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English drama developed out of early nonliturgical vernacular religious dramas, which had themselves probably developed out of the liturgical drama of the medieval church. Though secularized, these early dramatic forms—the mystery, miracle, and morality plays—still 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 Judgment Day. Miracle plays presented the lives and miracles of the saints, or episodes of divine intervention in human affairs, often through the agency of the Virgin Mary.

Unlike the perspective of the mystery and miracle plays, that of the morality play was individual rather than collective. The morality play (usually called simply a “morality”) presented religious and ethical concerns from the point of view of the individual Christian, whose main concern was to effect the salvation of his soul.

The mystery and miracle plays developed first, around 1100 a.d. Late in the fourteenth century, morality plays on such subjects as the seven deadly sins became popular in France, England and the Netherlands. In the first decades of the fifteenth century, secular allegorical plays concerning the conflict between good and evil in the individual soul began to be performed in France by law clerks and students, and this type of play soon became popular all over Europe, including England.

A morality play is essentially an allegory in dramatic form. It shares the key features of allegorical prose and verse narratives: it is intended to be understood on two or more levels, its main purpose is didactic, and the characters are personified abstractions with aptronyms (“label names”). The nondramatic didactic and allegorical precursors to the morality play are to be found in medieval sermon literature, homilies, exempla, fables, parables, and other works of moral or spiritual edification, as well as in the popular romances of medieval Europe.

Typically, the morality play is a psychomachia, 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.

In England the moralities dramatized the progress of the Christian’s life from innocence to sin, and from sin to repentance and salvation. Among the most widely known of the fifteenth-century moralities are “The Castell of Perseverance,” which features a battle between Virtues and Vices; “Mankind,” which incorporates topical farce; and perhaps the most famous of all the English morality plays, “Everyman” (c. 1495), which concerns the Christian’s experience of mortality and Judgment.

In other moralities, various manifestations of the forces of Evil (the Seven Deadly Sins, the World, the Flesh, the Devil, Vice) are arrayed against the Christian, who turns for help to the forces of Good (God, His angels, Virtue). The quality of writing in the moralities is uneven, and in many cases the author is unknown. Characterization is also crude and naïve, and there is little attempt to portray psychological depth.

from: http://riri.essortment.com/englishdrama_rjdz.htm

What is MANKIND?

Mankind is a morality play, and dates from about 1470. In morality plays, a character who represents humanity (and thus is named Mankind or Everyman) falls into sin and is redeemed. But the rather stodgy term "morality play" doesn't begin to describe Mankind. You may have seen or heard about Everyman. Everyman is really what you'd expect from something called a morality play. It is a rather straightforward, no-nonsense, and G-rated presentation of Everyman's recognition of his own mortality and what he must do to go to heaven. But while Everyman and Mankind are both morality plays, they are utterly different.

Where Everyman is reverent, Mankind bubbles with bawdy humor. Of the seven characters, five are evil. Nowadays, Nought, and New Guise engage in the kind of slapstick comedy we are familiar with from the Three Stooges. They ridicule Mercy, and encourage the audience to sing a raunchy "Christmas song." Yet all this randy humor has a point. We see the much-abused Mankind fall into sin, and then see that he can be saved anyway. Early on, Mischief tries hard to lure the audience as well as Mankind into evil. The vices encourage the audience to laugh at Mankind when he resists their temptations, which implicitly puts the audience on the side of the vices.

Later, the vices solicit the audience for money before they bring out Titivillus, thus getting the audience to pay to see the devil. Through humor, Mankind shows that humanity--both the representative Mankind within the play, and the audience--falls into sin but Mercy is able to overcome it.

from: http://www.engl.duq.edu/servus/M_R_Players/mankind.html