E-Notes: Everyman Recounts The Life and Death of Everyman, An Allegorical Figure Who Represents

E-notes
Everyman Summary
Everyman recounts the life and death of Everyman, an allegorical figure who represents
all of humanity. At the beginning of the play, God orders Death to visit Everyman and to
warn him that he will be judged by God himself.
 Terrified, Everyman turns to Fellowship. His friends soon desert him, however.
Everyman then turns to Cousin and Kindred, but they, too, leave him to face death alone,
without the support of his family or his friends.
 Everyman hopes that his Goods will comfort him on his journey to the afterlife. One
by one, however, his material possessions fall away, and the desperate Everyman calls
on his Good Deeds to accompany him. Weakened by Everyman's sins, Good Deeds
cannot rise out of the dirt.
 Everyman calls on Knowledge to help him. Knowledge advises him to confess his
sins to strength his Good Deeds. With the help of Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five
Wits, Everyman approaches the Gates of Heaven. He then learns that only his Good
Deeds will come with him. He is judged by his actions alone.
Summary
(Literary Essentials: Christian Fiction and Nonfiction)
The anonymous, fifteenth century English morality play Everyman was first published in 1508. It relates
through allegory the tale of a dying Everyman and the items and qualities he most values, which attend to him
in his death. The play opens with a messenger preparing the way for God, who after an opening meditation
commands Death to seek out Everyman and warn him that God sits in judgment of Everyman’s soul. Death
approaches Everyman and foretells his demise, telling Everyman that he will now undertake the pilgrimage of
the soul and stand before God to be reckoned. Everyman pleads to be released from his journey, even begging
for the journey to be delayed if only for a day, but Death reminds Everyman that he comes for all people in
their turn. Everyman laments at his fate and attempts to find comfort and companionship for his journey.
First he looks for solace among his friends, allegorized by Fellowship. Initially, Fellowship seems very
concerned about Everyman’s grave state and pledges his undying fealty and assistance, but upon discovering
that Everyman undertakes the journey to Death, Fellowship abandons Everyman to his own fate. Next,
Everyman turns to Cousin and Kindred, believing that familial bonds will prove stronger than those of
Fellowship; but, family, too, despite professing their love for and support of Everyman, abandons him in the
time of his greatest need. Next, Everyman turns to his own material possessions, his Goods, which Everyman
has spent a lifetime amassing. Everyman believes that his Goods will accompany him on his pilgrimage to
judgment, but his Goods, too, forsake Everyman, leaving the lamentable figure wailing over his fate.
Now, in his moment of greatest despair, Everyman considers his own good deeds. Calling for his Good Deeds,
Everyman can hear only a weak and faint reply, since his Good Deeds are but small in comparison to
Everyman’s sins. Nonetheless, Good Deeds advises Everyman to call upon his knowledge, to act as counsel in
this hour of need. Knowledge comes when called and prepares Everyman for Confession; after making an
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honest and penitent accounting of his life, Everyman finds Good Deeds strengthened and able to rise from the
dirt. Good Deeds and Knowledge urge Everyman to call upon his other attributes—Beauty, Strength,
Discretion, and Five Wits—to aid him in preparing for his journey. This they happily do, each offering their
support and proffering some wisdom to aid Everyman on his final pilgrimage. Each of his qualities pledges to
stand by Everyman, but as he approaches his own grave, each is taken aback. First Beauty abandons him, then
Strength, then Discretion, and then finally his own Five Wits. Eventually, even Knowledge warns Everyman
that he, too, will abandon him but only at the very end. Thus Everyman learns that he may only take Good
Deeds with him to the grave and with him as he stands before God.
Everyman’s suffering, honest, and penitent confession, buoyed by his Good Deeds, allows him to be brought
into the Kingdom of Heaven. As an angel welcomes Everyman into heaven, Doctor, a figure who represents a
wise theologian in medieval times, comes on stage and gives the play’s moral. The Doctor warns that
Everyman’s friends, family, and material possessions cannot take the final journey with him and that even
Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits will abandon him. The Doctor also warns that if the size of
Everyman’s Good Deeds is too small, they will not be sufficient for him to enter into heaven. Yet, the Doctor
concludes, if Everyman makes an honest confession and can make a clear accounting of his own good deeds,
then the Kingdom of Heaven will belong to Everyman.
