Economic and Spiritual Conflict in Medieval East Anglian Drama

Nearly all extant Middle English morality and miracle play-texts can be traced to one place and time: East Anglia in the fifteenth century. This confluence of texts has put scholarship on East Anglian drama in a unique position: on the one hand, scholarship on the surviving plays is regionally specific; on the other hand, it constitutes the interpretation of an entire genre. Building on the substantial body of scholarship on East Anglia’s status as a comparatively wealthy centre for the wool trade, I examine the ways in which economic issues shape the heterogenous forms of the region’s drama as well as the implications of these forms on our understanding of late-medieval dramatic genres more broadly. Focusing on four anonymous play-texts—Mankind, Wisdom, The Castle of Perseverance, and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament—I explore how East Anglian drama responded to pressing late-medieval economic problems, such as land enclosure and labor rebellion in Mankind, the abuse of the legal system for financial gain in Wisdom, or the temptations of trade in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament. I argue that the economic issues depicted in these plays are more than just topical villains or vices slotted into a didactic model of drama; rather, these economic conflicts give rise to the plays’ variegated and unusual dramatic forms. Based on research into relevant historical contexts, analysis of drama manuscripts, and close readings of the play-texts, I argue that medieval East Anglian drama is more deeply imbricated with local economic concerns than present-day models for drama’s engagement with commerce have been able to comprehend. By portraying economic realities as driving forces behind the performance and circulation of drama, these plays challenge their apparent message about the triumph of spiritual growth over destructive economic forces. Rather than viewing medieval morality plays as a single coherent genre that portrays the pursuit of economic gain as antithetical to spiritual growth, I posit that late-medieval allegorical drama was a more complex and flexible medium which often tied the act of performance to the economically-defined moral failings depicted in each play.

Department dc:contributor.department

Medieval Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Atiya, Alexandra

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sergi, Matthew

• English Literature
• Medieval Drama
• Medieval Manuscripts
• Morality Plays

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1807/153534

OAI record oai:identifier

https://utoronto.scholaris.ca/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Autoronto.scholaris.ca%3A1807%2F153534