From Morality to Shakespearean Vice

The old Morality plays depicted a drama that was rough and unsubtle, and was not matured and sophisticated. At the same time, morality plays were committed to reflections on doctrinal precepts. In this, the devise of the Vice character proved very useful because it provided rough and sometimes crass humour; and at the same time, Vice characters contrasted with the other characters in the interludes to show the difference between virtues and vices to the audience. Morality plays depicted a ‘psychomachia’, which reflected on the fall of innocence and the redemption that followed when the character regained his virtue (Somerset 54). The Vice characters were central to this ‘psychomachia’ and the later evolution of the Morality plays’ Vice characters into the more sophisticated Shakespearean Vice characters like Richard III and Iago, also depict a strong psychological base (Somerset 54). The evolution of the Morality Vice characters into Shakespearean Vice characters is traceable because there are many points of similarities between the Morality Vice and the Shakespearean Vice characters. This makes it easy to see how the later day Shakespearean Vices are based on the earlier Morality plays’ Vice characters. On the other hand, there are also some significant differences, which can be used to argue that the Vice characters on Shakespearean stage did evolve and did not remain the same as the Morality plays’ Vice characters. This chapter considers the significant points of similarities and departures of the Shakespearean Vice characters from the Morality Vice characters to show how Morality Vices evolved into the more identifiably Vice-like figures on the Shakespearean stage. Four of Shakespeare’s characters bear resemblance to the Morality play Vices: Aaron in Titus Andronicus, Iago in Othello, Richard in Richard III, and Don John in Much Ado About Nothing. Spivack has argued that the resemblance between these Shakespearean characters and the Vice characters is based on the manner in which these characters derive enjoyment from criminal acts; their proud labelling of themselves as the villain; the not experiencing of any loss of humanity due to villainy; and their soliloquies (Spivack 39-43). Not the least, these characters in Shakespeare’s plays do evil for the sake of doing evil and for disrupting the unity and order of the world around them (Spivack).

One of the first and foremost points of similarity between the Morality Vices and the Shakespearean Vice-like characters is in the use of comedy and humour by these figures. Comedy was a central characteristic of the Vice characters in Morality plays. For this reason, the Morality Vices have been thought of as buffoons or fools. However, the Vice character did evolve over time, as there was also a shift away from the moralistic and religious thinking that was prevalent in the Medieval period. In the Renaissance period, the Vice character changed and now depicted an inward evil rather than an outward manifestation of evil (George 8). As audiences became more modern, the Vice character also evolved to appeal to the modern audience and the Vice character was also evolved to fit a wider range of roles, which was apt because he already had a multi-faceted personality that allowed him to easily adapt to new roles, which also included elements of tragedy, as we will see in the Shakespearian Vice characters. It has been noted that Vice was able to adapt to both comic and tragic roles because “his two-fold nature allowed him to take an active position in both comedy and tragedy” (George 80). There are two views on the nature of comedy and entertainment that was provided in the Morality plays, where both the views are also centered on the role played by the Vice characters in the plays (Somerset 75). The first view is the comedy that was provided in the Morality plays can be described as that which provided "comic relief" in the otherwise doctrinaire influenced plays that depicted serious themes (Somerset 75). The purpose of providing such comic relief was to please an audience which was largely composed of rural and uneducated people who would have otherwise found the Morality plays too didactic and oriented towards invoking piety amongst the audience members (Somerset). This is the much older viewpoint about the nature of the Morality play comedy. This viewpoint also subscribes to the idea that the comedy in the plays was intentionally taking away from the unity of the play and nullified the intentions of the play.

Morality play Vice characters are also known for their use of low and bawdy comedy, as pointed out by Spivack:

“brawls . . . lascivious toys . . . profane witticisms . . . sudden and grotesque entrances, shoving aside of the audience . . . insults, scabrous language, profanity, long speeches of pure fustian, puns, malapropisms, garbled proclamations, double entendres, elegant foreignisms, and endless jests about anatomy, virginity, marriage, and the gallows” (117).

There was a duality of purpose that was served by the comedy in the Morality plays as the forces of comedy served the “edifying purpose of the clergy and the unregenerate inclinations of the folk” (Levenson 58). In the Prologue to The Four Elements, Rastell explains this duality of purpose as follows:

. . . because some folk be little disposed

To sadness, but more to mirth and sport,

This philosophical work is mixed

With merry concerts, to give men comfort,

And occasion. to cause them to resort

To hear this matter, whereto if they take heed, (Levenson 58).

As Rastell himself puts it, the minds of the people can be disposed more to sport and mirth, and for that such people philosophical works, as the Morality plays undoubtedly were, have to be mixed with the comic relief element so that these people in the audience also pay attention to the didactic message in the play. In this way, the comedy served the purpose of the clergymen as well as the merry loving audience. The moral and didactic sermons could be served but they could also be sweetened by the use of comic relief. Fulwell also explains the duality of purpose of comedy in Like Will to Like:

And because divers men of divers minds be Some do matters of mirth and pastime require: Other some are delighted with matters of gravity, To please all men is our author's chief desire Whereforth mirth with measure to sadness is annexed: Desiring that none here at our matter will be perplexed.

As Fulwell also expresses in Like Will to Like, the purpose of the comedy is to ensure that all playgoers are satisfied with the play. Some playgoers may prefer comic entertainment, while others are happy to see more grave matters being the subject matter of the play. The author’s desire is to please them all, and for this purpose the author is said to have mixed pleasure with mirth. As Morality plays were basically meant to serve a message on the vices and virtues, it was understood by the playwrights of the time, that the audience also consisting of those who were more fond of mirth and entertainment, will not be pleased with such serious content. Therefore, there was a mix of mirth with gravity. As per the first viewpoint discussed here, it is considered that the comic relief element was mixed with the more grave matters in order to provide entertainment to all people with their varied tastes. The second view point on the nature of the comedy of the Vice characters in the Morality plays sees such comedy as being functional, in that it is either in the form of satire or serves as a symbol of evil (Somerset 75). This view point is best explained by Spivack when he says: "There is no such thing as innocent merriment" (121). This view point also subscribes to the idea that the early Morality plays depict a unity of purpose where the didactic message of the play was combined with the comedy of the Vice characters to give the message of the play to the audience (Spivack 121). At this point, it is worthwhile to go back again before the early Morality plays and the emergence of the Vice characters, and see that even in the Christian plays, the humorous portions of the plays were given to the characters that were aligned with the evil. Earlier Christian plays involved the character of the Prince of Darkness or Devil, who was also given to humour (Levenson). The Devil in the early Christian plays was usually humorous and charming character, as well as being a representative of metaphysical evil. In the later Morality plays, the Devil was replaced by the Vice characters. The Vice characters were not representatives of metaphysical evil, but they represented the human weaknesses and the baser inclinations of man. Whatever we think about the origin of the Vice characters - whether we see the Vice character as a buffoon or the folk fool or stage clown, who was transported into the Morality plays, or we consider him to be the character that replaced the evil characters in the Christianity plays, it is generally agreed that the Vice characters combined the evil with the comic elements. The question is how this Vice character graduated to the Shakespearian villain and what points of similarity and distinction can be noted between the earlier Vice characters and the Shakespearian villains. In Shakespeare’s plays, the playwright’s intention of using comedy to a purpose is achieved in the sense that the second view point on Morality plays is based on as discussed above (Spivack). Falstaff’s character is a good example of purposeful comedy that Shakespeare too invoked in his own plays. Falstaff appeared in Henry IV, Part I and Part II and then again in the Merry Wives of Windsor. At this point, it is also important to distinguish between comedies and the use of comedy in otherwise serious plays by Shakespeare. It is also important to note that during Shakespeare’s time, Elizabethan England saw people becoming more inclined to enjoy holidays and festivities, and some of Shakespeare’s plays are aimed at such an audience (Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom). An example of this can be found in Love’s Labour Lost, in which Shakespeare used the elements of festivities to fashion a comedy play that was meant for noble entertainment (Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom). However, the plays that are interesting for noting the Vice characters are those that introduced villains with marked comic elements because it is these attributes that align Shakespearian villains to the Morality Vice characters. The Shakespearian Vice characters imbibed both comic and villainous traits some characters imbibed more comic elements while others more villainous elements. The former characters, such as, Falstraff in Henry VI and Feste in Twelfth Night were more comic and teasing and they did not seem to mean much harm to anyone. These characters were not as malicious as they were comic. Many of the loud and, bawdy and rough sequences in the plays were carried out by these comic Vices. In other words, these Vice characters were responsible to some extent for creating comic relief in the plays (George). Shakespeare was influenced by the development of the Vice character as a comic character and he included the Vice like characters, such as, Falstaff, to evoke comical reaction from the audience (George 50). This character also was put in the background by Shakespeare to mock the other characters in the play (George 50).

As pointed out by George, “Shakespeare did not allow his comic-hybrid Vice to dominate the play and control the action through scheming” (50). The Vice characters that were imbibed with more villainous than comical traits were different from the comic Vice characters. Thus, we find such difference between Falstaff, who is a buffoon, and Iago, who is a villain through and through. The villainous Vice characters were endowed with malice and evil and these characters rejoiced in causing turmoil and harm to others. In the words of George, a villainous Vice character was “a designing monster whose outstanding characteristics lie in his ability to plot evil by means of deceit and in his relative lack of motive for doing so” (59). In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago provides an example par excellence of such a villainous Shakespearian Vice, who conceals evil behind his demeanour (George). Iago is dual and diabolical and he tricks Othello into committing the most evil crime, for motives that are hard to understand. Iago does not give any reasonable justification for why he wants to hurt and harm Othello, but for attributing certain slights to the latter, which are hard to be reconciled with the harm that Iago causes. In the following sections, the comic and villainy of Shakespearian Vice characters is explored from the perspective of this duality, which is that Vice characters could be comic and villainous, sometimes one more than the other. The above discussion shows that Shakespeare employed a hybridity in Vice characters, which combined the elements of comic and evil in one character. The morality plays also employed a similar hybridity in the Vice characters. This hybridity was usually displayed in the puns and jokes that the Vice characters made to show their duality in being comic and evil or tragic at the same time. The statement of Richard in Richard III where he tells the audience that he is “determined to prove a villain” combines all the elements of the Vice of the Morality plays and brings it to the Shakespearian stage. These elements are the use of comedy to explain the inevitable tragedy of the play, which is rooted in the villainy of Richard himself. In the one sentence, Richard is making a joke but also letting the audience know his intentions. There is another way of looking at the statement by Richard, as pointed out by Lull that Richard wants the audience to know that his villainy is predestined, and there is little that he can do about it. In this statement, one can sense the tragedy of Richard, although he uses a pun to show it to the audience. Shakespeare also envisaged Vice characters that were comic more than tragic, and in that Shakespeare can be said to be very flexible in how he treated the Vice characters. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is the villain and a comic. The two characteristics are combined in him, in much the same way as the earlier Vice characters combined evil with the comic element. As pointed out by a writer, Falstaff’s comic elements proceed from what he does as a character and not from what happens around him and how such events may alter or shape his personality (Champion 62). Falstaff as a character does not alter or change, but the spectator’s vision of Falstaff and his inherent Vice like qualities change as they look more into his character which in the earlier part of the play is concealed by his comedy and wit (Champion 62). Falstaff’s comic speeches and actions also reveal his villainy as is clear from one of his monologues in the Merry Wives of Windsor, where he says:

Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford's knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet-lane: they took me on their shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the door, who asked them once or twice what they had in their basket: I quaked for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have searched it; but fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold, held his hand. Well: on went he for a search, and away went I for foul clothes.”

