Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Unsworth, Barry - Adam Begley (review date 24 December 1995)

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Adam Begley (review date 24 December 1995)

SOURCE: "Barry Unsworth Rescues 'All the World's a Stage' from Cliche," in Chicago Tribune Books, December 24, 1995, pp. 3, 6.

[In the following review, Begley praises Unsworth's deft handling of the historical novel genre and his thought-provoking themes in Morality Play.]

Morality Play, a fine new novel by Barry Unsworth, who won the 1992 Booker Prize for his Sacred Hunger, works brilliantly on three levels. It's an accurate, carefully imagined historical novel, set in 14th Century England; a dark and suspenseful murder mystery; and a provocative meditation on the birth of a new art form. Each layer adds a different flavor and texture. Binding the whole is Unsworth's understated, unerringly precise prose, and his narrator, a priest on the lam, very young and very poor, named Nicholas Barber.

We meet Nicholas as he's running out of a house without his cloak, running from the...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Anatole Broyard (review date 9 October 1977)
   2. Michael Malone (review date 11 January 1981)
   3. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (review date 7 February 1983)
   4. Thomas R. Edwards (review date 13 March 1983)
   5. John Clute (review date 16 August 1985)
   6. Katha Pollitt (review date 6 April 1986)
   7. Barry Unsworth with Phil Hogan (interview date 18 October 1992)
   8. Herbert Mitgang (review date 23 December 1992)
   9. Sybil S. Steinberg (review date 21 August 1995)
   10. Janet Burroway (review date 12 November 1995)
   11. Charles Nicholl (review date 12 November 1995)
   12. Adam Begley (review date 24 December 1995)
   13. Richard Bernstein (review date 17 January 1996)
   14. Anthony Quinn (review date 4 August 1996)
   15. Richard Eder (review date 9 March 1997)
   16. Hilary Mantel (review date 9 March 1997)
   17. Miranda Schwartz (review date 9 March 1997)
   18. Patricia Lothrop-Green (review date September 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright