MM Browne
SITM Poznan 2013
July 26, 2013
The Performance of the Moral Choice:
Sense and Sensing in the Late Medieval Morality Drama
Humanus Genus (Mankinde) and his choice to follow one of his two angels, Bonus
Angelus or Malus Angelus, drive the dramatic action in the fifteenth-century English morality
play Castle of Perseverance.1 Similarly, modern media renditions of the protagonist’s mental
arbitration between the advice from a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other
bear witness to the survival power of the medieval good angel/human/bad angel paradigm.
Modern performances of these two left and right shoulder sprites, (barring performances of Dr.
Faustus) are generally limited to comedic renditions of this mental moral trio.2
The good and bad angels generally banter with their human charge over what he “should” or
“should not” choose to do in the situation of a moral dilemma. The good angel’s “should”
spoken on the right shoulder, inspires the person to choose virtuous, selfless action. The bad
angel’s “should” spoken on the left shoulder, entices the person into indulgence and selfish
behaviors, namely, vice. The person in the middle turns from one shoulder to the other in his
1
David Bevington, “Castle of Perseverance.” Medieval Drama. (Houghton Mifflin:Boston,1970), 799-900.
Humanus Genus (Mankind), Bonus Angelus and Malus Angelus are introduced 808-813.
2
My Name Is Bruce. Dir.Bruce Campbell. (Dark Horse Entertainment, 2007.)
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attempt to choose one “should” path or the other, and as it usually turns out, the moral dilemma
which the person in the middle faces is difficult to solve when considered from just this left-andright “should” (interestingly “should-er”) dimension—conditions which often lend themselves to
tragicomedy rather than a dramatic encounter with an actual moral choice.
In contrast, the medieval characterization and performance of the choice between virtue
and vice, although highly theatrical and entertaining, was not meant to be “funny”. Where
medieval performance of choice did concern itself with what one “should” or “shouldn’t” do,
medieval virtue and vice was more complex. Rather than being limited to the left and right,
either/or dimension of the head, the medieval encounter of the soul with virtue and vice involved
the entire sensory system of the body and the mind. Vice characters can be performed adequately
(but not well) without a clear understanding of the medieval view of the senses, but the virtue
characters suffer greatly without a solid grasp of virtue’s interior sensory grounding. When
approached from interior and exterior sensory experience, the performance of virtue and vice
becomes accessible to modern actors. They are freed from abstract speculation in the
development of personifications instead of regular characters.
This paper takes a closer look at some of the pieces of the medieval physiological and
philosophical puzzle which compose an interior-exterior sensory approach to virtue and vice, and
then applies them to the performance of virtue and vice. More specifically, I will consider here
the interior-exterior dynamics at work in the medieval physiology of the interior and exterior
senses relative to virtue and vice, but with a special focus on virtue. I will then relate these to
comments in Augustine’s Libero arbitrio regarding the process of turning away from sin and
towards virtue as a key to the performance of the moral choice.3
3
Augustine. The Problem of Free Choice (Libero arbitrio). Mark Pontifex,Trans. Ancient Christian Writers: The
Works of the Fathers in Translation. 22 Westminster MD: The Newman Press, 1955), 57.
2
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The Inward Wits and the Interior Nature of Virtue
The medieval theory of the inward wits and the interior nature of virtue begin with the
medieval premise that the human being consisted of a masterfully integrated soul and body.4
This interconnection is informed by the medieval understanding of the interior senses and their
relationship to reason, and wisdom. Ruth Harvey describes the inward wits as being based on
the “medieval commonplace” belief that:
. . . man belongs to two worlds: the external material world into
which he is born, and the higher world of intellect [divine
intelligence] and truth, inhabited by immaterial beings, to which he
may attain. The inward wits stand at the point of communication
between these two worlds in man, between the body and the soul,
the realm of sense, and the realm of intellect.5
Thus the human being was perceived as having two interconnected sensory systems, the five
physical senses (hearing, sight, taste, touch, smell) which linked the physical body and the
interior soul to the “external material world”, and the inward wits which mediated the activity of
the soul in relationship to the higher spiritual realms of the angels and also the created world of
the physical senses. The physical senses were the gateways of the soul to the exterior domains of
the created world. The inward wits opened to, or “sensed” the interior realm of the soul—“the
realm of the intellect” which was connected with or “inhabited by immaterial beings”, or the
invisible hierarchies of virtue, wisdom, and the angelic spheres.6
4
Ruth Harvey. The Inward Wits: Physiological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (London: the
Warburg Institute, 1975). 4-5, 20-29. Aristotle suggested the existence of the interior senses came to central Europe
via the Arabian doctors, especially Avicenna.