The comedy is that Master Brook is really Ford who is thus disguised to as to find his wife in the act of adultery with Falstaff. Ford is wrong to think of his wife (Mistress Ford) thus, who is not involved in any such relationship with Falstaff. Instead, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are playing a game with both Falstaff and Ford. They are punishing Falstaff for his presumptuous nature and Ford for his unfounded jealousy. In this way, Shakespeare is combining multiple strands of action and putting them together in a unified play. Here, the role played by Falstaff is also part of the final pattern that Shakespeare weaves through the play (Champion). In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is cunning and is pursuing two wealthy women for the sake of money. He is also fat and aged, just like his character in Henry IV, Part I and Part II. There are no obvious charms in him that may attract the two women and he himself is well acquainted with his own lack of charms as he says in Scene 2 of Act 2: “Setting the attractions of my good parts aside, I have no other charms.” Then again, in Scene 5 of Act 5, he admits to the lack of his virtue in a comic way by saying that: “I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire.” Yet, he receives considerable attention from the two women, who are using him for amusement, as well as from the overly jealous Ford. In this, the character has evolved from where it was in Henry IV, wherein he would make others the butt of his jokes, while here he is being made fool out of by two women (Hazlitt). Then again, in Henry IV there were certain qualities in Falstaff which could serve as justifications for his knavery, while in Merry Wives of Windsor, he has no such redeeming attributes (Hazlitt). In the earlier plays where Falstaff played a role, that is, Henry IV, Part I and II, his character is shown as a fat, aged and much disgraced knight, who is of much use to Prince Hal because of his obviously Vice like qualities. He has all the qualities that are seen in the earlier Morality plays’ Vice characters. He does not practice abstinence from vices but he revels in them. He overeats, sleeps all day, uses foul language and basically just lives to make merry. Despite his bad qualities, both the central character in the play, Prince Hal, as well as the audience are enamoured with him. This is the principal similarity between the Vice characters in the earlier Morality plays and Falstaff. Henry IV, Part I, shows Falstaff character as a comic villain who is trying to involve the future king into the life of debauchery, in much the same way as the Morality play Vices tried to deviate the central characters from good virtuous deeds. There is similarity between Vices of the Morality plays and Falstaff as well as the Mankind figures and Prince Hal. It is noteworthy that Hal in his younger days was given to many excesses and he sobered as he grew older and was faced with increasing responsibility. In Henry IV, Shakespeare shows Prince Hal as just that; but he also adds the Vice figure to bring the similarity to the Morality plays closer. Just like the Morality plays, Prince Hal first undergoes the Mankind figure’s excesses and then later reform as he casts aside his evil Vice like companions. In Part 1 of the play, Prince Hal is caught between the vices, Sloth and Vanity on one side and the virtue of chivalry on the other; and in Part 2, he has to choose between misrule on one hand and Order and Justice on the other. In both the parts of the play, Prince Hal is driven towards the wrong choices by his undesirable companions. In this, the principal role of the tempter is played by Sir John Falstaff. This aspect of Henry IV bears strong resemblance to Morality plays. Thus, it can be said that Henry IV bears some resemblance to the Morality plays. The same can be said of the Vice character in Henry IV, Falstaff, bearing resemblance with the Vice characters of the Morality plays. For one, Falstaff uses humour and comedy extensively and at times at his own cost. The below dialogue between Falstaff and Lord Chief Justice is an example of use of humour:

Chief Justice: Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.

Falstaff: He that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less.

Chief Justice: Your means are very slender and your waste is great.

Falstaff: I would it were otherwise; I would my means were

greater, and my waist slenderer.

In the above dialogue, Falstaff uses humour seemingly against himself by referring to his obvious rotundity, but he is also making light of the Lord Chief Justice by refusing to take him seriously. This is not the only time in the play that Falstaff pits himself against the diametrically opposite character of the Lord Chief Justice. Later in the play, when Prince Hal is newly crowned as king, Falstaff makes yet another humorous allusion to the Lord Chief Justice:

Let us take any man's horses, the laws of England are at my commandment.

Blessed are they that have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief- justice.

In all this, Falstaff is essentially like a Vice character from the Morality plays. However, there is an evolution of the Vice in Shakespeare from that of the Vices in Morality plays, which is showcased in the character of Falstaff. Unlike the Morality play Vices, who were shown to have only villainous qualities, Falstaff is a shown to be more of a clown and is dressed down by Prince Hal himself on many occasions. However, Falstaff is essentially a Vice as is shown from his behaviour as well as his physical attributes. Like the Morality Vices, Shakespeare’s Falstaff is also shown to have certain infirmities of physical features. He is fat and aged and unattractive. At the same time, he has certain character defaults. For instance, he is not an honourable man, although he is a knight. On one occasion in Scene 2 of Act 4, Falstaff calls his soldiers "food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit, as well as better.” This shows a very cruel and dishonourable image of Falstaff. In Act 5, Falstaff stabs Hotspur's corpse so that he can take it as a trophy for a reward from the king. Falstaff is decidedly dishonourable. However, Falstaff’s own reading of the word honour is that it is a word used by nobility to glorify war and its effects. The following statement from Act 5, Scene 1 shows Falstaff to be disparaging about the word honour:

‘Tis not due yet: I would be loth to pay him before his

What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me?

Well, 'tis no matter; Honour pricks me on.

Yea, but how if Honour prick me off when I come on? How then?

Can Honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is Honour? a word. What is that word, Honour? Air. A trim reckoning! — Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it sensible then? Yes, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it: therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere 'scutcheon, and so ends my catechism.”

The previous statement where Falstaff calls his soldiers food for powder and the later statement where Falstaff decodes the word honour, show the crucial difference between Falstaff and the Morality Vices. The Morality Vices were generally interested only in the comedy and villainy, but Falstaff has obviously thought more deeply into his character defaults and has learnt to justify them better than the earlier Vice characters could. Another dissimilarity between Henry IV, Part I’s Vice Falstaff and the earlier Morality plays is that unlike the earlier Morality plays, the Vice is not rejected by the central character because of his reawakening to virtue, rather he is rejected because he is too clownish. In other words, it is not the evil in Falstaff that begins to drive Prince Hal away from him in Henry IV, Part I; it is his clownish behaviour, especially on the battlefield at Shrewsbury. Prince Hal’s final rejection for Falstaff comes in Henry IV, Part II. The dramatic character of Falstaff has received a lot of attention from writers and scholars, due to the complex comic and villainous elements of the character which aligned him to the Morality plays’ Vice characters. A very accurate description of Falstaff’s character is as follows:

“He is a man at once young and old, enterprising and fat, a dupe and a wit, harmless and wicked, weak in principle and resolute by constitution, cowardly in appearance and brave in reality, a knave without malice, a liar without deceit, and a knight, a gentleman, and a soldier without either dignity, decency, or honour. This is a character which, though it may be decompounded, could not, I believe, have been formed, nor the ingredients of it duly mingled, upon any receipt whatever” (Morgann 150-151).

This is a description of a character who is made up of incongruities by Shakespeare and these are noted in the above passage by Morgann. The difference between the Morality play Vices and the Shakespearean Vices, is also duly noted (Morgann). Before Shakespeare’s period, the stage Vices were drawn from a vile and coarse material, which gave the Vice characters their bawdy humour. The earlier Vice characters lacked the depth and the richness that is found in the Shakespearean Vice characters. Shakespeare’s Vice characters were built on the same premise as the Morality Vice characters but with more sophistication. Shakespearean Vice characters were not only comic, but there were layers of attributes that made the characters richer and deeper than the Morality Vices (Morgann). In Falstaff, Shakespeare cleverly builds on the Morality Vice to make his own Vice like character, physically incongruous and otherwise villainous; while allowing the character to have more depth. At the same time, Shakespeare ensures that the mirth and comic elements of Falstaff will go uninterrupted by a display of virtuous or otherwise appealing characteristics. Shakespeare achieves this objective by throwing on him “the substantial ridicule, which only the incongruities of a real Vice can furnish” (Morgann 156). One commentator calls Falstaff the clown of Henry IV (Wiles 116). The use of comedy by the Vice characters went to horrify and delight the audience and for that reason, Vice characters were neither purely evil, nor purely comic (Somerset 56). In this sense, the Vice characters imbibed some ambiguity as to their nature and the extent of their evil. In Shakespeare, this ambiguity is brought out by the phrase ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’ as well as in the characters, such as Macbeth, and Falstaff, which imbibe characteristics that make it difficult to classify them as purely evil. The Vice characters employed ambiguity in the Morality plays. An example of this is found in the use of the device of "who-am-I" game by some of the Vice characters in Morality plays. For instance, Merry Report uses this device when Jupiter asks him to identify himself as follows:

Jupiter: Why! what arte thou that approachest so nigh?

Merry Report: Forsooth, and please your lordship, it is I

Jupiter: All that we know very well, But what I?

Merry Report: What, I some say I am I per se I But, what manner I so ever be I I assure your good lordship, I am I.

In the above dialogue, Merry Report does not identify himself clearly and keeps Jupiter in dark about his identity. He evades recognition because he does not want Jupiter to know who he is. Jung has said that this attempt at evasion of recognition is also a way to defy control because to know the name of an individual is to define and control that person (Jung). The Vice cannot be controlled and indeed the early Morality plays show the Vice characters as essentially running riot on the stage and at times amongst the spectators. Ambiguity and dexterity were employed by Shakespeare with respect to the Vice-like characters in much the same way as it was employed in Morality plays and other important works of this time period. Notable amongst these works is Machiavelli’s The Prince, in which the author notes that the Machiavellian figure must have a flexible disposition so he can change “his character according to the time and circumstances” (Machiavelli 107). Iago in Othello exemplified Machiavellian traits as he is able to improvise and change as the situation or opportunity demands. As he does so, he is also able to manipulate others by having a very acute awareness of human nature. In Titus Andronicus, Aaron’s villainy is driven by the plan to bring down Andronici, although he does not seem to have any personal drive for revenge. Villainy for the sake of villainy is one of the characteristics of Vice characters and this is seen in Aaron’s character as well. Unlike Macbeth who was driven by his ambition to rule, Aaron has no such ambition. Therefore, there is an ambiguity as to why Aaron is acting in the manner he does. One explanation of Aaron’s villainy may be the fact of his race, as literature at the time tended to have racial prejudice against black men and moors. This is pointed out by Maus who observes that Aaron is a “stage descendant of the ‘black men’ of medieval morality plays, which conflated traditional depictions of the devil with racist conceptions of ‘Moors’ and ‘Africans’” (Maus 376). Aaron himself refers to this in Act III:

“Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace.