Summary
(Critical Survey of Literature for Students)
One day a Messenger appears to announce that in the beginning of life, human beings should look to the
ending, for they shall see how all earthly possessions avail little in the final reckoning. Sin may look sweet at
first, but in the end, it causes the soul to weep in pain.
Then God speaks. All living creatures are unkind to him. They live with no spiritual thought in their worldly
possessions. The crucifixion is a lesson they forget. Human beings turn to the seven deadly sins, and every year
their state grows worse. Therefore, God decides to have a reckoning, lest humankind become more brutish than
the beasts.
At an imperative summons, Death comes to receive his instructions. He is ordered to search out all human
beings and tell them that they have to make a pilgrimage to their final reckoning. Death promises to be cruel in
his search for everyone who lives outside God’s law.
Spying Everyman walking unconcernedly about his business, his mind on fleshly lust and treasure, Death bids
him stand still and asks him if he forgot his maker. Death announces that God dispatched him in all haste to
warn Everyman. Everyman is to make a long journey, and he is to take with him his full book of accounts. He
is to be very careful, for he did many bad deeds and only a few good ones. In Paradise, he will soon be forced
to account for his life.
Everyman protests that Death cannot be further from his thoughts. Death, who sets no store by worldly goods
or rank, is adamant; whom he summons must obey. Everyman cries in vain for respite. Then he asks if he must
go on the long journey alone. Death assures him that he can take any companions who will make the journey
with him. Reminding him that his life is only his on loan, Death says he will return very shortly, after allowing
Everyman an opportunity to find companions for his journey.
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Weeping for his plight and wishing he was never born, Everyman thinks of Fellowship, with whom he spent so
many agreeable days in sport and play. Fortunately, he sees Fellowship and speaks to him. Seeing Everyman’s
sad countenance, Fellowship asks his trouble. Everyman tells him he is in deep sorrow because he has to make
a journey. Fellowship reminds him of their past friendship and vows that he will go anywhere with him, even
to Hell. Greatly heartened, Everyman tells him of Death’s appearance and his urgent summons. Fellowship
thinks of the long trip from which there will be no return and decides against accompanying Everyman. He
will go with him in sport and play, he declares, or to seek lusty women, but he definitely refuses to go on that
pilgrimage.
Cast down by this setback, Everyman thinks of Kindred. Surely the ties of blood are strong. His Kindred swear
that they will help him in any way they can, but when they hear that Everyman has to account for his every
deed, good or bad, they know at once the last journey he has in mind. They refuse unanimously to go with him.
Everyman appeals directly to his favorite cousin, who says he would go willingly were it not for a cramp in his
toe.
Everyman think of turning to Goods. All his life he loved Goods. Goods hears his plea and offers to help him,
but when asked to go on the journey to the highest judge of all, Goods promptly refuses. Everyman reminds
him that money is supposed to right all wrongs. Goods disagrees with him. Anyway, if Everyman takes Goods
with him he will be the worse off for it, for worldly goods are not given, only lent.
Everyman becomes ashamed of having sought unworthy companions. Calling aloud to Good-Deeds, he asks
again for help. Good-Deeds answers feebly, for he is lying on the cold ground, bound by sins. Good-Deeds
already knows of the projected journey and wants to go along, but he is too weak to stir. Everyman learns that
Good-Deeds has a sister, Knowledge, who will stay with him until Good-Deeds can regain strength.
Knowledge promptly offers to go with him and guide him in his great need. Knowledge led him to Confession,
who lived in the house of salvation, to ask for strength for Good-Deeds. Confession in pity gives penance to
Everyman to shrive his soul. Accepting penance joyfully, Everyman scourges his flesh and afterward
Knowledge bequeaths him to his Savior. Thankfully Good-Deeds rises from the ground, delivered from
sickness and woe. Declaring himself fit for the journey, Good-Deeds promises to help Everyman count his
good works before the judgment throne. With a smile of sympathy, Knowledge tells Everyman to be glad and
merry, for Good-Deeds will be his true companion. Knowledge gives a garment to Everyman to wear, a
garment of sorrow that will deliver him from pain.
Asking Good-Deeds if his accounts are ready, Everyman prepares to start his pilgrimage. Good-Deeds reminds
him that three other companions will go part of the way: Discretion, Strength, and Beauty. Knowledge
proposes also the Five Wits, who will be his counselors. After Knowledge calls the new companions together,
Everyman, now well fortified, sets out on his last journey.