5
Ibid., 2.
6
John Parker, Trans. The Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Dionysus the Areopogite. (London: Skeffington
and Son, 1894), 15-16 and 21-24. Internet Archive. http://archive.org/details/celestialandecc01parkgoog
3
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Where modern brain physiology understands various parts of the brain to be responsible
for various functions of the body as well as cognitive activities of thought, medieval physiology
considered thought as evidence of the interior activity of the human soul. Thus, in order to
perceive this inner thought activity of the soul, sensory organs were needed. These sensory
organs which “sensed” the thinking activity of the soul consisted of imaginativa, cogitativa, and
memoria and were known in English as the inward wits. Thus the phrase which is still with us,
“scared out of his wits” refers to someone who has been frightened out of his interior senses of
imagination, reason, and memory. Madness, medievally defined, applied to someone who could
no longer sense the interior thought activity of his/her soul, a state of interior “disconnection”
between the soul and the body.7
The process of thinking was seen to occur in various phases, and each phase had an
inward wit to perceive it. The wit of imaginativa processed the soul’s activity of imagination,
the wit of reason or cogitativa “read” the soul’s activity of ratio or rational thinking, and the wit
of memory or memoria deciphered the soul’s activity of remembering. Medieval physiologists
placed the inward wits in the apparently “empty” ventricles of the brain. The many diagrams of
medieval anatomies of the brain are well-known, images which show the location in the head and
brain medieval physiology placed the various senses of the brain. This one shows the three
ventricles labeled with their respective senses, imaginativa at the front, cogitativa in the center,
and memoria at the rear. 8
7
For example, in the physical senses, when the inner ear does not function, the person cannot hear; when the
structures of the eye are damaged, blindness is the result, etc. If one could not imagine something, then imaginatio
was damaged, etc.
8
Sudhoff, W. Die Lehre von den Hirnventrikeln in textlicher und graphischer Tradition des Altertums und
Mittelalters. Archiv. für Geschichte der Medizin VII, 149-205, Figure 14. Image from Gregor Reisch, Margarita
Philosohica (published 1504). The labels from left to right are: sensus communis, fantasia, ymaginativa, vermis,
cogitativa, estimativa, memorativa. This description of the inward wits evidences the many variations on the three
main senses of imaginativa, cogitativa, and memoria. Sensus communis and fantasia are parts of imaginativa;
4
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The inward wit most important to the virtues is cogitativa, so from here I will focus the
discussion on this sense which perceived the soul’s activity of reason.9
For medieval philosophy as well as medicine, the core activity of the human soul was its
reason—or the soul’s ratio, to use Philosophia’s term from the Consolationis Philosophiae,:
vermis is a channel connecting the ventricles, estimativa is a part of,cogitativa, and memorativa is a variation on the
word memoria.
9
In German, reason is rendered as Verstand. Boethius’ use of the Latin term ratio (pronounced /ra-ti-o/,
not /re-sho/) as instructed by Lady Philosophy is closer in meaning to Verstand than it is to the modern English
understanding of “reason” due to the shift in use the term underwent in the Renaissance and the “Protestant”
eighteenth century which made the capacity of reason the sole property of thought, separated from the perceived
“fogginess” of the inner wisdom of (Catholic/old medieval schoolteacher’s) mysticism. The German word for reason
is Verstand , although this translation is not exact. Verstand, as well as ratio, is difficult to translate into Present Day
English; it means the capacity for presence of mind, and the mind’s basic capacity to put two and two together
relative to sensory observation and memory, but not disconnected from feeling and emotion. The word ratio as it is
used in the Consolationis Philosophiae can be understood as reason that is connected to the heart, namely wisdom or
compassion.
5
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t reason belongs only to human kind, as intelligence only to the divine.
[R]atio vero humani tantum generis est sicut intellegentia sola divini.10
Harvey paraphrases Nemesius from his book, On the Nature of Man, as she explains:
Man’s reason links him with incorporeal and intellectual beings like
the angels and like them too he has the ability to pursue virtue, and
the desire for beatitude. Just as the magnet links the realms of element
and plant, and the mussel and sponge bridge the division between
plant and animal, man joins the visible to the invisible, the sensitive
[physical sensing] to the intellectual [divine intelligence].11
Important to medieval personifications of virtue was the dovetailing of the medieval
physiological understanding of the brain’s cogitativa and ratio with medieval religion’s view of
the soul’s virtue of sophia, or wisdom. The soul’s capacity for wisdom, the highest development
of ratio, had a physical anchor in the brain’s inward wit of cogitativa. For the medieval
philosopher and the monastic contemplative, the inner wisdom of the soul was the place where
the spirit of God or Christ could come to dwell within the human being. Thus the interior sense
of cogitativa and its perception of reason was also the gateway to a connection with the higher
levels of wisdom and the angelic intelligence of the hierarchies.