Aaron will have his soul black like his face”

The relating of soul to the colour black is an indication of the interrelation between the colour of Aaron’s skin and his villainy and a possible explanation of the villainy of this character, which otherwise lacks the motive for the same (Maus). Again, in Act IV, the idea of the interrelation between Aaron’s villainy and his race is reinforced by Aaron:

“Why, there’s the privilege your beauty bears. Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing The close enacts and counsels of thy heart”

In this dialogue, Aaron connects his blackness with his ability to deceive others as he is able to hide his feelings unlike white people whose blushes will betray their deceit. In this, Aaron’s deception and his duplicity are marked for their relationship with his race; but this also shows the Vice like nature of the character. Aaron also makes repeated allusions to the Devil in the play, thereby marking his relationship with the Devil as well as his own atheist nature. In Act IV, Demetrius and Chiron speak about praying for the health of their mother who is in labour. Overhearing them, Aaron says: “pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.” There are other allusions to the Devil in the play. In Act V in particular, Aaron open aligns himself with the Devil:

“If there be devils, would I were a devil, To live and burn in everlasting fire, So I might have your company in hell But to torment you with my bitter tongue”

Aaron’s speech shows him to wish to be a Devil and he is even willing to burn in everlasting fire. As indifferent he is to the sufferings of the others, Aaron is also indifferent to his own suffering as is seen in his unconcern about his death sentence. This is reminiscent of the Vice characters of Morality plays, who were often shown as unconcerned about their own fates as they were of the fate of other characters in the play. What is also of interest in the context of the Vice characters is the duplicity of evil that these characters represented. In other words, the use of comic relief alone is not a characteristic common to the earlier Vice and the Shakespearian villain characters, and the other characteristic is duplicity. In Shakespeare’s Richard III, this duplicity is mentioned in the dialogue between Richard and the young Prince:

Gloucester: (aside) So wise, so young they say do never live long. Prince: What say you, uncle? Gloucester: I say, without character, fame lives long. (aside) Thus like the formal Vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word.

In the above dialogue, the duplicity of the Vice is shown by Richard to the audience by the employment of aside, a common device used by Vice characters in the earlier Morality plays, wherein he says something else in aside to the audience, which makes his intentions clear to them, but hides what he says by saying something completely different to the young prince. There is one important point of distinction between the Morality play Vice characters and Richard’s character that has been noted in literature and bears mentioning at this point (Hirsh). Unlike the Vice characters, who know that they are actors on the stage playing an allegorical role, Richard’s character knows that he is a human being and a king and he compares himself to the Vice characters for his own amusement (Hirsh 441). In the dialogue above, where Richard says “Thus like the formal Vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word”, he is self-consciously comparing himself to the Vice. Hirsch does agree that there are obvious similarities between the Vice characters and Richard. These similarities are unscrupulous attitudes, indifference to the sufferings of other people, and a perverse entertainment in the suffering of other people (Hirsh 441). However, Hirsch also notes that the fact that Richard believes in his being a psychologically credible human, makes him a more dangerous character that the Morality play Vice characters. Coming back to the Vice characters, there was an obvious double-sided quality or hypocrisy in these characters, which was shown by their deceit. Deceit was a common method that was employed by the Morality play Vice characters which they used to attract their selected preys, and then hoodwink them into the commission of the follies that were intended. The Vice characters are basically amoral and deceit comes naturally to them. Along with this deceit comes the indifference of the effects of their actions on the others within the play. The unconcern or indifference is seen in one of the Vice characters, Nichol Newfangle in Like Will to Like, who does not think twice before mocking his own godfather, Lucifer, or taking his own old acquaintances, Cuthbert Cutpurse and Pierce Pickpurse to the hangman, while taking away the coat of one of the men as a payment for bringing them to the hangman. In another Morality play, The Tide Tarrieth No Man, the Vice character Courage, also exemplifies similar deceit, unconcern and indifference:

Now may you see how Courage can work, And how he can encourage both to good and bad. Thus you may see Courage contagious, And eke contrarious--both in me do rest. For I, of kind, am always various And change as to my mind seemeth best.

Courage shows how he can manipulate people into doing both good and bad deeds and takes an egotistical pride in practicing such manipulation. He has no concern about how these actions impact others and he takes more pleasure in changing as he thinks fit. He has no fixed characteristics, good or bad; he is fundamentally amoral. The ability to be protean is an important aspect of the Morality play Vice characters. As Courage in The Tide Tarrieth No Man, other Vice characters have displayed similar changeling or chameleon like qualities. An example can be found in the Vice Idleness in the play Wit and Wisdom, who says:

Detected I cannot well be; I am of that condition That I can turn into all colours like the chameleon: Although some do refuse me, some leaden-heeled lubber will not refrain me; And when men hath done with me women will retain me!

Like Courage, Idleness too takes pride in his chameleon like abilities to change as well as the failure of humankind to control him. In effect, these characteristics remind of the duplicitous nature of the Vice characters and how these characters can never be predicted on stage. The Vice characters are ambiguous, as reflected in the Vice character, Ambidexter, whose name itself suggests the ability to be either one or the other. While the Morality play Vice characters definitely defied categorisation, it remains to be seen whether the Shakespearean Vice characters also were as ambiguous or was their villainy more pronounced and their attributes more easily recognised as compared to the Morality play Vice characters. Whether they appeared in Morality plays or in Shakespearian stage, there is one common characteristic of Vice characters, in that they are oblivious to pain or remorse for their actions (George 17). Either as religious evil, or evil simply to be evil, such as in Shakespeare, the Vice characters were not usually demonstrative of the motives for their evil, but simply were so (George 49). It is hard to attribute their evil to some reason or justify their actions on the basis of some cause. This is intriguing because the Morality playwrights as well as Shakespeare could well have created the conditions or noted the reasons why the Vice characters did evil, but they all chose to make Vice characters evil simply for the sake of being evil. If there was a reason for their evil, this was masked and unclear, which is not how the other characters in the plays were portrayed. This makes the Vice characters the most difficult to analyse and understand, as much of their character and their motivations are opaque and ambiguous. Shylock’s character in The Merchant of Venice is a good example of ambiguity or the fine lines between the evil and the good in the character. Shylock’s character has so many shades to it that it is difficult to identify the pure evil in the character as he is persecuted and manipulative as well as sympathetic and villainous. This makes Shylock’s character difficult to fathom in black and white shades. Despite this, it is easy to see how Shylock is the definite villain in the play. He is the character that manipulates the action and characters in the play and he does so in a manner that is not straightforward and is duplicitous, where he is diabolical at some times and sympathetic at others. These characteristics are brought out by the following speech in Act 3, Scene I, in which Shylock asks for Antonio’s flesh:

“To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.

He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies—and what’s his reason?

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?

Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?

And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge.”

In this speech, Shylock appears at times to be vengeful and at other times to be sympathetic. He even appeals to the audience to pay note to the injustices that Antonio met out to him just because he was a Jew. He then tries to create sympathy for himself by proclaiming how Jews are wronged by others and how they, Jews, too deserve sympathy. Moreover, he also justifies his need for revenge saying that even Christians are vengeful and he has learnt revenge from Christians. The speech and some other parts of the play also show that Shylock is aware of what the society thinks of him because of his Jewish race, and that he expects to fulfil these expectations. For instance, in Act 3, he states: “Thou called’st me dog before thou hadst a cause, But since I am a dog, beware my fangs.” Here, Shylock is acting the villain because he is fulfilling the society’s expectations of him or rather he is justifying his actions based on such expectations. Throughout the scene in the court, Shylock is referred to as the Jew time and again, to signify his otherness as compared to Antonio. Shylock, though legally in the right, is shown morally wrong as he desires revenge even when he can have his money back. Nothing less than Portia claiming that Shylock can take the pound of flesh but he cannot shed a drop of Antonio’s Christian blood, makes Shylock change his mind. Ultimately beaten at his own legalistic plot, he is made to convert to Christianity, which was probably meant to show that Antonio made Shylock convert to save his soul from damnation. In Much Ado about Nothing, the character of Don John is more like the Vice characters in the early Morality plays and his hypocrisy and villainy are revealed to the audience (Champion). Don John is the illegitimate half brother of Don Pedro, the Prince of Aragon. Because Don John is a bastard, there would have been a natural inclining of thinking of him as a crafty and scheming person, as in those times illegitimate children were seen in negative light. Don John’s own assessment of himself is also negative and he freely admits to his faults. However, his villainy proceeds from the social expectations of his villainy due to his bastard status and it is here that his character finds greater depth than what would be seen in the earlier Morality plays. He therefore, prefers to be open about his villainy, showing an honesty that is rare in a Vice character in the Morality plays. The following passage from Much Ado About Nothing, is relevant to this point:

“I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any. In this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking. In the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.”

Don John’s character, although Vice like due to its villainy, is also significantly different from the Morality Vices. Unlike the Morality vices, Don John does not indulge himself in comedy or bawdy humour. He does not dance or prance on the stage. He does not even speak that much. Yet, he is decidedly the Vice figure in Much Ado about Nothing. He creates the trouble between other characters. His intentions are anything but honourable. There is a tragedy attached to Don John’s character which is not seen in the earlier Vice characters and which is one of the ways in which Shakespeare evolved his Vice like characters. Unlike Morality play Vice characters or even Falstaff of Henry IV and Merry Wives of Windsor, Don John is not comic and does not indulge in the usual Vice techniques like asides. There is a stigma attached to Don John’s character, which is continuously stressed upon through the play. The stigma is that Don John is a bastard and therefore, his malicious actions are structured on the societal perceptions of bastards (Neill). Don John himself is aware of the societal perceptions of bastards and justifies his own flaws by putting these to the innate characteristic of being a bastard child. In Othello, the character of Iago is similar to the Vice characters of the Morality plays. Like the Morality Vices, Iago is evil, cunning and even demonic at times. Othello himself is caught between Iago and Desdemona. Unlike Don John, Iago combines the many attributes of villainy, comedy, sport and mischief that were the hallmarks of the Morality play Vices. He is also responsible for creating a rift between Othello and Desdemona, by taking advantage of Othello’s jealousy and the death of Desdemona and the damnation of Othello. And all this is done for sport, as he admits to Roderigo:

“I hate the Moor. My cause is hearted. Thine hath no less reason. Let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him. If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport.”

Later, when Iago has convinced Othello of Desdemona’s adultery, Iago is still shown to be insatiable in his need for sport and in this he is truly evil: "The Moor already changes with my poison. Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons." Iago is evil for the purpose of being evil and he takes obvious pleasure in Othello’s misery over Desdemona’s perceived adultery. Like the Vice characters in the Morality plays, Iago’s evil seems to be without motivation and there does not seem to be any reason why Iago was driven to harm Othello and Desdemona. Nevertheless, Iago is duplicitous as is seen in a number of scenes in the play. For example, In Scene 1, Iago is seen telling Roderigo that he hates Othello. However, when Iago meets Othello he accuses Roderigo of speaking ill about Othello: “He prated / and spoke such scurvy and provoking terms against your honour.” He continues to conduct himself in this diabolical manner, such as, telling Desdemona’s father about his daughter’s marriage with Othello and then telling Othello that Brabanzio is angry about the marriage. In the last scene, Iago kills Roderigo and then claims that he found Roderigo dead. The dishonesty and duplicity of Iago is ironic when seen in the context of how much Othello trusts him. In this there is a great similarity between Iago and the Morality play Vices who were known for their duplicity. Like the earlier Vice characters in the Morality plays, Iago is also in touch with the audience more than the other characters. Iago speaks to the audience in asides that lets the audience know of his knavery and evil intentions for other characters, long before the characters themselves known of it. In this, Shakespeare used a technique which was very popular in the Morality plays and therefore shows a point of similarity between Morality Vices and Shakespeare’s Vice Iago. Thus, Othello is unaware of Iago’s intentions and actually believes Iago to be an honest person:

"Why did I marry? This honest creature doubtless sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds."