Knowledge says that their first stop must be to see the priest, who will give Everyman unction and ointment,
for priests perform the seven unctions as intermediaries of God. Surely priests are human beings’ best hope on
earth, in spite of the many weak and venal people who are often invested with Holy Orders.
After receiving the last rites from the priest, Everyman prepares to meet Death. Again he is troubled, however,
for one by one his companions leave him. Even Knowledge refuses to go with him into the presence of his
maker. Only Good-Deeds stays with Everyman until the end. Thus it is with everyone who must die.
Knowledge, Strength, Beauty—all the other companions are a help in the journey, but only Good-Deeds can
face Death.
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The Angel greets Everyman as an elected spouse of Jesus. Taking him on high, he announces that Everyman is
thus exalted by reason of his singular virtue. When Everyman’s soul is taken from his body, his reckoning is
crystal clear. Thus shall it be with everyone who lives well before the end.
Finally a Doctor appears to remind all human beings that on the last journey, Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and
the Five Wits forsake everyone at the end; only Good-Deeds avail at the final judgment.
Summary
Everyman is a one-act play that begins with a Messenger announcing the play's purpose:
Everyman will be called before God, and thus...
Everyman Themes
 Everyman is a didactic play with a clear message: when you die, you can only bring
your good deeds with you to stand in judgment before God. Death is an important
theme, as is the afterlife. Everyman's struggle to accept and prepare himself for his
imminent death and judgment reflects the fear commonly felt when people are forced to
face their mortality.
 With the theme of death comes the theme of life. Much of the play is spent
considering the inherent value of life, particularly the notions of family, friendship, and
material gains. Though Christians believe in fostering a vibrant, supportive community,
they ultimately face God alone, as individuals. Consequently, one's way of life takes on
enormous importance. Everyman teaches us that one's actions are more important than
possessions.
 Everyman is a Christian allegory, and as such religion is one of the central themes.
The premise of the play presupposes the existence of God, Heaven, and sin. Everyman
is a Christian who learns an important lesson in the course of the play: that the only
things that matter in the end are his good deeds, not his material possessions or earthly
wealth.
Christian Themes
Everyman reflects the strongly Catholic ideal that only through one’s good deeds can the Kingdom of Heaven
be attained. Its populist message and colorful, emotional stage presence made it a very successful and admired
work in its time.
The play is told through allegory, which creates characters of those aspects of Everyman’s life that he deems
most important. Although Everyman is rejected by Fellowship, Cousin, Kindred, and Goods, the play does not
deem these relationships irrelevant or antithetical to a good Christian existence. Indeed, Fellowship, Cousin,
and Kindred are all sympathetic figures; though they abandon Everyman as his death looms, this desertion is as
much part of the natural process and reality of death as it is a reflection of every person’s fear of their own
mortality. (Goods represents the shallower, more materialistic side of Everyman and is thus depicted in a worse
light than the other figures in the play.)
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While Everyman does not decry the relationships the protagonist has with his fellow human beings, the play
demonstrates that it is the relationships within one’s self and with God that are most important and lead to the
road of salvation. Interestingly, Everyman’s path to judgment comes not through the justification of faith, a
later, more Protestant ideal, but rather through the strength of his Good Deeds and the sincerity of his
confession, a staunchly Catholic notion proper for the time the play was composed.
The loss of Everyman’s more personal characteristics, including his Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five
Wits, reflects the process of aging in human beings. They—physical appearance and health—flee when
confronted with old age and death. Even Knowledge abandons Everyman, although it is his knowledge of
confession and, ultimately, of God that opens the path toward Everyman’s salvation.
Everyman reminds the audience of the path to God according to the medieval Catholic Church. The allegorical
tale turns every member of the audience into the protagonist, crossing boundaries of class and gender, to prove
that all men are equal when they stand in judgment before God and that only an individual’s good deeds matter
on the journey to salvation.
Themes
Alienation and Loneliness

As Everyman is abandoned by Fellowship, Kindred, and Goods, he begins to feels increasingly...
(The entire section is 711 words.)
Everyman Characters
 Everyman, an allegorical figure who represents all of humanity.

 Fellowship, Everyman's friends.
 Cousin and Kindred, Everyman's family.
 Goods, Everyman's material possessions.
 Good Deeds, which Everyman performed in life.
 Knowledge, who advises Everyman to confess his sins.
 Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits, who accompany Everyman to the
Gates of Heaven.
 God, who sits in judgment of Everyman.
 Death, who delivers the message that Everyman will be judged by God.