Man’s reason links him with incorporeal and intellectual beings
like the angels, and like them too he has the ability to pursue
virtue, and the desire for beatitude. Just as the magnet links the
realms of element and plant, and the mussel and sponge bridge he
division between plant and animal, man joins the visible to the
invisible, the sensitive [or sensory] to the intellectual.12
On these grounds medieval contemplative practice cultivated pious devotion to the
development of interior wisdom, the building of an inner connection with the mystical Christ
10
Boethius. “The Consolation of Philosophy.” S.J. Tester, Trans. The Loeb Classical Library. 74 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1973), 417. Consolation V, V.
11
Harvey, 2. Bishop Nemesius of Emesa, Syria (390 BCE). “His short book On the nature of man was translated
into Latin twice during the middle Ages, and both Thomas Aquinas (d.1274) and Albertus Magnus (d.1280) made
use of it.” See also n. 4.
12
Ibid., 2.
6
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within the soul. Thus, not only was the soul’s connection with reason a deeply spiritual one, it
was also a physiological one. Herein lies the primary difference between medieval and modern
“brain theory”: the medieval physician and philosopher believed that the capacity for reason was
not only the interior touchstone of human sanity, but it was also the interior anchor for the
angelic spheres of wisdom, the sovereign of all virtue within the human soul.
As Prudentius teaches in the Psychomachia, all of the virtues are subordinate to Sophia, the
Queen of the soul, who is the representative of the mystical Christ within:
Light and darkness with their opposing spirits are at war,
and out two-fold being inspires powers at variance with
each other, until Christ our God comes to our aid, orders all
the jewels of the virtues in a pure setting and where sin
formerly reigned builds the golden courts of his temple,
creating for the soul, out of the trial of its conduct,
ornaments of rich Wisdom to find delight in as she reigns
fore ever on the beauteous throne.13
Thus the contextualization of the virtues, their character study, starts with the
Psychomachia not only because we rarely see them elsewhere as such powerful and entertaining
characters, but also because in the Psychomachia their relationship to Sophia is so starkly laid
out—which in turn authoritatively links them with the interiority of the soul, reason, and the
inward wits within the medieval bodymind. The virtues, then, when understood medievally,
existed in the human soul as part of the network of ratio facilitated by cogitativa within the soul of
the human being. When Sophia and her virtues win the battle with the vices, they win sovereignty
over the interiority of the whole human soul.
13
Prudentius. Trans. H.J. Thomson. “Psychomachia.” Vol. 1 Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP, 1949), 342-3.
7
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The interior nature of ratio and its centrality to the development of inner wisdom is also
exemplified in the Vita Sancti Antonii written by Athenasius ca. 360. 14 He describes St.
Antony’s demeanor when he emerges after forty years of seclusion in the Nitrian desert. During
that time St. Antony underwent many encounters with demons and vices.15 Athanasius relates
that the townspeople expected St. Antony to have lost his mind, or at least show signs of mental
aging. But contrary to their expectations, he exhibited nothing but full and perfect ratio after his
forty-year solitary life in the desert. He emerged from his isolation fully in touch with his
interior senses, rational, and wise:
. . . his soul was free from blemish, for it was neither contracted as if by grief, nor
relaxed by pleasure, nor possessed by laughter or dejection, for he was not
troubled when he beheld the crowd, nor overjoyed at being saluted by so many.
But he was altogether even[,] as being guided by reason [ratio], and abiding in a
natural state.16
Contrary to what we might anticipate as the hallmark of a saint, the middle ages regarded being
fully “guided by reason” from within as the characteristic feature of virtue and holiness. 17
St. Antony’s interior capacity for ratio and inward wisdom is depicted in Schongauer’s
image of St. Antony Tortured by Demons. Here is the late medieval version of “shoulder sprites”.
The bad angels, the demons, don’t stop at the shoulder however—they surround St. Antony in a
type of halo from hell, doing everything in their power to pull him out of his virtuous interior. 18
14
Phillip Schaff, Ed. The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers: The Life of Antony. Vol. IV (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980).