Iago himself has already let the audience know of his intentions to get Othello to doubt Desdemona in Act I of the play:

“I ha’t – it is engender’d. Hell and night

Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.”

The audience already knows of Iago’s intentions to manipulate Othello; while Othello himself is unaware of the same and proceeds to let Iago manipulate him into thinking the worst of Desdemona (Clemen 71). Because of Iago’s intimate relationship with the audience, the audience is always privy to the mischiefs that he plays on the characters in the play. However, the characters themselves are oblivious to this double role that is being played by Iago. This is similar to the Morality play approach to the Vice characters. Iago is not vice like, he is the Vice and villainy incarnate (Spivack 55). Moreover, Iago does not have any justification for his actions. Unlike Don John, who is a bastard and seemingly reacting as per the societal expectations of illegitimate sons; Iago has no reasonable justifications for his actions. He does give a list of reasons why he wants to take a revenge on Othello, but these reasons are frivolous and do not merit revenge. Iago is evil without reason and in that he is a truly Machiavellian character (Hazlitt 36). However, it is also true that the Morality Vice characters often played villainy for sport (Withington). Iago also had pronounced Machiavellian qualities, especially in the way he was able to understand the character of the others and play upon their character weaknesses. The very poisoning of Othello’s mind against Desdemona by Iago is an example of Iago’s Machiavellian traits. Iago realises that Othello considers virtue to be one of the most important qualities in a person and he uses this knowledge to poison Othello’s mind against Desdemona. By persuading Othello about Desdemona’s adultery, Iago is using Othello’s nature against himself. He knows that Othello holds virtue dear and by attacking Desdemona’s virtue, Iago creates a deep wedge between Othello and Desdemona. He does the most damage in Act III, when he carries on with his insinuations against Desdemona. Not only Desdemona, Iago also creates a doubt in Othello’s mind about Cassio. After telling Cassio to plead his case with Desdemona, Iago makes Othello doubt as to why Cassio was meeting Desdemona privately. In all of this, Iago manipulates the events and the other characters and almost directs the events to his whims. This forms a close association between Iago and the Vice characters from Morality plays as the latter were also known for similar behaviour. In all of this, Iago does not spell out Desdemona’s adultery in so many words, but he teases and leaves small hints for Othello to pick up on. This amuses Iago and also prolongs the misery for Othello who is left to wonder out Iago’s hints and messages about Desdemona. In all of this, Iago is an opportunist and he reads into Othello’s moods before playing upon his moods. In some instances, Iago plants the suspicions in Othello’s mind even before Othello even thought of such things. For instance, before Othello could think of jealousy, Iago puts the thought in his mind:

“O beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on”

Othello eventually becomes jealous. Iago has achieved his goal although the purpose of why Iago wishes so much ill on Othello is not clear. It has also been argued that Iago did not plant the suspicion in Othello, but he worked as an agent to unpack it (Garber). It has been argued that Othello already had deep seated insecurities with respect to Desdemona, and that Iago recognised these latent feelings and worked in a manipulative way to bring these feelings to the surface (Garber). Even so, Iago’s manipulation of Othello and his obvious enjoyment of Othello’s misery shows him to be very close to the Vice characters in Morality plays. Apart from the use of duplicity, there are other similarities between Iago and the Morality Vice characters. Like the Morality play Vice, Iago is witty, although he is not a buffoon or jester. Iago’s wit is intelligent and nuanced and in this there is the principal difference between Iago and the Morality Vice characters. Despite this difference, there is a very crucial similarity between the role played by Iago in Othello and the role of the Vice in morality plays; both are structured to lead to a moral lesson learning by the characters and the audience. In Othello, Iago brings the downfall of Othello, but he blames Othello himself for this state. Othello may be noble and kind, but he is also short tempered; and in this Iago finds the blame for Othello’s actions against Desdemona and Cassius (Hazlitt). For himself, Iago uses the word honesty many times during the play, which shows the double sidedness of his character (Happé). This is one way in which Shakespeare exploits the earlier Morality Vice character. With Iago, Shakespeare shows how Vice characters are evolved from the Morality plays. The Morality plays’ Vice character had two outstanding qualities: buffoonery and rascality (Withington). Shakespeare’s Vices did not always show both these characteristics. Don John was a rascal but not a buffoon, Falstaff was a buffoon but not a rascal, Iago was a rascal and his comedy was that of a wit and not a buffoon. One of the most interesting Vice characters in Shakespeare, Richard III, was a rascal but he combined such masculine characteristics of aggression and self assertion, that it is hard to label him a buffoon (Moulton). Despite his physical deformities, Richard III is an imposing character. However, his deformity is something that aligns him greatly to Vice character. In the beginning of the play, Richard III addresses his deformity thus:

“I, that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them— Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to see my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity.”

The self representation of Richard III in this opening soliloquy if the play is akin to the Morality plays’ Vice traditions (Day). There is also a determination of the character to give in to villainy which is also similar to the Vice characters in the Morality plays (Day). In this first soliloquy, Richard III gives the audience an insight into his self perceptions and his evil aims. He also speaks of a shadow in the sun, which is seemingly meant to contrast his dark and evil shadow with the fair and light Sun (Clemen). Therefore, Richard’s evil and rascally nature is determined by him alone and this continues to colour all his actions through the play (Clemen). The most common characteristic between Richard III and the earlier Vice characters is the use of asides and soliloquys (Neill). There is also an “ostentatious theatricality” in Richard III, which matches up to the self display of the Morality play Vice characters (Neill 99). Richard III epitomises malevolence and the most important attribute of the play is that, Richard manages to make the audience a part of his malevolence by taking the audience into confidence and using asides to convey to the audience his real motives as opposed to what the characters in the play may attribute to him (Slotkin). This is important because by acting in this way, Richard III manges to make the audience co conspirators in the same way as Morality Vices used to do (Slotkin). Richard could have deceived the audience but he chooses to make them privy to his malevolent acts:

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

The appeal of evil is treated in two ways in Richard III. First, as a problem of knowledge and second as a problem of desire (Slotkin 5). In the period of time that Richard III belonged to there were debates about the “epistemological value of appearances for determining moral truths” (Slotkin 5). While the deformity of Richard III is used by other characters to attribute his evil nature to some innate quality that he has; Richard himself takes a narcissistic view of the deformities and uses it to show the union between his outer appearance and his inner truths (Slotkin). While Richard lets the audience in on the true state of his inner nature, he keeps the characters in the dark and this raises the suspense quality of the play (Slotkin). The Morality play Vices were also marked at times by some deformities, but these were not shown to be the core of their character and rather these deformities added to their devilish allure. Richard’s deformities are the core of the character as he obviously feels deeply about it and in some ways his deformities are the reasons for the evil perceptions that are alluded to him by other characters, such as, Anne and Margaret; both of whom allude to these deformities while attributing evil or devilish characteristics to Richard III. It has been asserted by some writers that Richard’s deformities are not just a mark of what is wrong with him, but it is also the reflection of what is wrong with the world (Torrey). Thus, by creating the character, Shakespeare is setting out to mirror the ills of the world in the deformities of Richard III (Torrey). It has been said that in Richard III, Shakespeare has evolved a mature and grown up character that is able to balance his physical infirmities and intellectual superiority (Barnet). The physical person of Richard III is decidedly inferior, but intellect is sharp, and Richard uses his intellect to self represent himself to the audience in a way that makes him almost boastful about his physical infirmities (Barnet). In this, Shakespeare evolves the Vice character not only over and above the Morality play Vice tradition, but also above some of the Vices created by himself. Thus, Iago and Richard are similar in the way that they both prize the intellect over the moral character (Barnet). However, in some ways Richard III is different and more evolved than Iago, and the other Vice like characters created by Shakespeare. Unlike Iago, Richard III does not shirk responsibility for his evil deeds, rather he revels in these deeds. He is aware of his wrongs and uses legal jargon to explain how he is in the wrong:

“What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly! What, from myself? Great reason why: Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good That I myself have done unto myself? O, no! Alas, I rather hate myself For hateful deeds committed by myself. I am a villain. Yet I lie. I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter: My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain.”

The above speech from Henry VI, is crucial for understanding the character and psychological make up of Richard. In this speech, there are several important points that reveal the villainy of Richard. The speech is the first indication of the deeper character of Richard as this is the first time that Richard’s character is revealed (Muir 29). It is also significant as a soliloquy where Richard examines his own character for the first time and he lets the audience in on his self-discovery (Clemen,). Prior to this soliloquy, Richard has only been absorbed in the carrying out of his actions, but he has never revealed his designs or inner workings of his mind to the audience. In this speech, Richard subjects himself to a self-examination after his nightmare. Now Richard repudiates love by saying that ‘I am myself alone’. The speech also has mixed messages. On one hand, Richard time and again damns himself and then on the other hand, he displays a lack of remorse on his actions or behaviour. Richard also uses the word ‘myself’ time and again, which shows his complete absorption with himself and exclusion of every one else, as if he is creating a prison of self (Muir 29). When Richard says ‘My conscience hath a thousand several tongues’, this is very significant for a psychological understanding of the character of Richard III. Richard realizes in this moment that what is disturbing his sleep is not something that it outside of him but something that is within him. It is his own conscience and it is giving him different messages but when he says that his conscience has a thousand tongues, it seems that he is saying that there are several witnesses who can testify to his wrongs and condemn him for a villain. Yet, the conscience is within him and not something without. He himself is his own witness. The conscience is telling him of his sins, but he does not want to admit it. His saying “I am a villain. Yet I lie. I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter” signify Richard’s recognition of his character and his refusal to admit these flaws in himself. He asks himself to speak well of himself; yet says that he should not flatter himself. There is acute psychological drama in this scene. Richard’s soliloquy is also significant for understanding the modelling of Richard on Vice characters of the Morality plays. In the Morality plays, the Vice characters would involve the audience in their evil acts by making the audience somehow complicit in the acts. This would usually happen when the Vice characters would make the audience join in making jest of the Mankind characters. Another way of doing this would be to share the workings of their evil mind with the audience, while keeping the characters on the stage in the dark. In any case, the Vice characters would involve the audience to the exclusion of the other characters. In this soliloquy, Richard employs the same tactic when he shares his self-examination with the audience. The use of a soliloquy is particularly important here because this was a very common device that was employed by the Morality Vice characters to create a shared understanding between the Vice and the audience. Shakespeare’s Vice characters took on many of the characteristics of the Morality play Vices. Macbeth shows the Vice in Shakespearian drama to have the basic contextual elements of a Morality Vice character. In Macbeth, there is another similarity with the Morality plays, as Macbeth is used to teach the audience a moral lesson of lost innocence and consequences of sin. In Macbeth, Shakespeare comes very close to creating a character that is used to teach the same moral lessons that were taught through the Vice and Mankind characters in Morality plays. As noted by Kolve, in Macbeth, Macbeth as representing Mankind character teaches the audience through his own experience with “Innocence, Temptation and Fall, Life in Sin, and Realization and Repentance” (289). To be sure, Macbeth is not a Morality play, but Shakespeare does use certain elements of the Morality play for sending a message based in morality. Shakespeare did not however adopt the Vice character as it was in the Morality plays, rather choosing to redefine the Vice character by either endowing the character with the comic elements of the Vice, as with Falstaff; or by endowing the element with villainous characteristics, as with, Iago. In doing so, Shakespeare treated the Vice character with more flexibility and nuance as compared to the treatment of the character in Morality plays, where there was less psychological treatment of the Vice characters. In Othello, the Vice is a villain who has vowed to bring the downfall of the hero and it is hard to attribute this to any reasonable cause but for the Vice like tendency to cause trouble. In Macbeth, the Vice character, Macbeth, struggles with himself and the battle between moral and evil is fought within the character of Macbeth himself (Ornstein 230). In Macbeth, Shakespeare leaves his audience in confusion as to the Vice character and his motivations. Similar ambiguities in Vice characters is seen in other Shakespearean dramas.

The discussion in this chapter has shown how the Vice character evolved in Shakespearean drama. Shakespearean Vices have more depth and range in their character. The element of rascally behaviour remains but the Shakespearean Vices are not all buffoons. There is the element of malice and evil in some of Shakespeare’s Vice characters, similar to the Morality play Vices; but the Shakespearean Vices have evolved in different senses. Iago is mischievous for the sake of being mischievous. Iago is evil as is Richard. Although, Richard’s evil seems predestined and tragic while Iago’s evil seems senseless. Richard and Iago are both aware of their immorality; but they take pride in their intellectual superiority. Don John’s character is not comic like the Morality Plays’ Vices. Instead there is some tragedy attached to his character. His evil seems predestined like that of Richard. It seems like Don John will not be able to escape his destiny. Part of Don John’s tragic evil is due to his lineage, which is something that he cannot escape. There is therefore a tragedy attached to him, which makes him different from other Vice characters, particularly Falstaff, who is a buffoon and closer to the Morality Vice characters in being comic and bawdy. Falstaff is comic and makes jokes at the expense of other characters; but he is also frequently made fun off. In fact, Falstaff’s character evolves through the three plays in which he makes prominent appearance: Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV, Part II; and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Richard and Iago present the most complex characters amongst these in the sense of their villainy. Both characters invite the audience to delve into their psychological depth. Richard’s soliloquy in Henry VI is particularly interesting in showing the psychological sophistication of the characterization by Shakespeare. Richard is shown to have a conscience, which the Vice characters generally lacked due to their amorality. Richard cannot be perceived as exactly amoral due to this scene as he is able to discern his sins, however, he also does not want to accept this overtly. This shows a deep conflict within the character’s self-realisation. The audience is made privy to this conflict through the soliloquy in much the same way as Vice characters would involve the audience in their pranks. This chapter has discussed some of the differences and similarities between the Morality Vices and the Vices in Shakespearean stage. There is a difference between the Morality Vice characters and Shakespearean Vices, such as, Richard, is that the latter are involved in an introspection. Morality Vice characters rarely introspected. They lacked the moral compass to do so. The other characters in the plays were bestowed with moral reasoning, but the Vice characters were not bestowed with similar moral reasoning. In this respect, Shakespeare’s Vice characters were multidimensional in terms of their psychological characteristics. They had more depth and flexibility as compared to the Morality play Vices. In this respect, the Shakespearean Vices were different from the Morality play Vices, although Shakespeare borrowed many of the techniques in devising his Vice characters from Morality plays.

The stage space in the morality plays involving the Vice character, included the use of entrances or exits in a unique manner. As noted by one commentator, “It is a common characteristic of the vice to make a bold entry proclaiming his identity, often in a direct address to the audience and frequently introducing a note of bawdy, comedy or irreverence” (Grantley 26). The morality plays of the 15th century, are significant for the use of entrances by Vice characters in the manner explained by Grantley. One such notable example is Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres. In Fulgens and Lucres, the method of intrusion into the dinner of the guests was used to inform the guests that the play will commence in the Great Hall shortly. This intrusion was done by two characters in the play, “A” and “B”, who fluidly go between audience to the stage throughout the play. Fulgens and Lucres was initially designed to be performed as a Great Hall interlude at the Bishop of Canterbury’s Christmastide dinner. The use of dramatic intrusion at the beginning of the interlude has been recorded during the first performances of the play (Walker). It has been suggested that during the first performances of the play, as the diners were at the end of the dinner, someone from amongst them would begin to berate the other diners for not showing any gratitude for the meal (Walker). Then a household servant approached the irate diner and they talked about a play that was going to be performed in the hall. A asks: “Shall there be a play?” and B replies: “Ye, for certeyn” (Styan 63). In a while, it became clear that the two persons, “A” and “B” were actors in the play. At this point A said:

“Ther is so myche nyce array Amonge these galandes now aday That a man shall not lightly Know a player from another man”

Then the play would begin and A and B would be part of the audience for a while before B declared his intention to approach one of the actors on stage for a job. Then A exclaimed loudly that:

“. . . Pece, let be! Be God, thou wyll distroy all the play.”

At this point, B declared:

“Distroy the play”, quod a? Nay, nay, The play began never till now! I wyll be doing, I make God avow, For there is not in this hondred myle A feter bawde than I am one.”

The above is the opening dialogue in Fulgens and Lucres, and Medwall uses A and B as intruders from the audience as well as part of the play. This is the use of intrusion as an entrance by the two characters in the play. This fluidity with which A and B move from the audience to the stage and back to the audience is an indication of the nature of the interlude and the space that it occupies within the Great Hall where the audience and the actors occupied the same space. This method of intrusion as an entrance was explained distinct and special as this breaks the barrier between the play and reality (Walker). It has also been argued that Medwall has used the two comic characters A and B to separate the audience from the content of the play, which at times could be offensive to the nobility before whom the play was performed (Cartwright). The intrusions are powerful and threatening at the same time and their popularity with the audience also stems from the use of the intrusion by the vice characters, who would spring from within the audience itself. This also had a suggestive value for both the audience as well as the playwright, wherein the spectators shared the sins that were shown in the play (Walker). The method of characters coming through from amidst the audience was explored in different morality plays of this period. For instance, in the Play About the Weather, when Jupiter calls for someone to proclaim the court’s opening to the audience, Merry Reporte comes from within the audience, jostling his way through and exclaiming that he is a poor gentleman who is ready to serve Jupiter (Altman 122). This entrance scene also highlights the contrast between Merry Reporte’s self-identification as a gentleman and the actual dress and behaviour which pronounces him to be otherwise. His role as a Vice character is clear from his words:

“Syns your entent is but for the wethers What skyls our apparels to be fryse or fethers?”

This introduction to Merry Reporte also establishes the comic nature of his character and the serious nature of the work that he proposes to do for Jupiter (Altman). In the same method of emerging from the crowd, The Play of Love sees Lover Not Loved emerging from the audience while he holds forth a soliloquy on unrequited love:

“My maner is to muse and devyse So that sometime my selfe may cary me My selfe knoweth not where, and I assure ye.”

Lover Not Loved emerges distracted from amongst the audience and joins the debate on love. There are other methods of making an entrance by the Vice characters in the morality plays. For instance, The Interlude of Youth uses contrasting entrance methods by the virtue character Charity and the mankind character, Youth. Charity enters upon the stage saying:

“I am the gate, I tell thee of Heaven, the joyful citye I was planted in his hart We two might not departe.”

Entrance is used by Charity to welcome the audience and to explain to the audience the nature of the virtue that he represents and also his relationship with God and Christ. It has been said that Charity uses this entrance to show to the audience that he holds a claim to a divinely sanctioned identity (Burns 51). Then Youth enters the stage while lauding his own physical beauty and strength, saying “I am goodle of personae.” This narcissism on the part of Youth presents a contrast to the virtuous style of Charity. The contrasting styles of entrance by Charity and Youth introduce the audience to the allegorical nature of the interlude wherein Charity and other virtues attempt to make the impulsive and proud Youth see the right and virtuous way. In the Foure PP, the first character to enter the stage is Palmer, who enters exclaiming:

“Nowe God be here! Who kepeth this place! Now by my fayth, I crye you mercy! Of reason I must sew for grace My rewdnes sheweth me no so homely.”

By this entrance, the Palmer establishes his character in the play with the audience. By contrast, the pothecary’s entrance is at first noted by the Pardonner who addresses him as a part of the audience rather than as a rival (Heywood). In Johan Johan, the audience is made aware of the seething problems in Johan’s household at the very beginning of the play with Johan’s entrance as a muttering husband, who questions the character of his wife in the very first scene of the play (Borowska-Szerszun). The entrance is both comic as well as illuminating for the audience as to the nature of the play and the nature of Tyb as a wandering wife of the henpecked husband. This establishes an understanding between Johan and the audience in which both Tyb as well as Sir Johan are the adulterers. In The Tide Tarrieth No Man, the Vice, Courage makes an entrance with invitation to the audience to join him on the Barge of Sin by saying:

“To the Barge to! Come they that will go. Why Sirs, I say when? It is high tide, We may not abide, Tide tarrieth no man.”

The entrance is used in The Tide Tarrieth No Man to introduce the audience to the possibility of their joining in sinful mirth with Courage (Jones 62). In fact, in this play the stage space is monopolized by the Vice for almost the first three fourth part of the play (Jones). Shakespeare too used stage space and various aids of stagecraft that had been used in the morality plays and interludes before his time. This includes entrances and exits of characters. For instance, in Macbeth, the entrance of the King is preceded by thunder and lightning and a dance on the stage by the witches, who are chanting:

“Fair is foul and foul is fair Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

Immediately after this, when the king arrives on the stage from the battle, Shakespeare has already created the mood for the audience through the imagery of sight and sound by bringing the audience to think of the battle from where the King emerges, without actually showing the battle (Styan). Shakespeare understood the device of entrance for establishing the mood or the character in a play in the mind of the audience. This could be tragic as in Macbeth above or comic as in Henry IV, where Falstaff’s entry onto the stage is farcical. Poins removes Falstaff’s horse causing the latter to walk uphill to Gadshill. While the horse is not shown onstage, Falstaff’s comical entry onto the stage puts the immediately preceding scene in context. Falstaff huffs and puffs onto the stage exclaiming:

“Poins! Poins and be hanged! Poins!... The rascal hath removed my horse and tied him I know not where. If I travel but four foot by the squire further afoot, I shall break my wind.”

This entrance by Falstaff is comical and given to farce and loud exclamations. In Hamlet, Shakespeare takes a completely different route to making an entrance. In Hamlet, the entrances are quieter, as in when Horatio walks in silently on the stage when Hamlet is in the middle of a soliloquy (Styan 70). As the Shakespearian stage was usually big, sometimes characters had to make loud entrances to get the audience’s attention. At times, a character would announce the entrance of a new character on the stage, as in Hamlet, where the Queen announces Hamlet’s entrance by saying:

“But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.”

