Language and rhetoric in The Interlude of Youth work towards the same purpose of entrapping the audience and rendering them complicit in the temptation of the Vice characters of the play, but it is performed differently by Riot and Pride. Unlike Mankind where the Vices actively work together to lead Mankind astray, the Vices in Youth are much more subtle and insidious. Morality plays are unique because they portray a “natural affinity between the practice of theater and the practices of ordinary language... because each practice is committed to examining particular words used by particular speakers in particular situations” (Beckwith 108). The situation of the Vices against the Virtues in Youth places rhetoric as a powerful device that can influence Youth in either direction.
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They are each persuasive, making an argument living life in excess. The result is this feigned virtue has actually turned Youth to vice. In many situations, as a character associated with unbridled pleasure, Riot makes comments that appeal to Youth, and would also work simultaneously to entrap the audience in the appeal. On numerous occasions Riot and Pride actually convincingly speak as though they deliver the word of God, by citing “In faith, this is true” or swearing “by God in Trinity” (Youth 442). In a form of rhetorical blasphemous paradox “Virtue in this picture... is performative insofar as it is acquired by acting virtuously” (Beckwith 107). Through rhetorical language, the Vices in Youth entrap the audience by performing these grand associations as good Christian behaviour, and to them that makes sin virtuous. By implying that the life of vice is virtuous, and thereby encouraging the audience to find entertainment in what the Vice characters are teaching, they are also guiding the audience along the same
They are each persuasive, making an argument living life in excess. The result is this feigned virtue has actually turned Youth to vice. In many situations, as a character associated with unbridled pleasure, Riot makes comments that appeal to Youth, and would also work simultaneously to entrap the audience in the appeal. On numerous occasions Riot and Pride actually convincingly speak as though they deliver the word of God, by citing “In faith, this is true” or swearing “by God in Trinity” (Youth 442). In a form of rhetorical blasphemous paradox “Virtue in this picture... is performative insofar as it is acquired by acting virtuously” (Beckwith 107). Through rhetorical language, the Vices in Youth entrap the audience by performing these grand associations as good Christian behaviour, and to them that makes sin virtuous. By implying that the life of vice is virtuous, and thereby encouraging the audience to find entertainment in what the Vice characters are teaching, they are also guiding the audience along the same