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Embodying Temptation: The Representation of Choice in Medieval and Early Modern Drama

Abstract The human dilemma of making everyday choices between good and evil— obedience or disobedience to God—is poignantly depicted in several medieval Miracle and Morality plays and Early Modern plays, reflecting some of the anxiety induced by the pressure to make such choices by externalising, and thus physically embodying, the alternatives. The effects of these representations and the potential outcome—salvation or damnation—of these decisions are explored in the Catholic Morality play Everyman and its successors, including Johannes Kolross’s Protestant everyman drama, Das Spil von Fünfferlei Betrachtnussen zur Buss. In the early 16th-century Miracle play Mariken van Nieumeghen, Mariken spends seven years with the devil, and in Marlowe’s late 16th-century tragedy Doctor Faustus, the protagonist enters into a contract with him. The article argues that allowing the audience to see and experience abstract concepts at a visceral level makes these concepts part of the very fabric of their lives. As a commemorative lecture, the article also draws on and extends some of the research of the late Margaret Raftery, honouring her contribution to medieval scholarship.