Characters Discussed
God
God, who has decided to have a reckoning of all men.
Death
Death, who is summoned to receive God’s instructions to search out Everyman. Death agrees to give
Everyman some time to gather companions to make the journey with him.
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Everyman
Everyman, whom Death approaches and orders to make the long journey to Paradise to give an accounting for
his life.
Good-Deeds
Good-Deeds, the one companion who can and will make the entire journey with Everyman. Everyman finds
Good-Deeds too weak to stir, but after Everyman accepts penance, Good-Deeds is fit for the journey.
Knowledge
Knowledge, the sister of Good-Deeds. Knowledge offers to guide Everyman but cannot go with him into the
presence of his maker.
Confession
Confession, who lives in the house of salvation. Confession gives penance to Everyman.
Discretion
Discretion,
Strength
Strength,
Beauty
Beauty, and
The Five Wits
The Five Wits, companions who go part of the way with Everyman.
Fellowship
Fellowship,
Kindred
Kindred, and
Goods
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Goods, to whom Everyman turns for companions. All offer to help but refuse when they learn the nature of the
journey.
A messenger
A messenger, who appears in prologue to announce a moral play to the audience. He warns that people should
look to the end of their lives.
A doctor
A doctor, who appears at the end to remind the audience that only Good-Deeds will avail at the final judgment.
Angel
The Angel appears briefly at the play's conclusion to accept Everyman into God's domain. Because of his
virtue,...
Everyman Critical Essays

Critical Evaluation
The morality play, of which Everyman is the best extant example, and the mystery play
are the two principal kinds of medieval drama. The mystery play is a dramatic re-creation
of a story from the Bible, its aim being the elucidation of the revelation therein. The
morality play, by contrast, is an allegorical form, peopled by personified abstractions such
as Beauty, Justice, and Fortitude and types such as Everyman, Priest, and King. Here
the subject matter is admonitory, particularly concerning death. As Albert Baugh pointed
out, it is difficult to discover precise sources for the subject matter or the dramatic
method. There are, however, certain parallels with medieval sermons, which often
bolstered moral exhortations with allegorical examples. Indeed, allegory is pervasive in
medieval literature, as is, for that matter, concern for a happy death. It is not known,
however, how these evolved into the particular form of the morality play.
Few morality plays have survived, and only Everyman remained sufficiently well regarded
in later times to be dignified with performance. One reason for the unpopularity of the
genre is the limitation of dramatic complication resulting from the static nature of the
personifications. The characters are of necessity simple, and there is no possibility of
change except perhaps in a central protagonist like Everyman. As a result, there can be
little psychological insight and little diverse movement that invigorate earlier and later
drama.
Like all forms of allegory, the method is essentially intellectual. The active involvement of
the spectator is not through emotion so much as it is in the discovery of the meanings of
characters and the significance of the configurations in which they are arranged. Allegory
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engages the mind and Everyman succeeds well in representing a complex, highly
specific, theological system at the same time that it generates, by juxtaposition and order,
sufficient immediacy to give force to the moral exhortation. The structure is elegant and
compact. There is no attempt to catalog the deficiencies of Everyman’s past life; rather,
the play focuses on the poignant hour of death and implies what Everyman is and what
he ought to be at that critical moment.
Because of the allegorical method, it is easy to trivialize the significance of the play by
reducing it to the identification of the personifications. To do so would be to miss the
power of its abstractions and the complex view of life that is represented. A play about
the reaction to imminent death, Everyman with its configurations of characters implies
much about how life should be lived. God initiates the action with the premise that all
human beings are to be called to give an account of their actions. As the plot develops, it
would perhaps be more accurate to refer to the central character as Anyman, but the use
of the name Everyman implies that the experience is not random, not what might happen,
but paradigmatic of what will happen and how people ought to respond.
Everyman turns to his valued, habitual companions for comfort on his difficult and
dangerous journey, but the play does not present a pageant of specific sins. Instead,
Fellowship, Kindred, and Goods are summary abstractions, which are not particular sins
in themselves but rather examples of the distractions that divert people away from
positive direction toward God and salvation. Thus Everyman’s failures are represented
not by a static series of vices but by the vital enticements that took too much of his
attention. The conception is a Dantescan analysis of sin as a turning away from God.
