It has frequently been noted that David Mamet is a moralist, a keen social critic who uses the groping inarticulations and dizzying verbal constructions of his characters to form a chorus of complaint against the spiritual emptiness at the core of America. What has less frequently been noted is that Mamet is sometimes very nearly a medieval moralist, using themes, structures, and characterizations that recall actual morality plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The influence of medieval drama is perhaps most overt in his Bobby Gould in Hell, a play which features the Devil as a character and a plot lifted directly from the medieval morality formula. Some of his earlier works, however, foreshadow this appropriation of morality-play techniques, and in fact they express the debt in subtler, more interesting ways. Perhaps the most intriguing example of this medievalism in Mamet's early works exists in his Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Virtually every element of this play, from its title down to its structure and characters, contains clear echoes of the medieval morality play, and more specifically, of the sixteenth-century subgenre known as the “homiletic tragedy.”¹

Before proceeding to make specific comparisons between Sexual Perversity in Chicago and the earlier dramatic forms, it might be useful to offer a general description of the qualities that define both the morality play and the homiletic tragedy. In the well-worn words of W. Roy Mackenzie: “A Morality is a play, allegorical in structure, which has for its main object the teaching of some lesson for the guidance of life, and in which the principal characters are personified abstractions or highly universalized types.”² Examining these elements one at a time, the moralities' “lesson for the guidance of life” tends to vary little from play to play. It usually consists of a warning about the dangerous temptations to sin which surround us, coupled with reassurances that redemption is always possible, no matter how great the fall. The “personified abstractions” and “universalized types” are similarly formularized, tending to fall into three different categories. First, there are those representing specific virtues or forces of good—allegorical beings such as God, Good Angel, Mercy, Temperance, and Pax. Second, there are those from the other side of the fence, characters representing the forces of iniquity—Bad Angel, Mischief, Worldliness, etc. The actions of these forces are usually orchestrated by a leader—either the Devil himself or a particularly potent allegorical evil who is sometimes simply referred to as Vice. The third category is of course the protagonist, the “universalized type” representing all of humanity, known variously as Man, Mankind, Everyman, and Humanum Genus. The “allegorical structure” that Mackenzie speaks of is generally Psychomachean in nature,³ and the allegory it enacts is usually that of a “war” between vice and virtue for the soul of mankind. One might add that this structure is also essentially comic—the obstacles and complications resulting from the protagonist's sins are eventually resolved by a kind and forgiving divinity who ends the play by welcoming him into heaven (in this regard, the morality play surpasses traditional comedy, not only implying “happily ever after,” but actually assuring it).

As its name suggests, the homiletic tragedy differs in structure from its comic prototype. Homiletic tragedy was a fairly late development, reflecting the sixteenth-century rise of Calvinism and its attendant emphasis on the solitude of the individual in dealing with his or her own spiritual fate. In plays of this type, far less stress is placed on redemption, far more on punishment. While these dramas still feature a protagonist who is guaranteed entry to heaven at play's end, they differ from their predecessors in that they also feature a second protagonist, whose fate is a tragic mirror of the first. An unrepentant sinner, he inevitably winds up being driven off, his Vice in tow, to suffer the eternal torments of hell. This dark plot twist is important, for it is in this tragic form that the morality play has the most relevance to Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

Obviously, the moral message in Mamet's plays is somewhat more ambiguous than the dogmatic sermons of the moralities. Though he often addresses specific sins in his plays (rampant greed is the most common), he seldom tells us directly that he is doing so, and even more rarely offers any kind of clear solution to the problems that succumbing to the sin creates. Sexual Perversity in Chicago is unique in this regard, however. For one thing, its overtly allegorical title precisely pinpoints the offending sin: “Sexual Perversity” is unquestionably the dominant force in the world of the play. Although this title suggests sexual perversion (the play's opening in London was attended primarily by men in raincoat),⁴ Mamet clearly uses the term “sexual perversity” to refer to any degrading or dehumanizing use of sex. The perversity is that sex, which should be the ultimate act of union, often exists as an insurmountable barrier between men and women.