15
Ibid., 199.
16
Ibid., 200.
17
Ripperger and Ryan. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. (New York: Longmans, Green and Co.,
1941). Popularized during the later middle ages by its inclusion in the Legende Aurea, the life of St. Antony
despite its ancient origins was well-known in the late middle ages.
18
"Martin Schongauer: Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons (20.5.2)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New
York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/20.5.2 (October
2006).
8
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Where are the “shoulder angels” in this image? Not visible on the right shoulder, the Angelus
Bonus is visible in St. Antony’s quietly serene countenance, present as the force of virtue within
St. Antony. This interior power gives him the strength from within to remain fully disinterested
in the surrounding demon’s banter. This image of perfect interiority of the soul juxtaposed with
the calamitous exteriority of the body provides an apt rendition of the medieval approach to
virtue and vice.19 Contrasted with those in the Life of Bruce, this image successfully expresses
the gravitas present in the battle for Humans Genus in Castle of Perseverance because St.
Anthony’s virtue is alive in his interior being, and vice attacks him from the exterior, physical
world.
19
Christopher Marlowe. Dr. Faustus. (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1994). In Dr. Faustus, Faust meets his end when he is
torn to shreds. In light of interior and exterior anchoring, with his pact with Mephistopheles, Faust bound himself to
the world external to his interior soul. Given the transitory nature of exterior reality and the power of
Mephistopheles, Faust was anchored in the perpetual change of the transitory rather than the interior permanence of
the soul‘s virtue. Melded into and unable to let go of the changing physical world and retreat into himself, the chaos
and multiplicity of this external movement eventually tore Faust to pieces.
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Thus, the interior being of the soul as mediated by cogitativa provided a physiological
anchor for the medieval experience of reason and virtue within the human soul, thus establishing
the innate interiority, or spiritual nature, of the virtues, and subsequently the exteriority and
physical nature of vice. The moral choice occurs through the interaction between the inner
capacities of cogitativa and ratio to negotiate indulgences in exterior physical sensory
experience. The Castle of Perseverance represents the interior bulwark of virtue within which the
human soul can safely avoid the onslaught of the physically exterior vices.20 When placed within
the contexts of the scala naturae and considered from the perspective of contemptus mundi, the
interior nature of virtue as the stepping stone to the hierarchical, angelic spheres which only a
shunning of the exterior senses can achieve, the potency of an interior approach to virtue is
significant.21
The Interior-Exterior Dynamic of Temptation
In Schongauer’s drawing, the dynamic tension between St. Antony’s interior virtue and
the demon’s exterior vice is a function of the polarity between inner stillness and external chaos.
The successful performance of virtue and vice characters is dependent on this polar dynamic.
It is possible to imagine St. Anthony assuming an authoritative, moralizing air over the demons,
or attempting to push them away out of self-righteousness. These would be shallow
interpretations of virtue which lack grounding in an interior intension in line with virtues’ source
in inner wisdom. Without the virtue’s genuine interior focus, the theatrical tension would go flat.
20
Bevington, 843. Castle of Perseverance, l. 1597.
Arthur O. Lovejoy. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. (Harvard UP: 1936; rprt.Harper
& Brothers: New York, 1960). E.M.W. Tillyard. The Elizabethan World Picture. (New York: Random House,
1944).
21
10
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Looking at the demons, the intension of pulling St. Antony out of his protective interior
gives the vices a true dramatic focus that does not dissipate in antic silliness, but instead sustains
the intensity which the artist is conveying in this image. The exterior nature of the physical
senses and the vices’ intension to permeate them and gain access to the life of the soul is
conveyed by the intensity with which the vices attack and pull at St. Antony. They have a very
limited, singular intention of tormenting him. If the demons in this image were to dissipate this
intension, the power of their pull on St. Antony’s virtuous interior would break up as well.
The demons here have the purpose of torturing St. Antony, and not specifically tempting
him, although temptation is certainly not excluded from their intentions. Here follows a painting
by the Flemish master Hugo van der Goes painted in 1470, The Fall: Adam and Eve Tempted by
the Snake. The vice figure is fully focused on the act of temptation, and it is interesting to look
at this image with an eye for the virtuous interior and the external vice working through the
exterior senses.