In the theology of the play, salvation obviously cannot come by faith alone, since it is
imperative that Everyman be accompanied to judgment by Good-Deeds. However, Good-
Deeds is so infirm because of Everyman’s prior misdirection that a prior step is
necessary: Everyman is entrusted to Knowledge for guidance. The implication is that
knowledge of the institutional Church and its remedies is necessary for the successful
living of the good life. Knowledge first directs Everyman to Confession, one of the
tangible means of repentance and regeneration. Once Confession takes place, Good-
Deeds begins to revive, as contrition and amendment free the accumulated merits of past
virtuous actions.
Knowledge also summons other attainments, which can travel at least part way with
Everyman. Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits are all auxiliary human
accomplishments that can help and comfort human beings along their way, though none
can persevere to the final moment of judgment. As they fall away, one by one, the play
presents the process of death. Beauty is obviously the first to depart in this telescoped
version of an individual’s demise. Strength follows as life ebbs. The last of the
attainments to leave is Five Wits, the sensual means through which human beings
acquire whatever understanding they gain in life.
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In the end, even Knowledge, the representative of the human intellect, which builds on
sense and is a higher power than sense, cannot go the whole distance with Everyman.
The respect for Knowledge in the play’s implied theological system is enormous:
Knowledge plays the pivotal role in informing Everyman of the way to salvation. However,
in the final analysis, only Good-Deeds can descend into the grave with Everyman
because it is only the efficacious result of knowledge in right living that merits eternal
reward.
An examination of the abstractions and their arrangement in Everyman reveals the

complex shape of medieval Christianity. The play suggests a means to salvation
everywhere consistent with the prescriptions of the medieval Church: There is an ultimate
accountability, but human beings have the capacity, through faith and reason, to direct
themselves toward God by using the institution of the Church, which enables them to do
the good required of all.
Everyman (Critical Survey of Contemporary Fiction)
God sends the messenger Death to summon Everyman on a “long journey” at the end of
which he must make a reckoning. Everyman does his best to stave off the duty, including
an attempt to bribe Death. Told that he can bring company if he can find anyone willing to
accompany him, Everyman turns to Fellowship, who amusingly vows to stand firmly by
his friend--until he learns the nature of the journey. Kindred, Cousin, and Goods also
refuse the invitation.
When it occurs to Everyman to ask his Good Deeds, he finds the latter weakened by sins
and unable to make the trip, but she recommends her sister Knowledge, who vows to go
by his side. After Knowledge leads Everyman to Confession, Good Deeds is able to rise
from the ground and join him.
A final set of abstractions representing bodily attributes--Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and

Five Wits (five senses)--accompanies him, but each leaves in turn as he approaches the
grave. Eventually Everyman learns who is willing to go all the way with him to meet his
Maker.
Like many other medieval works, Everyman uses the motif of the spiritual journey or
pilgrimage to make a powerful statement of religious faith that also contains a warning to
the spiritually lax in a period of increasing worldliness just prior to the Reformation.
Probably allegory has never worked more effectively than it does in Everyman. The play
is an excellent example of the strengths peculiar to allegorical literature.
Bibliography:
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Kaula, David. “Time and the Timeless in Everyman and Dr. Faustus.” College English 22
(October, 1960): 9-14. Kaula compares the two morality plays and the kinds of time
represented in them. In Everyman, astronomical time is finally replaced by moral time
with its attendant freedom, in which human beings can control their destiny.
Kinghorn, A. M. Mediaeval Drama. London: Evans Brothers, 1968. Examines the plot and
themes of the play and its place in the tradition of the morality play.
Kolve, V. A. “Everyman and the Parable of the Talents.” In Medieval English Drama:

Essays Critical and Contextual, edited by Jerome Taylor and Alan H. Nelson. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1972. Examines the parable as a possible source for the
play and includes a close reading of the play and its themes.
Potter, Robert. “The Unity of Medieval Drama: European Contexts for Early English
Dramatic Traditions.” In Contexts for Early English Drama, edited by Marianne G. Briscoe
and John C. Coldewey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Examines the
relationship between Everyman and its Dutch analogues to argue the importance of
seeing the larger contexts for early English drama.
Van Laan, Thomas F. “Everyman: A Structural Analysis.” PMLA 78, no. 5 (December,

1963): 465-475. Argues that the play’s popularity arises from a structure that accentuates
its dramatic qualities. In the first half, there is a falling toward damnation, in the second,
there is a rising toward God.
