality (the knights, who were
supposed to be the champions of the oppressed, were
themselves the oppressors, notorious for their arrogance and
lawlessness).
To survive stresses of this sort there had to be radical
change and so there was in this period. The feudal system
began to disintegrate, the power of the barons was slowly
brought under central control, the high mortality rate due to
the plague meant that labor was scarcer and there was more
mobility and freedom of choice, a rising merchant class was
changing the political balance. The seeds of a new order
existed but they would be slow to germinate.
In the theater too this was an age of transition. Medieval
drama, the traditional Mystery Play, grew out of the liturgy,
the prescribed form of worship of the early Christian Church.
When it passed from the Church into the streets and market
squares it still remained religious in character, presenting
episodes from the Old Testament and from the life of Christ;
but it became in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries more elaborate and ambitious. It was taken over by
the trade associations of the cities, called guilds, who
financed whole cycles of plays from the fall of Lucifer to
the Last Judgment, and who were rich enough to afford stage
machinery and special "effects." The groups of poor players
who traveled from town to town with a small repertory of these
Bible plays could not compete with the guilds, but they
continued to perform, mixing their half-improvised dramas
with burlesque interludes. At the same time a totally new
form of drama was being born, known as the Morality Play,
which told the story of an individual Christian on the road
of life, yielding to temptation, falling from grace, and
eventually being redeemed. It was thus the story of the battle
for an individual soul, carried on by allegorical figures
representing the forces of good and evil.
These two types of play, the Mystery and the Morality, went
on being performed side by side throughout the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, but it was the Morality, with its stress
on psychology and argument, which was to survive as the
stronger form, leading the way to the secular drama of the
Renaissance.
Praise for Morality Play
"Morality Play is a bravura performance. . . .
The novel is a thought-provoking comedy on the eternal
sameness of disaster and the recurrent uses we put it to in
art. On the way we toy with morality and also play our way
to truth."—Janet Burroway, New York Times Book
Review
"Morality Play is a book of subtlety, compassion and
skill, and it confirms Barry Unsworth's position as a master
craftsman of contemporary British fiction."—Charles
Nicholl, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A historical novelist of rare talent. . . . A spare and
disquieting tale that, like a morality play itself, urges us
to question the allure of 'Murder One,' 'Prime Suspect Three,'
and our most recent trial of the century."—Linda Simon,
Boston Globe
"The entire novel is brilliantly imagined. . . . It is a
dramatic meditation on the relationship between life and
play."—Brian Finney, San Francisco Chronicle
"In Morality Play, [Unsworth] has created an
entertaining, thought-provoking work of remarkable scope and
detail."—Rick Quackenbush, Houston Chronicle
"A gem. . . . Morality Play resonates with meaning for
our own time."—Dan Cryer, Newsday
"A perfect novel. . . . This book dazzles on every level.
It's lyrically surprising, unforgettably credible, darkly
challenging. You succumb happily on page one and stay in
thrall right up to the quick, bruising end."—Julie
Myerson, [London] Independent on Sunday
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