Compare and Contrast Mystery (Noah’s Flood) and Morality (Everyman) Plays
... to symbolize the animals boarding on the ark to add to the enjoyment of the audience in ‘Noah’s Flood’ but it wasn’t usually possible to even change the scene. In fact, there was nearly no scenery in the plays. The solution for this was the monologue. In the mystery and morality plays, the scene would start with a monologue telling the scenery and helping the audience to imagine the environment that the play took place. The mystery and morality plays were in a way frame tales, they usually started with a powerful person’s talk, which was God, and end again with his words. In Noah’s Flood, God starts talking to Noah telling about the condition of mankind and that he would send a flood to punish them. The play ends again with his words telling that everything was over and they were saved. Everyman has a similar opening. God tells Everyman that he ran after his pleasure all his life and his end is near. The play ends with the monologue of the Doctor, the learned theologian, who represents God in a way. Another similarity between a mystery and a morality play is that they both take their subject matters from Christianity. Both dramatic forms focused on the religious and moral themes that dominated the Christian imagination during the Middle Ages. The Mystery Plays dramatized sacred history, representing events from Creation to Judgement Day. They are the dramatizations of Old and New Testament miracles and the spiritual mysteries of Christianity, most particularly Christ’s redemption of fallen humanity through his Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection. The Morality Plays also presented religious and ethical concerns but from the point of view of the individual Christian, whose main concern was to effect the salvation of his soul. . The morality play is an externalized dramatization of a psychological and spiritual conflict: the battle between the forces of good and evil in the human soul. This interior struggle involves the Christian’s attempt to achieve salvation, despite the obstacles and temptations that he encounters as he travels through life, toward death. Both Mystery and Morality Plays use allegory. Allegory is a form of extended metaphor in which objects and persons within a narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. In Everyman, the allegory is obvious, the characters are allegorical representations of the worldly things and spiritual attributes. In Noah’s Flood, however, the allegory is on the deeper level. In the allegorical plot Noah represents God and his wife represents mankind. Noah’s wife disobeys her husband which in fact means that human beings disobey God. Noah also represents Adam in a way as both are acting on specific orders from God but are...