Critical Overview
There is no record of Everyman being produced on stage during the medieval period. The
title page refers to the work as a treatise, and occasionally such works were fashioned as
dialogues between characters. This was especially true when the author intended the
work to provide a moral lesson. Whether Everyman was ever performed or not, it proved
popular among readers, achieving four reprintings in the first years following its
publication. But with the move to a Protestant religion in England—and the development
of the more sophisticated Elizabethan theatre—the morality plays of the medieval period
were forgotten. Everyman was not reprinted again until 1773 and was then regarded as
an artifact of the ancient past. However, by the nineteenth century, medieval drama
became an important topic of study, and eventually interest in Everyman surged enough
to warrant a production in 1901.
In William Poel's 1901 staging in Canterbury, England, Everyman achieved dramatic

success, according to a critic writing for the Athenaeum, because the play's ‘‘naive
simplicity and uncompromising sincerity'' had modern appeal. Although the reviewer
referred to the play as primitive drama, he also found that this drama, ‘‘which seems so
dull and didactic, may well have passioned our forefathers—this is, indeed, capable of
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passioning us.’’ This acknowledgment of the play's strength after 500 years of dormancy
must have been gratifying for the director.
Everyman, claimed the critic, had the possibility of becoming a sensation during the 1901
London theatre season. The review in the Athenaeum recognized that the play's focus on
religion and salvation might appear quaint or dated, but the critic said that "Temptations
to ridicule presented themselves, and the smile rose occasionally to the lips. It died there,
and sank before the absolute sincerity of the whole. Amusement never degenerated into
mockery.'' Accordingly, the ideas depicted in...
Time and Timeless in Everyman and Dr. Faustus

In his recent study, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil (1958), Professor Bernard Spivack points out two
related trends in the development of the English morality play during the sixteenth century: the first a change
from a hero who represents all humanity to one who embodies only an aspect of humanity; the second a
change from a comic to a tragic ending. Behind these changes lay the general shift from a Catholic to a
Protestant theological perspective. One of the chief purposes of the older plays was to demonstrate the
possibility of salvation for all humanity: hence the generalized hero and the happy ending. The later plays, on
the other hand, were more concerned with the exceptional individual and the dilemmas he must cope with in
this life rather than the next.
The various implications of this development may be seen very clearly, I think, in two plays written about a
century apart, Everyman and Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. A comparison between the two is a natural, even an
inevitable one to make, since both plays have as their main theme the eschatological predicament confronting
every Christian individual, the choice whether to be damned or saved. Futhermore, both plays are basically
concerned with only one character and his spiritual destiny; the other characters either symbolize various facets
of the hero's personal conflict or are limited to strictly subsidiary roles. Everyman is undoubtedly the most
skillful example of the morality play that has survived. T. S. Eliot claims (in ‘‘Four Elizabethan Dramatists’’)
that it is perhaps the one play in which "we have a drama within the limitations of art''— meaning, I gather,
that nothing in the play is extraneous to the central homiletic purpose, that all elements of style, structure, and
theme are governed by the conventions of allegory. The consistency of the form reflects the perfect clarity and
oneness of belief in the playwright and his audience. By comparison, Dr. Faustus is an impure, hybrid play,
not merely because of the revisions inflicted on it by later playwrights, but because it is transitional: it both
harks back to the older drama in its use of the devices of homiletic allegory, and anticipates the fully developed
tragedy of the later Elizabethans, especially in its conception of the hero.
It is in their protagonists that the two plays differ, perhaps, most obviously. Since Everyman is supposed to
represent all humanity he is given no social or political identity, no attributes which would suggest that his
predicament is more common to one class of humanity than another. (The only political references in the play
occur in the repeated designation of God as "Heuen Kynge'' or "Chefe Lorde of paradyse,'' the implication
being that all men, whatever their earthly status, are democratically equal before the one true monarch of the
universe.) This is not to say that Everyman is merely an abstract figure, a type. He is, rather, a complete
individual whose feelings as he faces death and yearns for salvation are to be understood as those of any
human being caught in the same universal situation. In Everyman the soul, or that which unites the hero with
the rest of his kind, is treated as incomparably more significant than character, or that which sets him apart.
