Morality Play – Barry Unsworth

This is one of those historical novels that almost obliges the reviewer to use the phrase “well researched”, containing as it does lots of social detail and a recognition of the entirely alien worldviews of the medieval setting. The story dramatizes a moment of transition from traditional archetypal drama to a new style of theatre that reflects real contemporary concerns. 

The fiction associates the shattering of old assumptions with the revelation of great evil, as the re-enactment of a murder exposes the flaws in the general understanding of the case. It’s a brilliant device and, if all this sounds a tad high-faluting, it’s a cracking thriller too, reminiscent in some ways of Iain Pears’ An Incident of the Fingerpost.