Each Morality Play follows a common basic narrative structure, with its own unique variations. The central character is an ordinary person - someone with whom the whole audience can identify, who has ordinary human experiences. This representative character, who is usually male, is called the mankind figure. He has responsibilities, works hard, feels bored, hungry and tired. At this point he is approached by a group of tempters who suggest that he should leave his responsibilities for a while and go out for a drink and perhaps a meal with them. These are the chief Vice and the vice-crew. One thing leads to another, and the mankind figure goes rapidly downhill, forgetting his work or his study, and consorting with low company. These are the most entertaining scenes of the play, and generally involve obscene jokes, tumbling, juggling, comic drunkenness, singing and general uproarious tomfoolery. The Vice's wooden sword or dagger may be much in evidence, in comic stage-business.
From time to time virtuous and well-meaning characters approach the mankind figure to remind him of his duties and of the need to lead a virtuous life. He reforms readily, if briefly, until the vice-crew return. More fun takes place in the form of humiliation of the virtuous characters by mocking and beating them, and sometimes putting them in the stocks. After several repetitions of the pattern of reform and relapse, the mankind figure realises that he has wasted his life, and is in danger of despair. The vice-crew offer to help him commit suicide (an act which, according to Elizabethan religious dogma, would damn his soul forever). In the nick of time, however, a virtuous adviser reappears, driving the devilish vice-crew off howling (often carrying one another piggy-back, vowing that they cannot be killed); the mankind figure turns joyfully to God (sometimes on his deathbed). This counts as a happy ending, whether he now dies or not, as the audience is confident that he will go to heaven.
Morality plays (15th-16th c.): a type of theatrical where the characters, in the form of personified moral attributes, must validate the virtues of Godly life by prompting the to choose such life over evil. These plays, most popular in 15th and 16th century Europe, helped move theater from being religiously based to secularly based. However, the plays still offered moral instruction and together with and constituted the theater of the . Examples of morality plays include the Condemnation des banquets by Nicolas de Chesnaye and the English The Castle of Perseverance and , which is today considered the best of the morality plays.
