'Some religious texts seem to find it relatively easy to disengage from the material world. Many others, however, derive their dynamism from the difficulty of doing so. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay "Look not upon the earth, but lift up your eyes," [30] Mercy preaches at the opening of Mankind, a work among the corpus of medieval morality plays dealing with spiritual crises in figures representative of humanity. Mercy's line succinctly expresses the didactic purpose of the morality play; encourage the public to see and think beyond the distractions of the material world and, in the words of Richard Proudfoot, "persist in virtue unto death", that is, to be faithful to that which is immaterial such as God and heaven. If we consider the "material world" as everything that is immediately tangible, including the body, it becomes easy to see how difficult it is for any religious text to avoid engaging with this altogether and focus exclusively on the immaterial concepts of virtue, hell, heaven and God. However, morality plays recognize this impossibility and, I would argue, dramatize how the material world can act as a barrier to humanity's salvation. The problem of disengagement thus becomes not of the text but of the protagonist. The dynamism of these works derives precisely from this struggle of the protagonist, as the texts demonstrate how easy and pleasant total absorption in the material world can be, blinding humanity to the more important spiritual world. In addition to this, if we are to understand 'dynamism' in the sense of movement, it is generally the allegorical enemies of humanity (such as 'malice' in Humanity or 'goods' in Everyman) who are directed to be the most physically physically available. dynamic, and therefore very emotional, on stage, serving the purpose of the morality play in demonstrating how attractive sin can be. Indeed, if these texts were simply to mediate on heaven, hell, God, and spirituality, the work would be closer to a sermon, and indeed the moral figures in these works are often described as sermonizing in their speeches. What makes the morality play more dynamic and didactically effective than this is its active engagement with the various symbols of the material world in order to realize through this the superior importance of God and the Christian faith. “Material world” is a broad and expansive term. with the plasticity to apply to literally anything of matter on the planet. However, placed in semi-antithesis to the immaterial realm of heaven and the concepts surrounding it, Everyman and Mankind are interested in representing aspects of the material world that are negative and hindering. One of the most evident material concerns in Everyman in particular, although present in both, is wealth and worldly possessions as diversions or even substitutes for God. Everyman brings this to the foreground of the play in which the actor playing God expresses: " In worldly riches is all their mind; / They fear not my righteousness, the sharp rod."[27-8] Here, the syntactic arrangement of The "earthly riches" on one line and the "justice" of God separated on another cause a pause in the discourse, expressing both the incompatibility between worldliness and holiness and the distance that material wealth creates between God and humanity. G. A. Lester suggests in his introduction to the work that "Everyman's dissolute lie is reflected in the people and possessions that are dear to him and to which he turns first in necessity", underlining the necessity, established from the beginning, for Everyman to abandon the love of wealth and material possession forbe acquitted before death. It follows an interesting structure in the play, where the more Everyman loses, the more tightly he holds on to what he has. Faced with the prospect of death, wealth is the first and last destination for every man. He initially tries to corrupt death, then also rejected by Company, Relative and Cousin, he turns to Goods to be accompanied to the tomb, who in response replies: "what, do you know that I am yours?"[437] It is immediately clear that Everyman made a mistake. Instead of accepting his solitary journey, he clings to figures increasingly linked to him, from the Company to the Goods; the latter of which he believes he is the owner. Goods, however, emphasizes what death has done before: that all of every man's prosperity and wealth is simply loaned to him by God. The nature of the theater then allows Merce to physically disappear in his next outing, dramatizing through this movement the transitory nature of material wealth where Every Man believed it to be stable. This direction shows a forced disengagement with the material world as the audience gradually sees it disappear around Everyman before he finally comes to understand, through his losses, that he must face death with only his good deeds beside him. Humanity engages with material wealth as an exciting commodity. who has the power to make things happen, but, as with humanity, proves to be an inconsistent distraction from God. When Mischief, Newguise, and Today fail to bring about humanity's downfall, they decide to call upon Titivillus, who they believe he will have better luck. The three figures ask the audience for money: 'We intend to raise money, if it pleases your negligence,/For a man with a head of great omnipotence', [460-1] remaining vague as to who they will address on stage. Regardless of whether the audience actually parted with their money or not, the direction 'They take up a collection' [466] implies that the actors would pretend to do so anyway. Such a collection, I would argue, has two ramifications. First, it's not entirely clear who the audience is funding to appear, and when it's Titivillus who comes in, the show draws a clear parallel between money and evil, showing how foolish it is to put too much faith in it. Secondly, in a much more indirect way, it is this collection that advances the plot to humanity's abandonment of work and rejection of Mercy, for it is their money that allows Titivillus to succeed in bringing the humanity astray. Making the audience involved with their material wealth and complicit in the direction of the plot demonstrates here how easily one can be deceived by trusting too much in money rather than God. Both works also conceive of corporeality as an unwieldy fact of the material world. which acts as another barrier towards the ultimate goal of unity with God. Indeed, it is this conflict between the body and spirituality that drives much of the action and dynamism in humanity, particularly as humanity grapples with the difficulty of living a holy life trapped in an inherently sinful body, while Today, Naught, and Newguise exploit the disgusting aspects of corporeality for comic titillation as a distraction from Mercy's sermons on the spiritual and the immaterial. Indeed, G. A. Lester affirms the place of dynamism in humanity in his introduction to the work, suggesting that 'Humanity […] teaches by example. Mercy preaches and the wild debauchery of the comic scenes provides the living text.' The three evil figures are much more immediately accessible to the audience than Mercy; they invoke bodily processes for humor and in the process appear more human than Mercy, whose body is full of Latin.