Yet, ironically, in this play it is sex that seems to offer the clearest road to redemption, a condition which might exist, Mamet suggests, in the genuine connection between two people. As Dennis Carroll has noted, “contact ripening into communion is the salvation that Mamet hints at.”⁵ Unlike a morality play, which inevitably contrasts the purity of the soul with “that stinking dunghill” of the body⁶ and its animal needs, Sexual Perversity in Chicago offers sex as both sides of the moral equation, as both sin and salvation. The split is not so much between soul and flesh as it is between Healthy Sex (or sex that connects), represented in the brief flowering of human understanding that occurs between Danny and Debby in the middle of the play, and Sexual Perversity (or sex that distances), exemplified by the swaggering sexual violence of Bernie and (to a lesser extent) the prim hostility and anxiety of Joan.

The play's characters also contain echoes of the morality formula. Though each is drawn in recognizably lifelike hues, they also fulfil an important allegorical function within the moral framework of the play. For instance, as the protagonist of Sexual Perversity, Danny bears an uncanny resemblance to the Humanum Genus figure. Though ostensibly a realistic, individualized character, Danny too is almost a universalized type, as Mamet has endowed him with a curious facelessness. While an actor playing Danny would obviously have to supply internal motivations and specific character traits, he would be doing so with little help from the playwright. For this reason, young actors are sometimes perplexed by the role, finding Danny to be something of a cipher.⁷ This is particularly true in the beginning of the play, where we see him engrossed in Bernie's fantastic sexual tale. It is immediately obvious that Danny is completely subordinate in this relationship, a wide-eyed novice in the medium of sexual exploits sitting at the feet of a master teacher. While Danny does join Bernie in the sexual talk, his comments and questions serve merely to prop up Bernie's story—he even makes suggestions to help (consciously or unconsciously) patch up the story's inconsistencies. Walter Kerr commented on this in his review of the original production, saying his responses “are the quick, liquid, uninterruptive assents of a dummy sitting on a ventriloquist's knee, and it is the story-teller who is dictating the questions he should be asked.”⁸ Like the innocent, newborn Humanum Genus in The Castle of Perseverance, Danny is introduced to the world of the play as a blank slate, ready to be filled up by the most persuasive voice. And as with his medieval counterpart, it is the Dark Angel who first captures Danny's ear.

It is the parallel between Bernie and the Vice figure, however, that gives the play its strongest ties to the medieval morality. Alan C. Dessen defines the Vice as “a character who embodies a quality, force, idea or sin pervasive in the world of the play, something to be acted out in a variety of ways, one of which may be the corruption of individual figures.”⁹ This definition fits Bernie precisely, for his main action throughout the course of the play is to corrupt Danny, tearing him away from his one chance at salvation. And as the play's main corrupter, it is almost entirely through this character that the allegorical force suggested by the title manifests itself—Bernie is Sexual Perversity.¹⁰ In the first scene we see him spellbinding Danny with a sadomasochistic tale that equates sex with the violence of war. In his next scene with Danny, he continues his instruction in the ways of women, informing Danny that “The Way to Get Laid is to Treat 'Em Like Shit.”¹¹ From there he goes on to descriptions of women having sex with dogs, equation of women with animals (“time she's twenty two-three. You don't know where the fuck she's been” [39]), diatribes against the Equal Rights Amendment, and so on and so forth. As Sexual Perversity, he is a being who seems to exist solely for the purpose of dehumanizing the idea of sex with a woman.