The faces of both Adam and Eve express the interior focus of virtue, an expression that
reflects the other-worldiness of inner wisdom. Adam’s focus is fully inward. Eve, however, is
interestingly perched between interior and exterior. The snake has called her out of her virtuous
interior life which is obvious in the apple she holds in her right hand and her reach for another
apple with her left. But the snake has not fully succeeded in pulling Eve out of her interiority. As
if blind to the physical senses, her reach for the apple is done as if in a darkened room—she does
not follow her arm movement with her eyes. Her eyes are partially opened. Different from Adam
who stands as if in another world, her eyes look as though she is thoughtful and perhaps waking
up to something she hasn’t yet experienced. She finds the forbidden fruit out of feeling for it and
sensing it in her hand. Her arm seems to be led out of her, as if being pulled by hidden strings.
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Her movement is not initiated from within her; it is created from outside her, as if she is being
drawn out of herself, moving outwards with the instructions of a hypnotist.
The magician orchestrating Eve’s movement, the snake, focuses its intention on Eve.
From the outside in, it aims its attention on her ear, and seems to be speaking to her. It is not
aggressive in its physical gesture, but in its intention it is forceful. Its facial expression is fully
externally oriented, its eyes and brow contracted with intensity as it successfully disrupts Eve’s
interior grounding and pulls her out of her inner being to find and grasp the fruit in the tree.
12
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Comparing Adam and the snake, Adam’s gaze contrasts markedly with the snake’s singular
exterior focus. Adam’s face is almost blank because of his disconnection with the physical
exterior senses and his inward anchoring in wisdom, not unlike the interior gaze of St. Antony.
Whereas the snake is one with the exterior world of the physical senses—it touches and holds the
tree, it stares at Eve with a mesmerizing intensity. The snake’s penetrating force working through
Eve is affecting Adam, however. Like Eve, his arm and hand are floating upwards to ever so
gently touch Eve’s hair. Adam is beginning to awaken to the sensory world.
Van der Goes’ painting captures the dynamic of the interiority of virtue and the
exteriority of vice as these processes play out in the act of temptation. Based on Hugo’s painting,
one could argue that Eve does not make a choice to touch the fruit in the tree. The snake
effectively draws her out of herself towards the fruit in the tree. She seems to be taking it without
fully realizing what she is doing. The serpent stealthily draws her away from her interior nature
and out into the physically created world, and somewhere along the way she chooses to pick the
fruit from the tree. Or does she really choose?
The interesting thing that occurs in this painting and the text of the Castle of
Perseverance is that Humanus Genus does not have outspoken moments of choice to follow the
Bonus Angelus or Malus Angelus. Rather, Humanus Genus is gradually worn down by Malus
Angelus, and eventually capitulates into his hands, but this action happens gradually. So the
Humanus Genus character is slowly drawn into vice, much like the figure of Eve in the painting
above. The power of the Malus Angelus’ intent works into Humanus Genus over a period of
time. The serpent in The Fall: Adam and Eve Tempted by the Snake could have taken hours or
even days of penetrating focus on Eve before she finally succumbed to touching and then tasting
the fruit of the forbidden tree.
13
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In contrast to the power of the Malus Angelus, once Humanus Genus has been mired in
the company of the vices, Bonus Angelus does not have the power to pull him towards her by
herself. Joined by Confessio and Paenitentia, Humanus Genus is confronted to return to virtue,
but only Paenitentia’s arrow—the prick of conscience can pierce through his arrogance from
within and bring him low to the throes of confession. Interestingly, the prick of conscience does
not originate outside Humanus Genus, like a typical arrow shot from a physical bow.
Paenitentia’s “wound” occurs from within the soul, as the conscience is part of the interior
sensory system. Where the prick of conscience causes Humanus Genus to shift his ways, this
change does not happen in an inkling of a “choice.” Again, it takes some time before Humanus
Genus learns about the Castle of Perseverance.
Similarly, in his tract Libero Arbitrio, Augustine’s discussion of free choice, doesn’t
involve a moment of choosing one thing over another thing, good or bad. Rather it concerns the
power of good in relationship to evil as such, and how it is that good is more powerful than evil.
Out of this inherit power of goodness, then, the possibility for a choice of the good always exists,
and the human being is free to choose it:
Since what is equal or superior does not make a mind the slave of
passion, if it is in control and virtuous, on account of its justice,
while what is inferior cannot do this on account of its weakness, as
our argument has shown, therefore, nothing makes a mind give
way to desire except its own will and free choice.22
He goes on to explain the nature of the will:
[A good will is a] will by which we seek to live rightly and
virtuously and to reach the height of wisdom . . . a just soul, and a
mind which keeps its proper and rightful control, cannot dethrone
22
Augustine, 57.