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In Dr. Faustus, on the other hand, these two aspects of the hero receive a more equal emphasis, and as the play
develops a growing tension may be observed between them. As early as the opening chorus Faustus is
presented as an individual set apart by the circumstances of his birth, education, and scholarly career. As he
shows so clearly in his initial monologue, he is one who craves uniqueness, who longs to "gain a deity'' and
"reign sole king of all the Provinces.’’ But whatever Faustus eventually gains in distinction as a character he
loses as a soul, for however cavalierly he tries to dismiss it at first he cannot escape the predicament of
Everyman. All the high honor he receives for his learning and necromantic skill is ironically replaced in the
end by the terrifying isolation of the final hour, when under the pressure of imminent damnation he yearns to
lose all identity whatsoever and become as indistinguishable as waterdrops blended with the ocean.
The fact that Everyman, the representative individual, is saved, and Faustus, the exceptional individualist, is
damned, has significant theological implications. Between the two plays falls the Reformation. Despite its
several severe warnings, Everyman is essentially reassuring in its estimation of man's chances for salvation. Its
purpose is not to terrify but to edify. ‘‘This mater is wonderous precyous,’’ says the Prologue; "But the entent
of it is more gracyous, and swete to bere awaye.’’ God at the beginning speaks ruefully of His love for
mankind, the sacrifice He made for them in the Crucifixion (‘‘I coude do no more than I dyde, truely’’), and
His original intention that they should all be saved and share His glory. It is only because mankind is
‘‘Drowned in synne’’ that God is obliged to command Death to summon Everyman to his final reckoning.
Once Everyman appears, however, he hardly bears the marks of a deep-dyed sinner. He is more like the
anxious, baffled, and painfully well-intentioned hero of modern existentialist fiction. Except for the momentary
truculence he shows at the outset when he asks Death what God wants with him, he never betrays any sign of
wishing to resist God or question His ways, let alone aspire to a Faustian divinity. Once he realizes his spiritual
danger, his faith, his will to be saved, is beyond question; and after he turns to Good Deeds and is joined by
Knowledge the way to his salvation is clear.
One reason the process of redemption for Everyman seems relatively easy is that positive evil does not appear
as a serious impediment. Unlike most of the other mortality plays, the world of Everyman is not invaded by the
Devil and his ministers, the personified vices. The only obstacle to the hero's redemption is his own blindness
to the true good, represented by his over-reliance on Fellowship, Kindred and Cousin, and Goods. These are
not vices but mutable goods, dangerous only when their value is overestimated. (As Goods explains to
Everyman, had he loved his possessions moderately and distributed alms his spiritual prospects would have
been much brighter.) Death, too, is depicted as God's dignified and business-like subordinate—not the sadistic
antic of the medieval danse macabre. The universe of Everyman in general is one thoroughly under the control
of a benevolent deity who sees to it that the normal, repentant sinner has more than a fair chance to save
himself: a universe in which the demonic is kept at a thoroughly safe distance.
Moving to Dr. Faustus, we are immediately impressed by the remoteness of the divine, the omnipresence of
the demonic. Not only does God's benevolent protection fail to show itself as a visible reality (even the
impeccably virtuous Old Man is tormented by the fiends), but God's representatives, the Good Angel and the
Old Man, are heavily outnumbered by Mephistophilis, Lucifer, the Bad Angel, the Seven Deadly Sins, and an
indefinite number of minor devils. The magnitude of evil represented in Faustus is far greater than it is
in Everyman, for Faustus consciously wills to surmount his human limitations and rival God. This deep
concern with the demonic makes Marlowe's play seem at once more primitive and more sophisticated
than Everyman: more primitive in that it reflects that original fear of darkness and chaos which is at the core of
the tragic experience; more sophisticated in that it sees the exceptionally gifted individual, the man who
believes he has mastered all the known fields of human learning, as precisely the one who is most lacking in
genuine self-knowledge, the most vulnerable to illicit temptation. This concern with the potency of evil also
appears in the hero's inability to repent despite his urgent desire to. Before he signs the bond Faustus suffers
momentary pangs of conscience, and periodically...
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Everyman (Literary Criticism (1400-1800)) - Essay

Everyman
English morality play, written circa 1495.
Everyman is considered the greatest example of the medieval morality play. Composed by an unknown author
in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, the play was long judged to be of historical interest only. It was
successfully revived on stage at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, and has since become the
most frequently performed of the morality plays. It has earned praise and admiration for its profound moral
message, which is conveyed with dignity tinged with gentle humor, and for its simple beauty and vivid
characters.
