Dating between 1460 and 1463, the play is preserved in its complete form in the Macro Manuscript, currently a part of the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library (MS V.a.

Despite boasting a large cast list, the only six speaking roles in the play are Anima, Wisdom, Lucifer, Mind, Will and Understanding.

Although the manuscript does not contain scene demarcations, the play can be divided into four sections, based upon a theological schematic of transgression and redemption: innocence, temptation, sinful life, and repentance.

In the third part (551-837), each faculty (having exchanged monkish, acetic robes for more fashionable and luxurious ones) devotes himself to sin and dances wildly with six followers.

[9] In August 1936, Joseph Quincy Adams, the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, purchased this manuscript along with Wisdom and The Castle from the antiquarian firm Bernard Quaritch for £1,125 (approximately $5,625).

Lucifer’s arguments to the three faculties in the temptation scene are mutations of 14th century mystic Walter Hilton’s writings in his Epistle on mixed life.

At the play’s conclusion, sections of Anima’s repentance (particularly the language of Mind, Will and Understanding) come again from Hilton, in his major work The Scale of Perfection.