The Return of Morality Plays in England: Unexpected Inspirations in Conan Doyle
| Author |
| Shinjini Ghoshal |
| Date of Publication: June, 2026 |
| Volume: XXIII |
| DOI:10.65734/tgi.ssei.avp.ijcsss.ti.23.7 |
| Abstract |
| The revival of medievalism originated in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Morality plays like Everyman received its first recorded modern performance in July 1901 by William Poel. One of the unexpected authors of Modern morality plays was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who turned from his own disappointment (he was upset because of the raging popularity of his own crime fiction) to transport medieval ideas and forms to the twentieth century. My paper focuses mainly on the stage works by Doyle, specifically two out of his fifteen, The Fires of Fate (1909) and The Journey (1922), where he talks about the (late) Victorian/ early modern crisis of faith and how pain, grief and suffering serve a useful purpose in the larger design of the universe. The Victorian conflict between faith and reason travelled through ages (from last years of Queen Victoria’s reign to the Edwardian era and finally to the early modern period) and settled as strong moral and allegorical elements in Doyle’s plays, similar to medieval moralities. The dissonance between logic, spirituality and empirical progress is addressed through the allegorical characters of Inspiration, Sorrow, Faith, Reason, and Science. The decadent moralities and crumbling beliefs of the late Victorian and early modern era are inscribed within the conversations between The Man and The Woman which sway between despair and hope. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection (1859) challenged the existing religious belief in God as an Absolute. It provoked a wave of pessimism and skepticism challenging the historicity of the Bible. In this paper I have tried to demonstrate how Conan Doyle has used an antiquated form of allegorical drama to portray his own concerns about morality, or rather, the apparent lack of it in his age and times. The paper deals with how the concept of morality plays has been revisited during the Edwardian era and how writers have tried to revive the existing ‘Moralities’ as well as problematise the concept by showcasing the conflicting emotions of a late-Victorian mind triggered by Darwin’s doctrine: the blooming faith in Britain’s industrialisation and scientific progress and the crawling sense of doubt in authorities and absolutes that ultimately lead to a crisis of belief in the modern age. |
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