Morality Play

by Barry Unsworth

  The morning passed in practising, though there was not space enough in the barn to do the movements properly. Tobias and Margaret together fashioned an effigy of Thomas Wells with straw from the barn floor and twine and bits of clothing and they put on him the white mask that Straw sometimes wore when he played the Man of Fashion, and which has no expression, either of good or bad. This effigy it was necessary to make in order to show the change of death, also to make the burden light enough to be carried.

  Martin was at first intending to do as we had done in the Play of Adam, that is to make our changes in the barn and come back again through the people. But Springer, who after his death as Thomas Wells was to be the angel that showed the Monk where the money lay hidden, would not agree to this. 'I will not pass so close among them,' he said. Springer was a fearful soul and like a girl in some ways: he felt no shame in showing that he was afraid. And the rest of us were secretly grateful for this, as the same fear was in all of us. Some measure of fear a player feels always because he is exposed to view and there is no shelter for him without abandoning the play; but now it was stronger, we knew that we would be coming close to the people's lives. So it was decided among us to make a space with curtains against the wall of the yard in the corner close to where we were playing.

  When the noon bells began to sound we were still busy with this. The curtains were threaded through canes and the canes rested on corner posts, two of the sides being formed by the angel of the corner. While this work was being done by Stephen and Tobias and me, the others did tricks to entertain the people - there were already more folk in the yard than had come for our play ofthe evening before, and they were coming still. Straw and Springer did cartwheels, going different ways across, while Martin stood on his hands with a coloured ball resting on the sole of each foot, one white, one red -the same that had been thrown to me as a test - and he walked on his hands over the icy cobbles, keeping his legs so straight that the balls did not roll off, a thing I had never seen in my life before.

  Then our work with the curtains was finished and all of us save Martin and Tobias crowded into the room we had made and began to ready ourselves. Martin and Tobias continued some minutes longer before the people, one throwing up the balls and the other somersaulting to catch them. Then Tobias joined us. 'The yard is full,' he whispered. We stood there in the cramped space, listening first to the breathing of his exertions and then to the voice of Martin, as he began to speak the Prologue:

  'Good masters, we beg for your patience

  And also to give good audience

  To this our play ...'

  They were the lines agreed on, taken from the Interlude called Way of Life, with some changes to accord more with the tenor of our play. But when Martin had spoken them he did not come at once to join us but remained there before the people, which we had not known he would do, and I think he had not known it either. There was a silence of some seconds. No sound came from the people. And then he spoke again but in his own voice:

  'Give us your attention, good masters.

  This is the present play of your town.

  It is yours, and that is a new thing,

  to make a play that belongs to a town.

  And this play does honour to your town,

  because it shows that wrongdoers are punished here

  with great speed of justice.'

  Inside our tent of curtaining we regarded one another mutely. Tobias was frowning as he prepared to put on the mask of Pieta. I saw that Straw's lower lip was trembling slightly. The others I did not look closely at but I think we were all in fear. I went to the curtain and opened the parting a little and looked out. At that moment the rim of the sun showed above the wall on the side towards the sea, and a faint radiance fell across the yard and gleamed on the wet stones. There was a strange light on things, a snow-light, although the yard had been swept clear; and this light was gentle and at the same time pitiless: there were no shadows in it. It was as if the light of all the miles of snow outside had gathered here for our play. And it lay on the faces of the people as they stood close together there, dressed for the day of the fair, rough faces of labouring people, paler ones of servants and maids, with here and there the sharper or more stately look of people more well-to-do. These faces all were turned towards Martin and his voice filled the yard.

  'When we make a play of a wicked act

  we give God's pity further occasion,

  for those who play in it and those who watch.

  So as you look for pity you will be ready to grant it to us poor players

  and to those whose parts we take.'

  With a sudden gesture he raised his arms to the sides, palms outward to the people and raised above the shoulders. 'Gentle people,' he said, 'we give you our Play of Thomas Wells.'