This and similar such techniques in making an entrance allowed Shakespeare’s characters to create a rapport between each other as the character on stage and the character entering upon the stage (Styan 72). At times, characters were able to signify irony to the audience through the entrances of the characters on stage. This usually happened when the character on stage prepared the audience for the character about to enter the stage by giving false particulars about the characters appearance, which were belied as soon as the new character made his entrance. This created a room for irony. For instance, in the Twelfth Night, Fabian tells Viola that the contestant is the most “skilful, bloody and fatal opposite that you could possibly have found in any part of Illyria.” However, the entry of the contestant as an effeminate knight is contradictory to the preparatory introduction and creates irony and sets a comic mood for the audience. The use of the words “Look where he comes” in different Shakespearian plays as preludes to entrance on the stage by some character, was done with the purpose of creating a position of the participants for the audience members (Styan). In Othello, Othello uses this device to create a confidence between himself and the audience as to the character of Desdemona, whom Othello invites the audience to study themselves thus:

“Look where she comes: If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself! I’ll not believe it.”

As the audience has become privy to judging Desdemona, it immediately sees her honesty and Iago’s lies are exposed (Styan 97). Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Richard III, modelled Richard’s character on the lines of the Vice character from the early morality plays. Just like the Vice characters from the early morality plays, Richard also talks to the audience of his future plans and his past misdeeds. Similar to the Vice characters, Richard manipulates the other characters in the play. But Richard is not the Vice character in the play, but a hero, albeit a faulted one. Nevertheless, the entrance of Richard is made in such a way that is reminiscent of Vice characters, as he comes proclaiming his qualities:

“I that am curtailed of this fair proportion. Cheated of feature by dissembling nature Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up— And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.”

The entry of Richard, without calling himself by name, but by naming his attributes so that there is no ambiguity in the audience’s mind as to the identity of the character is reminiscent of the method used in morality plays. The comic element of the morality plays was manifested usually in the asides that the Vice characters made for the benefit of the audience from time to time. It has been argued that the purpose of the asides was to provide some relief from the serious themes that were otherwise portrayed in the plays due to moral didactics (Craig 380). It has been counter-argued that the asides were meant to be a reflection on the audience itself as there was “no such thing as innocent merriment" (Spivack 121). In any case, the use of techniques such as asides, added to the theatricality of the Vice characters (Happé). The Vice characters have been notable for keeping a steady interaction with the audience in the morality plays. In the early morality plays, one of the uses of asides was to the end of creating an active relationship between the audience and the characters. An example of the same is Gammer Gurton’s Needle (1575) which created an active collaboration between the audience and the characters (Cartwright). In Gammer Gurton, the Vice character, Diccon manipulates the events and the characters and stage manages the play in the tradition of the morality play Vice who is a schemer and a planner. At the same time, Diccon’s relays to the audience are often the sources of information as to the direction that the play is set to take (Styan 77). The use of asides and soliloquys aids the giving of information to the audience as to the comic events that are about to take place, even as the characters in the play are clueless as to these events and manipulations. Medwall used asides from a comic standpoint as well as seen in the play Everyman where the comic element is high (Cartwright). The Play of the Weather (1533) was also a Great Hall play and it is known for the use of the boy actors for its comic possibilities (Cartwright). The use of asides in Elizabethan theatre and drama is usually seen as a throwback to the early morality plays. In Damon and Pythias, the use of aside is done by the hangman from whose execution two friends are saved, but the hangman confides his intention to the audience that he shall make an immediate exit from the stage before he loses his fee (Dillon). In King Cambises, the Vice character, Ambidexter, uses an aside to explain to the audience the meaning of his name and the quality it holds to play with both hands, as he moves from weeping for the death of Lord Smirdis, who has been slain by his own brother on the one hand, to laughing at it on the other hand (Dillon 48). In The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, one of the clowns on the stage directly questions the audience as to which part of the body they think is the tenderest after hearing that blood taken from the tenderest part of the body cab cure Armenio of his dumbness (Dillon 48). Shakespeare carried on the conventions of the asides and soliloquys and other such devices that were used in the morality plays and interludes. However, Shakespeare’s use of these devices has not always conformed to the earlier conventions and in many a way he improvised upon these devices and used them to different ends in his own plays. The early morality plays have used these devices for the foretelling of the Vice characters’ evil plans and schemes, or as a method of creating a confidence between the characters and the audience. While Shakespeare used these devices to these ends, he also increasingly used these devices for the purpose of heightening of the dramatic element in his plays. In the early morality plays, asides were used for the purpose of imparting information to the audience. However, in the Shakespearian drama, asides were increasingly used as a method for sharing with the audience the introspective nature of the characters’ thoughts and feelings. Shakespeare continued the use of asides in his plays, in the same tradition as was followed in the interludes and morality plays. Parallels can be drawn between the use of the technique of asides by Shakespeare and morality plays before him. For instance, in Richard III, Richard Gloucester’s character uses asides and soliloquies to inform the audience about his future sinister acts and plans (Clemen 26). Richard is a master schemer but his soliloquies and asides ensure that the audience is not kept in the dark about his scheming. In fact, by using the device of asides, Shakespeare creates a relationship of confidence between the character on stage and the audience. The foreknowledge about Richard’s schemes also builds up the tension in the audience, which is a confidante to Richard but does not know how his plans will actually play out on the stage (Clemen). Shakespeare’s techniques in Richard III is reminiscent of the Vice characters from the morality plays and interludes, where these characters forged a confidence with the audience by announcing their sinister and mischievous schemes and plans for the future. For instance:

“Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous. By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams To set my brother Clarence and the King In deadly hate the one against the other.”

Shakespeare used asides as a technique for verbal preparation. In Othello, Iago uses asides and soliloquies to inform the audience about his plans for the future. In the manner of the Vice character, Iago’s scheming and planning is an exercise in plotting mischief for the other characters. While the other characters are unaware of these plans, Iago lets the audience into his confidence by telling them of his plans in advance with the use of asides. Iago is detailed in laying down his schemes for the audience in the very beginning of the play. For instance, at the end of the first act of the play, Iago describes his planned campaign against Othello thus:

“I ha’t – it is engender’d. Hell and night Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.”

This gives the audience an insight into Iago’s intentions to manipulate Othello. Time and again during the play, the technique is employed by Iago to inform the audience of the next step in his scheming. Unlike the Vice characters in the morality plays and interludes, Iago’s asides are not comic and are not aimed at creating a camaraderie between the character and the audience. Rather, Iago’s asides lead to a paradoxical relationship between the character and the audience, with the audience in the position of an antipathetic confidante (Clemen 71). Asides were also used in King Lear to create a contrast between appearance and reality in the third act, wherein Kent, Edgar and the Fool disguise themselves as judge and his two assessors. In between the play acting within the scene, Edgar uses the technique of asides to create a contrast between the appearance and reality. For instance, he says:

“My tears begin to take his part so much They mar my counterfeiting”.

The purpose of these words is to create a sense of the characters’ being assistants to King Lear’s imagination of the trial as well as the spectators at the same time. The duality of the characters is known to the audience, although Lear himself is oblivious to it. In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses asides not as a technique for preparing the audience or informing the audience, but rather as spontaneous soliloquies. This is a different use of the technique as compared to the early morality plays and interludes. When Macbeth uses these asides, he is not passing information on to the audience but using short burst of speeches as an aid in self- reflection. Thus, for the audience these asides may act as an aid in gaining insight into Macbeth’s actions or thoughts. Shakespeare has taken the technique of asides and soliloquies from the early plays and used them to a different end in Macbeth. Shakespeare uses this technique from a deeply psychological perspective, where the inner workings of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s minds are revealed to the audience. This helps in increasing the tensions between the good and evil powers and ideas at work throughout the play. The audience is made privy not to what is about to come, but to what Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are thinking at different points during the play. Shakespeare uses the same technique in Hamlet, where he uses short soliloquies and asides to gain an insight into Hamlet’s mind and thoughts and the conflicts of emotions and thoughts that Hamlet faces through his realisation about his father’s love or ruing a hasty marriage. The ‘To be or not to be’ speech is a classic example of the utterances of such inner conflicts by Hamlet that make the audience privy to his thoughts and feelings. The entire soliloquy is reflective in nature (Clemen). In that this is a very different application of the technique of soliloquy from the one employed in the morality plays and interludes. Literature points to the unique place of music in the interludes and how the Vice characters used music (Giles-Watson). For instance, Rastall said that the devil and his agents all use music to seduce and befool people (Rastall). In the interludes, Vice characters used music to seduce the hero as well as the audience. Here, it is also important to reflect on the relationship between the Vice character and the Devil. Vice is a kind of stage devil, and the basic difference between Vice and the Devil is that while the former is generally mirthful, the latter is always vicious (Cox 77). For that reason, many writers have preferred to see the Vice characters as those resembling fools and jesters rather than the knave (Cox). Nevertheless, there are some characteristics of the Vice character which are reminiscent of the Devil, particularly, a penchant for depravity and the tendency to deviate people from good towards vices or evil. Therefore, the use of music by the Vice character becomes an essential point in which Vice character’s need to deviate people from good is pronounced and music which is otherwise thought of as a pleasant entertainment, becomes a method for furthering the Vice character’s evil or mischievous intentions. The Vice character used music in a bawdy, garish and vulgar fashion. Music was particularly involved in morality plays, as it played a central role in acts involving physical comedy, tumbling, dancing, singing, and improvisation. The Vice character being the principal mischief maker in the interlude drama, he used music for enhancing his comic and mischief making acts. It has been stated:

“As a household entertainment, the dramatic interlude uses music to mediate, both semantically and semiotically, between the performative subjectivity of the ‘play’ and the concrete objectivity of the ‘game’. It is suggestive that by the later Middle Ages the Latin ludus meant ‘school’ as well as ‘stage play’ and ‘game’; in performance, the Vice’s singing circulates through these notions until at last the interlude fully exposes its didactic purpose” (Giles-Watson 58).

In order to understand the Vice character’s engagement with musical performances within the interludes, it is pertinent to understand the role played by minstrel characters. In the period before the rise of the interludes, there were minstrel characters in plays that performed to music but these characters were replaced by Vice characters (Happé). Minstrel characters were very similar to the later Vice characters, in that minstrels were morally deficient and were capable of depraved behaviour. Minstrels were also very mobile like the later Vice characters and they were capable of formulating and enacting multiple social identities (Giles-Watson). In The Play of the Wether, Mery Reporte plays the Vice character which is akin to minstrel of the earlier plays. Mery Reporte plays the usher of Jupiter who controls the access of people to Jupiter. The text of the interlude indicates that there were two songs in the text, that are attributed to the Vice Mery Reporte, although there is no music ascribed within the text, which some have interpreted to mean that Heywood himself played the character of Mery Reporte. This assumption is made because Heywood was a minstrel in the court of Henry VIII, and as such he would be able to sing extempore (Giles-Watson). When the Gentlewoman seeks Jupiter, Mery Reporte tries to seduce and stall her by singing:

“Now by my trouth for the love that I owe you, You shall here what pleasure I can shew you. One songe have I for you, suche as yt is, And yf yt were better ye shold have yt, by gys! Mary syr, I thanke you even hartely. Come on, syrs, but now let us synge lustly.”

