Incorruptable

The play Incorruptible by Michael Hollinger lives up to its subtitle. It is indeed a dark comedy about the dark ages. However, in addition to being incredibly funny and having a dark sense of irony, the play also raises some religious and moral questions. The biggest theological question that stood out to me was, "How much of our lives do we control and how much do we leave to fate?" We could spend our lives living as the monks did at the beginning of the play: relying on a higher power to resolve our needs. Or we could take on Jack's point of view and assume that we make our own fortune in this world. A view that the monks seem  adopt when Martin says, "Tell me why it's not that simple." The monks decide, much like most of us do today, that trusting in God's miracles means trusting themselves to make those miracles happen. Reading this play certainly did make me stop and think about how much of my life I actually fight for and what parts of it I simply let faith handle. Incorruptible had a very funny way of bringing these deep thoughts about.

As I said before, Incorruptible has a very dark sense of humor and a sense of irony to match. One of the aspects about this play that I enjoyed was not only the plot but the characters themselves. The play features four monks who are supposed to be the most religious figures of their time. However, they have no faith. They do not truly trust in God. Ironically, the two characters who seem to be the least religious are the one with the most faith. Felix is considered to be somewhat of a womanizer by the other monks, but he is the one who truly believes that their saint is merely waiting for a show of faith to perform miracles. Jack is the man who gave them the idea and helped them begin their grave robbing venture. He is a faithless man who believes that the church is filled with crooks yet, after living life as a monk, he is the one who ultimately has the most faith and restores the saint to her altar and is rewarded with a miracle. I really enjoyed the irony in the reversal of roles that you get to see from when the play begins to when it ends.