Another element Bernie shares with his medieval counterpart is what Dessen calls the “two phased”¹² relationship between the Vice figure and the audience. In the odd blend of moral instruction and popular entertainment that made up the average morality play, the Vice served a double function, existing as both the play's primary symbol of evil and as its primary entertainer. It was this latter function that made up the first phase of the Vice's relationship with the audience—it was his job to delight the audience with his pranks and his obscenity (making a refreshing contrast to the dull Virtues and the faceless Humanum Genus), in this way seducing the audience into his world of sin just as effectively as he seduced the Humanum Genus (who is in fact a symbol of the audience). At some point, however, the hilarious antics of the Vice began to lose their humour, eventually degenerating into something downright sinister. Theoretically, when this second phase was reached, the dullness of the virtuous figures suddenly appeared to be highly desirable, a haven from the chaos and wanton destruction that the Vice had come to represent.¹³ Perhaps the best example of this “two-phased” relationship comes from the play Mankind, which begins with a tedious, latinate sermon being given to the audience by Mercy, the play's chief Virtue. This is soon interrupted by the Vice Mischief and his friends. They proceed to make fun of Mercy, hilariously mocking his speechifying with a sermon of their own—one that consists of a colloquial blend of sexual and scatological humour. The protagonist, Mankind, begins the play in Mercy's corner, but Mischief and company woo him as easily as they undoubtedly did the audience, and soon he becomes a world-class libertine, drinking, whoring, and gambling. When the plans change from sex and ale to thieving and killing, however, the vices' true colours begin to show, and they actually become frightening, nearly destroying Mankind before Mercy miraculously reappears.

Bernie's relationship to the audience is two-phased in exactly the same way as Mischief's. Initially he is an immensely appealing figure. His opening story, for all its violence, is hilarious and captivating. The same is true of his vicious diatribe against Joan in the second scene—it somehow manages to be extremely funny. In fact, for the first half of the play, Bernie is the most amusing and compelling character we see, achieving this distinction in the same manner Mischief achieves it in Mankind—through language. Mamet's gorgeous sense of sound, dynamics, and rhythm in language has been well documented and it needs little explication here except to say that Bernie, with lines such as “A lot of these broads, you know, you just don't know. You know?” (39), is one of the prime repositories of Mamet's special brand of poetry. Just as Mischief's colourful country vernacular would have been far more appealing to a rustic medieval audience than Mercy's dull didacticism, Bernie's colloquially poetic flair makes the other characters sound particularly terse and bland. Interestingly, just like his medieval counterpart Mischief, Bernie often presents his arguments in a kind of parody of religious speech. His pronouncements to Danny are sometimes printed with the first letter of every word capitalized, as if they were commandments coming down from the Mount. And in his short monologue between the scene in which Danny picks up Debby and the one in which they first make love, he lords over their union like a preacher, delivering a veritable sermon on the necessity of “[giving] thanks to a just creator” every time one is able to “moisten the old wick” (24). Again, this parodic pseudo-religious commentary is engaging and funny, and through his Vice-like antics Bernie is able to seduce both audience and protagonist, drawing us towards him just as he does Danny.

Inevitably, however, our Vice figure manifests his second phase, becoming less funny and attractive and more dangerous and destructive. This begins to happen when the focus shifts from the Danny/Bernie relationship to the Danny/Debby relationship. The budding romance appears to us as something at once highly desirable and extremely fragile. As Bernie's sabotage attempts grow less subtle, we perceive him as more and more of a threat, until at the end he clearly stands as the primary agent of Danny's fall.

Debby's place within the Psychomachean scheme of the play is somewhat more complex. If we accept Danny as the main protagonist (and considering the disproportionate amount of time that Mamet spends on him, this is not unreasonable), then Debby takes on some of the characteristics of a force of virtue. For she represents Danny's one true hope for a non-perverse relationship—his short-lived salvation reaches its zenith in a beautiful and playful scene in which he and Debby exchange the secrets of maleness and femaleness. Her most obvious function, however, is that of a Humanum Genus-like protagonist alongside Danny. As in a homiletic tragedy, Mamet has bifurcated his protagonist, giving us two parallel journeys to follow. Interestingly, Mamet has even followed the medieval practice of giving the dual protagonists like names, his Danny and Debby recalling similar oppositions in the earlier form such as Lust and Just, and Heavenly Man and Worldly Man. In the homiletic tragedy, the line of demarcation between the two protagonists is sharp, with one a successful resister of temptation and the other an irredeemable sinner. Yet Sexual Perversity is even more pessimistic than the average homiletic tragedy (which was fairly pessimistic), and in this modern morality play Debby hardly exists as an exemplar of virtuous living. The moral difference between Debby and Danny is a matter of slight shading rather than stark contrast, and really only manifests itself in the final two scenes of the play.