  He came back now to join us and his face was calm but his breath caught a little. Straw and Springer and Stephen stepped out to begin the play, Straw dressed in a countrywoman's bonnet with his kirtle padded out to make him buxom, Stephen in his own ragged jerkin — the one he had worn at our first meeting, when he had threatened me with his knife. Springer, as Thomas Wells, wore his own drab doublet and hose.

  Tobias had fashioned a purse out of black felt, a good big one that all could see. And Stephen tossed it up so that the people should see it well, and he laughed in the manner of a boor, ho-ho-ho, with the hands held loosely clenched against the sides of the waist and the trunk of the body moved forward and back. Martin had schooled him in this and he did it well. There was laughter among the people to see a man laugh so at having made a bad bargain, because all knew that the cow had been sold out of need, and one or two called out, but not in anger as it seemed to me - if the man himself was there among them, he gave no sign of it. The laughter died away soon into silence and this quick dying away was a disturbing thing.

  I watched through the curtain as the play went on. Things were done as we had planned and practised them, the drunkenness of the man, the woman's filching of the purse, her miming of the dangers facing her son on his six-mile journey back to the town. Despite the full skirt and the bulk of his padding, Straw succeeded well in miming the perils of bears and wolves and robbers, and Springer followed all these movements with a goose-like turning of the head to show his careful listening and good intention.

  Then Stephen and Straw came back to change and I stepped out into the shelterless open and began my sermon to Thomas Wells.

  'Good Counsel is my name and some call me Conscience;

  my task it is and also my delight to urge and prompt you

  and every man to keep well on the way of life,

  which way was opened for us by the sufferings of Christ...'

  I said the words as they came to me, keeping my eyes steadily on Springer all the while, and making from time to time the gesture of exhortation, right hand raised and three middle fingers extended. There was some talking aside among the people and shifting of feet, they found the sermon long. Then there came again that sudden hush and I looked away from Thomas Wells and saw the woman come forward in the robe and wig and mask of the temptress - Straw had put on the round sun-mask of the Serpent before the Fall.

  For a moment I faltered in my lines. In that full unshadowed light there in the yard, the scarlet robe and the yellow wig and the unchanging smile of the white mask with its round pink cheek-patches were very striking. I felt my breath quickened as by some shock. And she did not come nearer, but stayed at a distance and at first without movement, while I continued my good counsel to Thomas Wells, using now some set lines I had kept in my memory:

  'Of ghostly sight be you not blind

  On earthly store to set your mind.

  To give you life Christ suffered to be dead ...'

  But the eyes of the people were not on me. They were on the woman, as she began her miming of delights. And this again had been Martin's idea, for the woman to keep at a distance and make a dumb-show of pleasures, while I still continued with my sermon,
so the words of spirit and the gestures of flesh should contend together.

  Martin's idea, yes; but Straw had made of it something only he could do. Of all of us he was most gifted in playing. Martin had high skill and a feeling for the spectacle and the whole shape and meaning of the play far beyond any of us. But there was in Straw an instinct for playing, or rather a meeting of instinct and knowledge, a natural impulse of the body, I do not know what to call it, but it is something that can neither be taught nor learned. For the part of the temptress he had devised a strange and frightening way of bending the body stiffly sideways with the head held for a moment in inquiry and hands just above the waist, palms outward and fingers stiffly splayed in a gesture of his own invention. So for a moment, while he made the pause to see the effects of his tempting, he was frozen in wicked inquiry. Then he broke again into sinuous motion, gesturing the delights that awaited Thomas Wells if he would but follow: cakes and pies and sweet drinks and the warmth of the fireside and something more - there was some writhing suggestion of lewdness in it also.

  This change from the flowing motions of pleasure to the stiff pose of observing was a frightening thing, even to me who had seen him practise it alone in a corner of the barn. There was complete silence among the people. Looking towards the rooms above, I saw open casements and faces watching us, one of them a white face with a black cap fitting close, and it came to me that this might be the Justice. I was coming now to the end of my exhortation:

  'Sin in the beginning may seem full sweet

  But the reckoning comes, be you never so fleet.

  When you lie in clay ...'

  Thomas Wells stood between us in his simple dull-coloured smock, looking from one to the other. His face was wide-eyed and solemn and he turned his body at the waist towards the one he looked at, keeping head and body in a straight line, and I saw the effort he made to breathe deeply enough and I felt his fear in me also, perhaps because of the silence - there was neither babble nor horseplay among the people, they sat hushed.

  Straw too must have felt it. He was affected always by currents of feeling and unpredictable in his ways of responding. Now he did something that had not been at all in our practice. His movements before had been lascivious in some degree, and this more for the sake of the people than the boy. But now he moved his hands down the front of his body in a long movement of self-love and turned them to make the arrowhead shape and ran this arrow down the lines of the groin and held it there to show the form of the mons venereal, and he did this for Thomas Wells, swaying his body as he did it, and it was a gesture of pride and power and terrible invitingness. I came to the end of my words as the woman still stood there showing the place of pleasure, and the stuff of the gown was strained over the fork of her body and showed the parts of a man beneath.

  Thomas Wells went towards her, he too playing by impulse now, moving like someone between waking and sleeping, stepping high as if under a spell. I turned to the people and made the shrug of sorrowful resignation, with arms half raised. But now, as the boy moved forward, there was a sudden voice from among the people, a cry of anger or distress. A woman's voice -emerging from the silence it had great force. Straw turned to see where the cry had come from and I heard the gasp of his breathing and saw the rise and fall of his breast. I stepped forward and lowered my head and made again the gesture of sorrowful resignation, hoping that this would give time for Springer and Straw to retire behind the curtain and prepare for the scene of the killing. But the woman called out again, and now with words. 'It was not thus,' she shouted. 'My boy did not go with her.' Her voice was loud, though there was the choke of tears in it. She was not looking at us, she was looking at those around her, which was worse. 'My Thomas was a good boy,' she shouted in appeal to them.

  Other shouts came now from among the people. There was a movement among them, a rustle of violence. Danger of hurt for players comes like the sound of wind in the trees. Once heard it is never forgotten. The three of us were frozen there. We could not go on against the shouting, we could not retreat or the play collapsed. Then Martin came forward from behind the curtain and he had put on the hood of Mankind, but this he drew quickly back as he faced the people, turning his wrist as he did so in the sign of changing discourse. 'Good people, why did he go with her?' he shouted. 'Thomas Wells was not killed by the roadside.'

  This shouting above the people's shouts brought some moments of silence and Martin spoke loudly into the silence. His face was white, but his voice was confident and steady. 'God's pity, not in such a manner as that,' he said. 'She would not do it there, on a road where people might pass.' The silence held still. With the briefest of pauses he turned to me, arm extended in the gesture of indication: 'You, Good Counsel, tell us why Thomas Wells gave you no heed.'

  I knew I must answer this quickly while we could be heard. I spoke the words as they came to mind: 'Alas, good sir, man lives after his pleasure ...'

  Now, under Martin's eye, Springer made a memorable conquest of his fear. He took some steps forward, making as he did so the gesture that accompanies the confession of Adam: 'The woman tempted me and I did go with her,' he said. As he spoke he turned towards Straw and fluttered the fingers of his right hand very briefly and rapidly, concealing this with his body from the view of the people. This sign I did not know at the time, but it is the one that asks for a thing to be repeated by him you look at. 'With her body she did me tempt,' he said.

  Straw drew himself up. The sun-mask of the Serpent regarded us and all the people with its unfaltering smile. With the same sinuous movement as before the temptress caressed herself, made the arrow shape at the place of lust, swayed her shoulders in power and pride. And the silence among the people was again so complete that I heard the wings of a pigeon as it rose above the roof of the inn.

