ABSTRACT
Mankind for all its twentieth-century popularity and contemporary reference to individual and place names, has fared less well, with identifications being couched in much more general terms. The approaches taken to Mankind are rather different from the more precise analyses of Wisdom and tend to revolve around the oppositions of indoor/outdoor performance and common/educated audiences. Mankind makes more reference to the audience than any other surviving play of comparable length. Excluding those that are doubtful or ambiguous, there are several allusions to the audience as a whole or to individual members. The employment of fraternity titles as forms of audience address is not the only reason for associating Mankind with a performance by a religious guild. The staging of Mankind before an audience of guild members would seem most appropriate in the context of a feast or ‘in time of drinke’ as it is called in the ordinances.