Mery Reporte gets the gentlewoman as well as the audience to sing along with him. The mischief that Mery Reporte causes is by getting the Gentlewoman to gain pleasure from the singing. It has also been claimed that the song is actually a duet between the Vice and the Gentlewoman (Happé 123). While that is unclear from the text, Mery Reporte does get ‘syrs’ from the stage or audience to sing and he also sings a duet in the play when he rounds up the suitors to bring to Jupiter who is about to deliver his judgement:

“If I haddë caught them, Or ever I raught them, I wolde have taught them To be nere me. Full dere have I bought them, Lorde, so I sought them, Yet have I brought them Suche as they be.”

In the song, Mery Reporte is not only singing a song, he is also making a representation of his persuasive powers by which he has managed to bring the suitors together. The change from minstrels to Vice chawas gradual and there was some overlapping between minstrels and Vice characters, or deliberate references to minstrels, as was seen in the interlude Mankind where the Mischief, the principal Vice character calls out to Nought, another Vice character, to blow on his flute and announce the devil’s entrance on to the stage (Giles-Watson). In Mankind, Mischief, Nought, Nowadays, and New Gyse attempt to get the other characters to sing a song, which Mankind refuses to sing. In the scene, Nowadays makes way for Nought who gives the cue for the song. Nowadays says:

“Make rom sers, for we have be longe! We wyll cum gyf yow a Crystemes songe.”

Nought then provides the cue:

“Now I prey all þe yemandry þat ys here To synge wyth ws wyth a mery chere.”

At each point, Nought provides the cue and the audience and other Vice characters singalong:

“Yt ys wretyn wyth a colle, yt ys wretyn wyth a cole He þat schytyth wyth his hoyll, he þat schytyth wyth his hoyll.”

The song sung by Nought is basically a song sung to a popular tune of the day, which makes the audience also want to sing along. This is a way for the Vice characters to get the audience to collude with the Vices (Giles-Watson). This has been considered to be a form of seduction of the audience by the Vice characters. As one of the principal tasks for the Vice characters was to disrupt the social harmony, the characters attempted to seduce the interlude hero into a bad act or life, and by extension also attempted to seduce the audience by making them a part of the mischief that is being plotted against the hero character (Giles-Watson). To challenge the hero and make him stray from the path of goodness and virtue, was the principal objective of the Vice characters. The Vice characters had to divert the hero but at the same time, they had to make sure that their diversionary tactics were not obvious, leading the Vice characters to employ seduction (Rastall). The art of seduction by the Vice character required him to be engaging and amusing, wherein he used songs and music to entertain. As pointed out: “songs were a common element in the part of the Vice, for he was able to use them to establish his identity, to show off his cleverness, and, because of his structural role to make significant steps in the development of the play” (Happé). As this observation shows, songs were a central element in the Vice’s repertoire of tricks of entertainment as well as a way of seducing the hero of the interlude into committing acts of folly. In the Tide Tarrieth No Man, Courage, the Vice character, leads three other Vice characters, Feigned Furtherance, Painted Profit, and Hurtful Help. Together they sing ‘First Courage causes Minds of Men’ and ‘We have great gain with little Pain’, which are the two songs that are marked out in the text (Giles-Watson 68). It has been surmised that the entrance of the Vice Courage is a song (Giles-Watson). Shakespeare’s plays also incorporated the singing Vice character. In the Twelfth Night, Feste, who is at times referred to as the ‘Clowne’ or the as ‘Foole’, is the performative Vice akin to the Vice of the interludes. Disguised as Sir Topas, Feste imbibes the Vice character’s referential as well as the performative functions. He also sings a song in the exit of Act 4:

“Malvolio Foole, I’ll requite thee in the highest degree I prethee, be gone. Clown I am gone, sir, and anon, sir, Ile be with you againe: In a trice, like to the old vice, your neede to sustaine, Who with dagger of lath, in his rage and his wrath, Cries ah ha, to the diuell: Like a mad lad, paire thy nayles, dad, Adieu good man diuell.”

In the exit song sung by Feste, he makes a clear reference to the old Vice character and the rage and wrath of the character, while he also imitates the old Vice character through his own histrionics (Giles-Watson). Clearly, Shakespearian drama has incorporated this performative side of the Vice character as seen in the Twelfth Night. Based on this, it has been said that the “memories of the Vice are closely related to presentational practice in which performance is displayed in its own right” (Weimann and Bruster 66). Music may be heavenly and it may represent holiness, or it may also represent worldliness and depravity (Weimann and Bruster). The manner in which the Vice characters in the interludes used music definitely belonged to the latter category. In Shakespearian drama, this aspect of the Vice character was represented through certain characters that resembled the Vice. An example can be taken from Merry Wives of Windsor, wherein Falstaff plays a character that resembles the old Vice character from the interludes. The common features between Falstaff and the old Vice characters include mischief making and the use of music and song. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff uses the popular songs of the day, that is, the songs which were popular amongst the public and corrupts the songs by adding his own messages to the song’s tune or changing the lyrics of the songs. As the songs are already popular with the theatre going crowd, Falstaff is able to get members of the audience to sing along with him, thereby becoming a party to Falstaff’s fun making. When Falstaff is tricked and humiliated in Act 2 Scene 2, he threatens Hal, Peto, Poins and Bardolph with revenge that he will visit upon them with a song:

“Hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters! If I be ta’en, I’ll peach for this. And I have not ballads made on you all and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison.”

Falstaff is threatening Hal, Peto, Poins and Bardolph that he will make ballads on them and sing these to filthy tunes as a revenge upon them. Song in this scene becomes the central feature of Falstaff’s threat against the four friends. This demonstrates the use of song by the Vice like characters in Shakespearian drama. In the morality plays and interludes that precede Shakespearian drama, music and dance was associated with the Vice characters (Wells). The interludes of Mankind and The Interlude of Youth, all involved the Vice characters using music to create a possible seduction of the hero as well as the audience. In the later period, Shakespearian play also used music by the Vice like characters. Spivack (1958) argues that the Vice characters have comic as well as seriously moral attributes. The Vice character was devious in the way it tried to deviate the hero character from the path of virtue and resort to immoral or evil actions (Spivack 170). Every morality play could be stereotyped by the fact that there would be a moment where the Vice character would succeed in deluding the hero figure and corrupt him (Spivack). In the early morality plays and interludes, the comic characters or the Vice characters served the purpose of bringing the serious virtuous characters to the realisation of the value of virtues. The Vice characters used various methods to bring the serious characters to the point where they would denounce sins and embrace virtues. One of the methods was subjecting the serious characters to frivolous and undignified behaviour by the Vice characters. This is seen in the play Mankind, where Mercy’s lessons are delivered through the comic, slapstick and often undignified comedy by the Vice characters like Mischief and even the scene where the Devil Titivillus defeats Mankind’s resolve (Davenport 36). The parts of the play which show conflict between the Vice characters and the serious Mercy, are full of Vice characters’ jesting and challenging Mercy in vulgar and obscene language, leading the latter to warn of repentance to the audience: “Thys ydyll language ye xall repent” (Davenport 38). The contrast between the comic Vice characters and the serious virtuous characters was stark in the morality plays. The Vice characters were bawdy and scurrilous while the serious characters personified as Virtues or Mankind characters, were wholesome but tiresome (Jones). This led to the Vice characters stealing the show from the Virtues (Jones 45). As important as the interactions were between the Vices and the audience in the form of asides; the interactions between the comic Vice characters and the serious characters were also equally important. Usually in the interludes, the serious characters became the butt of jokes that were played on them by the Vice characters and the audience participated in the joke. As emphasised by a commentator: “Behind the laughter at the butts, there was always a sense of solidarity about pleasure, a communion embracing the merry making in the play and the audience” (Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy 8-9). The significance of the interplay between comic and serious elements of the play was that it provided an opportunity for merry making as well as comic relief from the serious allegories involved in the morality plays. The play Fulgens and Lucres, is remarkable for its interplay between the comic and the serious elements, with the comic and serious plots providing parallels at certain points in the play (Merrix). For this to be effected, the play uses an interplay between the comic and serious characters in the play, with “A” and “B” providing the comic relief with their antics, asides and the fluidity of their going from stage to audience and back. The Play of Love is an interlude which takes on a serious question and creates a serious environment (a court for deciding legal disputes) for the debate on the question, but interposes the seriousness of the subject matter with comic elements provided by Neither Lover Nor Loved, the Vice character who joins in on the debate on love by providing his own experiences with love (Altman 114). Through the play, Neither Lover Nor Loved interjects the serious debates by other characters with his farcical speeches on the subject of love. In one scene of the play, Neither Lover Nor Loved plays a little game on Lover Beloved by telling him that the courtesan’s house has burnt down and the latter leaves the stage swearing to kill himself if that is true (Altman). The audience is aware of the swindle played by Neither Lover Nor Loved. In Like Will to Like, Nicholas Newfangle ensnares his victims for the Devil’s party and the audience finds mirth in the act and laughs at Tom Tosspot and Cuthbert Cutpurse. In all of this, Nichols creates a kinship between himself and the audience and so the audience becomes complicit in his mischief as against the serious characters in the play (Jones).

In Ralph Roister Doister, the relationship between Ralph, the protagonist, and Mathew, the Vice character is charged with comic elements introduced by the Vice at the expense of Ralph. Through a large portion of the play, Ralph does not realise that the Vice is jesting with him although the audience is aware of the fact. One of the Elizabethan dramas by Robert Greene, James IV, dealt with myriad complex issues, such as, love and social corruption and used many of the devices from the morality plays, such as, Vice characters, such as, Ateukin, who tempts the king into evil-doing (Dillon 56). Ateukin uses Machiavellian designs on other characters in the play in the tradition of the Vice in morality plays as the play alternates between the comic and the serious episodes. One of the significant features of the play is the balancing of Dorothea’s pathos with the helper dwarf Nano’s humour and comic timing (Foster). A running commentary throughout the play is provided to the audience by another character, Oberon, King of the Fairies, while Bohan time and again invites audience to view the events of the play in the past as well as in the contemporary time (Foster). When Shakespeare started writing, the Vice was a popular character on the stage who was also an anarchist who used his stage presence to cause riot and deviate the other characters from the path of virtue and righteousness (Barber 3). In the festive plays written by Shakespeare, such as Midsummer Night’s Dream and Love’s Labour Lost, Shakespeare used Vice like characters for merry making. However, the use of Vice like characters also served the purpose of creating layers of complex relationships or complex messages that were marked by the interplay between the comic and the serious. In Henry IV, Falstaff and Prince Henry’s dialogue is reflective of Prince Henry’s dislike of Falstaff and his Vice like qualities and Falstaff himself is deluding the Prince into thinking that Falstaff’s Vice like qualities are actually good qualities and the Prince must banish anyone he likes but not Falstaff:

“No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s company. Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.”