14
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and subdue to passion another mind which keeps control with the
same justice and virtue. 23
Thus the interior realm of justice and virtue insure that interior strength can potentially at every
moment overcome the passions of the flesh, or weakness. The good will strives for the interior
goals of virtue and “the height of wisdom.”
Further, in agreement with the gradual process of temptation and choice that is present in
throughout The Fall: Adam and Eve Tempted by the Snake and Castle of Perseverance,
Augustine does not relate to the movement between wisdom and good and folly and evil as a
“moment” of choice or a purely mental decision. Rather, throughout the Libero arbitrio he uses
the terms “turn towards” the eternal and the good and “turn away” from the temporal and evil.
So the eternal law bids us turn away our love from temporal things,
and turn it back, when purified, towards things that are eternal.24
In the Libero arbitrio, the process of choosing the good is always a matter of a turn inwards and
towards the “unchangeable good” and a turn outwards and away from the unchangeable goods
which is at the same time a turn towards the changeable goods.25 Thus the choice of the interior
over the exterior was a process, not a single moment, and it involved the whole person, a turning
of the attention from the exterior physical sensory system of the body to the interior sensory
system of the soul and the inward wits. It wasn’t a question of mental chatter. Augustine’s use of
this term is known as “the inward turn” and is described by Phillip Cary as being not only a turn
inward, but also movement upwards. So Augustine related to the choice for good as an inward
and upward turn—a movement of the will into the interior realms of the soul and the inward
23 58,
23 68.
60.
24
Ibid., 68-69.
Augustine relates to wisdom, truth, virtue etc. as unchangeable goods, and physical pleasures and possessions as
changeable goods.
25
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wits, and a striving upwards towards the “heights of wisdom.” Likewise, the choice for the
changeable world was a downward and outward turn. 26
Looking again at The Fall: Adam and Eve Tempted by the Snake for the dynamics of the
inward and outward turns, Eve seems to be at the zenith of an outward movement away from her
virtuous interior. Imagining the whole movement that Eve must have made to reach her arm
upwards as it is in the painting, it seems as if she began facing Adam with both arms down at her
side or possibly in front of her. She must have begun from an inward space with Adam and then
opened her left arm to reach and turn towards the tree and grasp the first apple, lower her arm
and transfer the apple to her right hand, and then open and reach her left arm again to retrieve a
second piece of forbidden fruit. Her gesture tells the story of the turn away from the perfect
interior virtue and opening towards the imperfect realm of the physical senses. The contrast in
the expressions in the eyes of Adam and Eve encapsulate the given circumstance of the medieval
moral choice, as Adam stands, still enfolded in the otherworldliness of celestial paradise, while
Eve wakes up to the exterior physical world all around her. Adam is her Bonus Angelus—her
connection to the wisdom of her inward wits to her right, and the serpent is her Malus Angelus—
her connection to the desires of her physical senses to her left.
The inner wits and the physical senses as a whole provide a framework for the
development of medieval morality play performance in which the moral choice is the unfolding
of a sensory event. Working with this sensory paradigm requires that actors step up to the
challenge of discovering their own interiority of being, for without this inner grounding in the
actor’s own experience of inner virtue, the performance of the virtuous personifications are left
26
Phillip Cary, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. (Oxford: Oxford UP,
2000).
16
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to typecasting and the guesswork of uninformed trial and error. Similarly, actors playing the
vices need to stimulate and deepen their experience of their own physical senses, and take these
gateways to the world of the flesh very seriously as they build their characters. In order to
perform the act of temptation, the virtuous characters must be fortified within their own
interiority of being, so that they have something stored inside which he vices can aim at teasing
out. The temptation into vice and the protagonist’s choice for vice or virtue is not a moment, but
a turning—a gradual turning outwards and downwards into the hands of the vice characters, or a
slow opening to Confessio that leads inwards and upwards into virtue.
Ya, Mankinde, wende forthe thy way,
And do nothinge aftyr [Malus Angelus] red.
In dale of dole til thou schudist dey,
He wolde drawe thee to cursydhed,
In sinne to have mischance.
Therefore, spede now thy pace
Pertly to yone preciouse place
That is al growyn ful of grace,
The Castel of Perseveraunce!27
27
Bevington, 843. Castle of Perseverance, l. 1584-5, 1591-7.
17
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Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation. 22 Westminster MD: The
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____________. Concerning the Teacher [De magistro]; On the Immortality of the Soul [De
immortalitate animae]. George G. Leckie, Trans. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.,
1938.
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