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Title: Morality Play

Author: Barry Unsworth

Narrator: Michael Maloney

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-01-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 50 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

It is the late 14th century, a dangerous time beset by war and plague. Nicholas Barber, a young and wayward cleric, stumbles across a group of travelling players and compounds his sins by joining them. Yet the town where they perform reveals another drama: a young woman is to be hanged for the murder of a 12-year-old boy. What better way to increase their takings than to make a new play, to enact the murder of Thomas Wells?

But as the actors rehearse, they discover that the truth about the boy's death has yet to be revealed.

Members Reviews:

Fantastic

On of Barry Unsworth's best novels and all the better for being short and punchy. It plunges you into a very believable medieval worldview and meditates on the relation between art and reality, while also spinning a gripping murder mystery tale at the same time. Michael Maloney's reading is a true performance - he speaks in a breathy, hyperactive voice that captures the novel's intensity extremely well.

good historical mystery with more

This is a very good historical mystery around time of Black Death in Europe. There is a murder mystery coupled with a tale of a traveling acting troop and a "defrocked" clergyman who joins up and gets involved in acting and writing plays, acting being one of the sins he is not to participate in normally. But he is drawn to it slowly and suffers some mental anguish over his choice to remain with them. There is more to his story that adds weight to whole novel. I like the atmosphere of the story taking place in medieval times, but more importantly it plays with the idea of how morality and religious dramas grew into actual dramatic creativity freeing themselves from shackles of repeating same old biblical tales etc. I always find items of that nature interesting: the speculation on how drama and literature developed from greek drama or earlier mythic rituals, into mystery and morality plays, and into drama as we know it today.

Great story

A really terrific short book. Engaging reader performing a wide variety of accents and characters. Loved thinking about the development of the dramatic form, and the many different types of language required.

Great Story...highly recommended

Would you listen to Morality Play again? Why?

Yes...this was third time reading and first listening. Great story...a novella...and fresh every time.

What did you like best about this story?

The breathless narrative by a first person storyteller.

Which scene was your favorite?

The opening scene. Story told in first person brings you right into the forest watching the other characters in medieval England. Economically told. Cinematic.

Any additional comments?

A short novel that manages to have you engaged with several characters as they dance on the edge of danger's cliff while unraveling a mystery.

Fourteenth Century Morals

Fourteenth century traveling players (actors) re-enact the death of a boy and find out who really killed him and why. An engaging story with interesting details regarding life on the road and in small towns controlled by feudal lords.