  Now at last we were able to withdraw, all save Thomas Wells, who had to remain while Avaritia and Pieta prepared themselves to struggle for the woman's soul. And so we had been saved, and by our own exertions. But these same exertions, this narrow avoiding of disaster, set something free among us that had before been caged.

  The first to show it was Springer, left alone there before the people. There is a sort of desperate boldness that comes to the fearful when they have gone beyond their fears and this it was perhaps that impelled Springer now. He had been intending, in order to lighten the mood of the people before the acting of the murder, to do the old mime of the thief of eggs whose eggs break inside his clothes. It was this that he had practised and he had made us all laugh with it in the barn. But instead he began to speak directly to the people. Standing there together, we heard his voice, high-pitched and clear, still with something of a child in it. We heard him ask a question which, simple as it was, had not occurred to any of us.

  'Read me a riddle, good people,' we heard him say. 'How did the woman know I bore the purse about me? Did some demon whisper it to her? Did I toss it up and down as I walked along? If I did so, would she have seen what it was from where she stood on the common at the close of a winter day?'

  Stephen bent his large frame to peer through the parting in the curtain. 'He is walking back and forth before them, tossing up the purse,' he said in a hoarse whisper. His dark eyes looked larger than usual, more prominent in his face.

  'Go out and speak to him, Stephen,' Martin said, 'before they turn to anger again. Say what comes into your mind to say. Then Tobias and I will come out for the scene of argument.'

  Stephen was less able as a player, but he had a quality of hardihood that stood him in good stead now. He was in full command of his voice and his nerves as he advanced on Springer. Even without God's gilding he had a dignified presence, and this despite his ruffian's nature. 'Thomas Wells, you boasted of it,' he said in his deep voice. 'You boasted to the woman of the purse...'

  We heard Springer make the crowing sound of false laughter, then a voice came from among the people, a man's voice, harsh and loud: 'Fool player, what brought her near enough to hear the boy
boast?'

  But now Avaritia and Pieta came forward with the woman between them and they walked slowly back and forth, halting to speak the lines, then resuming. The Battle for the Soul is usually done with the players always in the same place and speaking in turn. But Martin had wanted more movement in it and had practised Tobias in this walking and halting.

  So we proceeded for some time, keeping to the way we had practised. But we were not the same people as those who had practised ... Straw's changing of the masks succeeded well and was very startling to the people. He did it behind the backs of Avaritia and Pieta, who came forward and stood side by side together facing the people and spread their cloaks, white for the Virtue, black for the Vice. Then they drew aside to left and right and the woman was revealed with the demon's mask and she raised her hands and hooked the fingers and hissed at the people and some hissed back. This was to show that the Evil One had triumphed. The sun-mask she hid in the waist of her gown.

  The strangling of Thomas Wells was done in dumb-show. Straw did it alone before the people, without the boy. It was decided thus among us in whispers behind the curtain. Martin was for keeping it as we had intended, with the boy strangled in full view, as it made a strong scene, and this mattered more to his zealot's soul than the danger. But the rest were opposed - we were unwilling to rouse the people against us for a second time. So we passed directly to the bearing of the effigy back to the road and thence to the finding of the money.

  This scene of the finding did not play so well as we had thought. Some things have better success in the practising than in the playing. Martin as the Monk did what he could, hunting here and there, holding up the purse triumphantly when found, while Straw, still in his demon mask, cowered back against the wall. Despite this there was a lack of force and all of us felt it. It may be that what happened next was due to our sense of this lack and our wish to make it good. Or perhaps it was because Martin had to conceal the purse in his sleeve until it was found, there being nowhere else in that bare place to conceal it. It was Stephen as the Monk's servant that began it, and this too in a way was surprising because, though truculent in debating, he was the one least likely to undermine the form of the play once this had been agreed on. Being shouted at for a fool may have rankled in his mind, though he never admitted this. When he spoke it was in rhyme, and so it was with all of us, and the rhymes came easily, unhesitating, unforced — we were possessed.