Falstaff is misleading the Prince into believing that the very qualities that the Prince finds repulsive – that Falstaff, drinks and makes merry, are the qualities for which Falstaff should be loved and liked more than the others. By speaking thus, Falstaff seeks to redeem himself to the Prince as the person who is full of noble qualities. In doing so, Falstaff uses what is the most pronounced quality in him- his ability to use words to suit his ulterior purpose and motives (Barber). Shakespeare used the Vice character in a more secular form. He found the Vice in Lucio in the play Measure for Measure, a comedy which shows Lucio being scapegoated for the society’s sins by the end of the play when he is made to marry a prostitute (Beauregard). Lucio lends a comic as well as serious angles to the play. Shakespeare uses Lucio’s comic role to interplay with the more serious characters like Angelo to depict sexual intemperance in all the characters (Beauregard). In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare also used Lucio as a benevolent character, therefore, we see some deviation from the Vice like characteristics, which are chiefly about mischief and causing disruption and trouble. Indeed, Lucio manages to show the hypocrisy of the actions of Angelo or Claudio, who want something but are too afraid for their reputations to seek out what they want. In other words, Angelo and Claudio while maintaining a virtuous demeanour are also capable of immoral emotions. Angelo and Claudio are not truly virtuous, but because they are so jealous of their reputation, they maintain a façade of virtue. This is depicted in some of Lucio’s speeches in Measure for Measure. On Angelo, Lucio makes the following remarks:

“a man whose blood Is very snow-broth one who never feels The wanton stings and motions of the sense But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge With profits of the mind, study and fast.”

Here, Lucio is depicting Angelo as someone who represses his natural emotions. Angelo is proud that he is able to master his passions by withdrawing from temptations and emulating the characteristics of an ascetic person (Winston). The use of the comic element in Measure for Measure does more than merely to provide entertainment of the comic sort, it is for the purpose of also showing some flaws of the serious characters in the play to the audience. Lucio does this while making a buffoon of himself and letting himself be made a scapegoat at the end of the play, thereby playing a role in interspersing the comic and the serious. Shakespeare used the Vice like characters as a means for counterbalancing the imperfectness of the serious characters in his play. Vice like characteristics in some of Shakespeare’s characters were also used to bring about the downfall of the characters within the plays, to show that villainy has no merits and can only lead to the downfall of man (Spivack). However, to do all this, the villainous characters in the play must be of a disposition so flexible that they are able to change their character with time throughout the play. Such a mobility of character can be presented by the Vice like characters. An example of mobility of character is embodied in Iago, who is very capable of improvisation throughout the play. Another important aspect about Iago is the resemblance of Iago to the Vice character of the morality play where the Vice does not get provoked to act in a villainous way, he is villainy that is disguised as a person, in the convention of the earlier period (Spivack 55). Iago gives a list of reasons why he wants to take a revenge on Othello, but these reasons are frivolous for the most part and are not grave enough to arouse the need for revenge. This shows that Iago is being villainous simply for the sake of villainy and this is reminiscent of the Vice characters from the morality plays whose villainy was usually unmotivated. The morality plays and the essential Vice character in these plays also led to the background for Shakespeare’s development of the drama. The Vice character had evolved by the time Shakespeare was born and the popularity of the morality plays had declined by the time Shakespeare reached adolescence (Spivack). Despite the decline in the popularity of the morality plays, the Vice character remained popular. As Spivack points out:

“The source of our trouble with them is that by Shakespeare’s time they had lost their original import without losing their dramatic popularity, so that they had to undergo a gradual reprocessing to meet the demand of his age for what in our own is called ‘realism’” (Spivack 44).

Although, as Spivack points out, by Shakespeare’s time, the Vice character had lost its original significance, it had not lost its popularity on the stage. The Vice characters continued being popular on the stage. Even when Shakespeare’s plays were being staged, in the same theatres in London, morality plays were being staged, meaning that Shakespeare was aware of the method and techniques of the morality plays (Spivack 60). Some of Shakespeare’s characters bear resemblance to the morality plays’ Vice characters, for instance Iago. Shakespeare did adapt the Vice character to his contemporary time and the Vice character in Shakespeare’s plays was refurbished with more personable clothing and name as is seen in Richard’s character in Richard III, Iago in Othello, and Don John in Much Ado About Nothing (Spivack). Another aspect that is pointed out by Spivack is that the Vice character for Shakespeare is not so much a person as he is a personification. For instance, Iago shows complete disregard for his impending death in Othello because it is not really death but merely an end of his role in the play (Spivack 198).

The Vice characters were parasitic, comic, evil and vulgar. The parasitic intentions of Iago are made known to the audience by Iago himself when he says:

“Cassio's a proper man: let me see now: To get his place and to plume up my will In double knavery—How, how?—Let's see... The Moor is of a free and open nature, That thinks men honest that but seem to be so, And will as tenderly be led by th' nose As asses are.”

In the lines above, Iago compares Othello to an ass who can be led to believe whatever Othello chooses to tell him for Othello believes in the honesty of men. Iago plans to use this misplaced belief that Othello has in the goodness of men for the furtherance of his own motives and the downfall of Othello. All this shows Iago to be an evil, selfish and villainous person. While Iago remains a Machiavellian character, he also brings comedy to the Elizabethan stage of the time. However, Iago’s comedy is not that of a buffoon or a court jester, rather it is the comedy of a highly intelligent wit. In this, Iago is different from the Vice like characters of the morality plays. How much of this change in the nature of the Vice character in morality plays to the Shakespearian stage can be attributed to the progression of the play from the great halls to the playhouses, is also to be seen. The acting space in the great halls where interludes were played, was different from the professional play houses of Shakespeare’s time. Great halls were situated within Manor houses and palaces and they provided varying acting space to the actors of the interludes. The halls were generally rectangular and contained a dais at one end and a screen or partition at the other (McGavin and Walker 52). The dais was a slightly raised area that was either placed at the end of the hall or in the middle of the hall and it was meant for the patron of the home and special guests to sit on to watch the performance (McGavin and Walker). Therefore, the focus and the centrality of the great hall was in the dais, which unlike the Shakespearian stage, gave focus to the patrons and not the actors. The screens which were placed at the end of the room, were meant for both the actors to come and go during the interludes as well as the servants who could also come and go to watch the entertainment in the great hall (McGavin and Walker). The interludes were played within this set up the great hall. The great halls allowed for the playing of interludes to a diverse audience consisting of the aristocracy and nobility as well as the lower class servants who could sit or stand on the ends of the hall to watch the entertainment. This was very different from the professional playhouses of Shakespeare’s time, where the actors were placed on the stage while the audience sat and watched the play. In the great halls, the Vice characters could easily relate to the lower class spectators who would be standing around. This formed a good basis for the interaction between the Vice characters and the audience where the Vice characters would try to co-opt or involve the lower class members in the audience into their games and frolic (McGavin and Walker). On the other hand, the more virtuous characters in the play addressed themselves to the upper class seated patrons on the dais (McGavin and Walker). It is also pertinent to note that the way the screens were placed next to the servant or working quarters, the actors would be required to pass through these working quarters and make their way into the great halls by passing through the audience. This gave the actors a good basis for making boisterous entries from within the audience ranks. There used to be bystanders in the great halls, sometimes in great numbers, which required the actors, particularly the Vice characters to push their way through the audience into the great hall. In the Play of the Weather, Mery Reporte pushes his way through the audience saying:

“Friends, a-fellowship, let me go by ye! Think ye I may stand thrusting among you there? I must go thrust about other gear.”

In the lines above the Vice character is able to make such an entry thrusting from within the audience and talking to the audience at the same time, particularly because of the way the screens were placed within the great halls as well as the peculiar audience placement within the great halls. Sometimes, other characters also spoke directly with the audience to let them pass to the great hall, such as in Interlude about Youth, where Youth says:

“Aback fellows and give me room Or I shall make you avoid soon.”

The space within the great hall was culturally marked by the placement of audience as per their rank in the society. The upper society sat on the dais or close to the dais while the lower society stood around the great hall closer to the screens. This had a decided impact on the way the Vice characters interacted with the audience or even the antics of the Vice character which were performed within the audience or close to the audience comprising the lower class standing spectators. On the other hand, in the Shakespearian play house, such social or attitudinal differences could be avoided by the actors in the play because of the way the spectatorship or audience was placed on the Shakespearian stage. During the Elizabethan period, play houses began to get more sophisticated. Although plays were still conducted within the great halls of the palaces, there was also a development of public arenas for theatre where larger crowd could be accommodated (Foakes). Some of the playhouses were large and luxuriant and provided a very different experience from the inns and the great halls, at least for the lower class of spectators (Foakes). The intimate experience provided by the great halls was lost, while the seated spectatorship also increased because play houses provided seats for anyone who would pay the price for them (Hattaway). The Vice characters of the early morality plays had thrived upon the acting space and culturally marked spectatorship provided in the great halls, which allowed the Vice characters to include and involve the audience, particularly the low class audience into their antics. Within the play houses, the experience changed. The Elizabethan play house would consist of a rectangular stage, which was raised above the ground and was large and accommodating of big sets. It was different from the acting space provided in the great halls. The same kind of antics that the Vice characters performed during the interludes in the great halls may not have been possible in the play houses with a larger audience. Many of the techniques of the Vice character, such as entry from within the audience would not have signified the same sense as it did within the great halls. Asides and soliloquys were used in the great halls to a greater effect than they were possible in the larger play houses. Vice characters brought a criminality to the stage that the audience was attracted to. By the time Shakespearian plays were staged, the audience was less interested in the allegorical virtues and this led to the diminishing interest in the Vice characters. The Shakespearean stage still used the Vice character’s essential characteristics for several of the important characters in the play but instead of comedy, the Vice character moved on to “Psychomachia without benefit of allegory” (Spivack 49). The Vice character was adaptable and could be used in comedy as well as tragedy as demonstrated in Richard III. In the Elizabethan stage, some of the characteristics of the early morality plays have been carried forward. The most important of these is the use of the Vice figure, albeit without strong didactic element. As the Vice character was used to bring comic relief in the morality plays, the Elizabethan plays too use such characters for undermining the serious concerns of the play. Music also played an important role in the morality plays and helped the Vice characters to extend their creativeness and ability to seduce other actors and audience through music. Shakespeare is also known to have used music for some of his Vice like characters.

Shakespeare increasingly uses Vice characters in more serious sense than the morality plays as he separates the buffoonery associated with the Vice characters and invests the Vice like characters with more evil than was seen in the morality plays. As a Vice character, Iago sets out to corrupt Othello by getting him involved in a state of sin. Just like a Vice character from the morality plays, Iago keeps the audience in the know about his evil designs all the while Othello himself believes in Iago’s honesty and goodness. Like the morality plays, Shakespeare’s Othello sees all but Othello himself in the know about Iago and his true nature. Like morality plays, Shakespeare’s Othello sees the Vice like character, Iago, charming the audience while being mischievous and villainous. With respect to Shakespeare’s plays, there is significant carrying on of the conventions in the morality plays as pointed out by one commentator that “Shakespeare learned general techniques from Marlowe: the use of the aside, the flexibility of the soliloquy, the mid-speech opening into an apparently real fictional world. And these techniques were not by definition comic, but usable in all dramatic forms” (Dillon 62). However, the Vice character transformed in Shakespearian drama and became more evil or aware of its own evil lending a psychological side to the drama surrounding the Vice character. In the morality plays, the Voce character was more of a fool and buffoon but in Shakespearian drama, Vice characters, such as, Iago, were wittier and more charming as well as more personable. The stage or acting space also changed in Shakespearian period from the great halls to play houses. Although Shakespearian drama was also played in the great halls of the royal court, there was an advent of big professional playhouses around this time. This also had an impact on the Vice characters’ interaction with the audience. The great hall provided a very different culturally marked experience within which the actors, especially the Vice characters were able to include the lower class spectators and bystanders into the antics. Similar acting space of culturally marked experience was not provided in the larger play houses of the time.

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