It is these scenes that most closely ally the play with homiletic tragedy, as each represents a “fall” for its respective protagonist. In Debby's final scene, we find her back in her old apartment, trying to recover from the breakup with Danny. She is sitting dismally in the company of lonely, embittered Joan, who has succeeded in wresting her friend away from Danny through her own brand of Sexual Perversity (a profound, generalized distrust of men). Joan is giving her an “I told you so” lecture when Debby suddenly bristles, forcing Joan to back off nervously. In this reaction, Debby registers some level of perception about the situation—some recognition of the Perversity that helped to destroy her relationship.

If there is a modicum of hope suggested in Debby's vague awareness, Danny's wilful obliviousness suggests a far grimmer future for him. Danny's final scene finds him and Bernie on the beach cruising chicks, united bachelors once again. This time, however, we see a change in Danny. He is no longer merely a listener, echoing Bernie and feeding him lines. He now initiates conversation as well as returns it, matching Bernie crude observation for crude observation, until in his final line he almost out-Bernies Bernie. When a passing woman ignores his greeting, he snarls out “Deaf bitch!” (69). Here Danny has reached the nadir of his sexual development. Where Mankind eventually signifies his salvation by taking on the ornate speaking style of Mercy, Danny signals his fall by adopting the language of Sexual Perversity. As in any homiletic tragedy, Danny and his Vice finish the play in hell, and it is a hell that is particularly appropriate for them: sitting in blazing heat, surrounded by beautiful women that they will never be able to touch. In the Psychomachean world of the play, Vice may win the battle for the protagonist's soul, but David Mamet, the medieval moralist, does not allow Sexual Perversity to go unpunished.

Notes

1. Coined by David Bevington, in From Mankind to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 161.

2. W. Roy Mackenzie, The English Moralities from the Point of View of Allegory (Boston, 1914), 9. Mackenzie's definition has been nicely deconstructed in recent years, most notably by Natalie Crohn Schmitt, in Drama in the Middle Ages (New York, 1982), who takes him to task point by point. For instance, she argues with the term “abstraction,” arguing that moralities in fact constitute “medieval realism” of a sort, as the earthly world was held to be much less substantial than the divine (305).

3. Robert Potter, in The English Morality Play: Origins, History and Influence of a Dramatic Tradition (Boston, 1975), has rightly questioned the primacy of the Psychomachea as an influence on the morality play, noting, for instance, that Virtues and Vices rarely confront each other directly in a morality (37-39).

4. Related by C. W. Bigsby at American Society for Theatre Research conference, Newport, R.I., November 1992.

5. Dennis Carroll, David Mamet (New York, 1985), 21.

6. From Mankind, in Glynne Wickham, ed., English Moral Interludes (New Jersey, 1976), 12.

7. Based on my observations as a teacher of “Introduction to Performance” at the University of Pittsburgh, 1987-91.

8. “Easy Does It Playwriting Comes of Age,” New York Times, 15 Aug. 1976, 14.

9. Alan C. Dessen, Shakespeare and the Late Moral Plays (Nebraska, 1986), 34.

10. Attilio Favorini, in a lecture at the University of Pittsburgh (12 Nov. 1989), added some interesting observations to the idea of Bernie as Vice. He noted the closeness of the name Bernie to the word “burn” (and Danny to the word “damned”), and pointed out Bernie's association with heat and flames in several of the scenes. His opening tale ends with the room in flames, and in another tale he has chained a woman to the radiator.

11. Sexual Perversity in Chicago and The Duck Variations (New York, 1974), 22. Subsequent references will appear in the text.

12. Dessen, 24.

13. C. L. Barber, in Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton, 1959), calls this process “release to clarification” (29), meaning that the initial sense of joyous release at the overturning of societal norms is soon replaced by the realization that such a situation is inadequate as a permanent living condition, and one is then able to return to those norms with a fresh appreciation of them.