Textual History
The text of Everyman survives in four early sixteenth-century editions: two complete printings by John Skot
(or Scott) entitled Here begynneth a treatyse how the hye fader of heuen sendeth dethe to somon euery
creature to come and gyue a counte of theyr lyues in this Worlde, and is in maner of a morall playe (The
sumonyg of eueryman) (c. 1522-29 and c. 1525-30), and two redactions by Richard Pynson (c. 1510-25 and c.
1525-30), which are extant only in fragments. From these initial publications until the work's revival in the
twentieth century, Everyman was considered little more than a literary artifact, and appeared only in collections
of pre-Elizabethan drama that sought to catalogue England's literary history. Such anthologies include Thomas
Hawkins's The Origin of the English Drama (1773) and W. Carew Hazlitt's edition of Robert Dodsley's A
Select Collection of Old English Plays (1874). No separate editions appeared until after the play's twentieth-
century revival. Since then, the work has been reprinted numerous times, including A. C. Cawley's highly
regarded 1961 edition. In addition, the play has been adapted and translated into various languages; Hugo von
Hofmannsthal's German adaptation Jedermann is particularly noteworthy, having achieved great popular
success in performance at the 1911 Salzburg Festival.
Plot and Major Characters
Everyman, like other morality plays, seeks to present a religious lesson through allegorical figures representing
abstract characteristics. The play centers on the life of Everyman, a wealthy man in his prime who is suddenly
called by Death to appear before God for judgment. On his journey to meet God, he seeks assistance from
lifelong companions Fellowship (friends), Kindred and Cousin (family), and Goods (material wealth), but all
abandon him. Because he has neglected her in life, Good-Deeds is too weak to accompany Everyman on his
journey. She advises him to call on Knowledge (awareness of sin). Knowledge escorts Everyman to
Confession, who directs him to do penance. In the process of Everyman's penance, Good-Deeds is
strengthened and is finally able to accompany Everyman to his final reckoning. Everyman, now wearing the
garment of Contrition, continues his journey—until now a quest for spiritual health, but increasingly showing
the qualities of a pilgrimage—to salvation. Everyman, Knowledge, and Good-Deeds are joined on the journey
by Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits (the senses). After donating his wealth to charity, Everyman
follows the advice of Knowledge and Five Wits and receives the sacraments of Communion and Extreme
Unction. Meanwhile, Knowledge and Five Wits converse on the subject of corrupt priests in the church.
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Approaching his grave, Everyman is again deserted by all his companions except Knowledge and Good-Deeds.
As the story closes, Knowledge remains behind as Everyman and Good-Deeds together descend into the grave.
Major Themes
The themes in Everyman are strongly reflected in the allegorical characters which populate the work. The work
teaches ethical and religious lessons about how to please God and how to treat humanity. The work has been
seen by some critics as a dramatic treatment of the medieval Catholic church doctrine of “Holy Dying,”
whereby a person forsakes earthly attachments and prepares his or her soul for salvation, but episodes such as
the discussion between Knowledge and Five Wits on corrupt priests suggest the influence of the Protestant
reform movement as well. The testing of Everyman's companions, all of whom fail except for Good-Deeds,
reflects the medieval belief that friends must prove themselves before they can be accepted as true. Good-
Deeds's loyalty additionally points to the Christian notion of friendship as a gift from God. Thus, this figure
represents not only Everyman's own positive and good actions but God's blessing as well.
Critical Reception
Since its revival in the early twentieth century, Everyman has been considered the finest of the medieval
morality plays. Critics have investigated numerous aspects of the play, including its source, the religious
doctrine it presents, its structure, its style, and its use of allegory. Many critics propose that the primary source
of Everyman may be the Dutch play Elckerlijc (c. 1490), because of the close similarity of the text and tone of
the two works. Some scholars have gone even further and have asserted that Everyman is a translation
of Elckerlijc. Scholars have also commented on the close integration of the play's structure and themes.
According to Lawrence V. Ryan, the doctrine and the “theology presented actually determines the structure of
the morality and helps to give it the place it admittedly deserves as the most successful thing of its kind in
English literature.” Thomas F. Van Laan has argued that the play's “human action and its allegorical
significance together form a distinct structural pattern which not only imposes discipline but also contributes
its own intrinsic meaning.” The main thrust of the play, according to William Munson, is for the reader to
understand that “a saving deed is, in the end, possible.” Ron Tanner has contested the claims that the morality
play genre lacks humor by pointing to Everyman's dramatic irony. The poetry of Everyman has also been
praised for its clear, direct style. Most critics agree that its vivid characterization, unadorned poetic style, and
closely interwoven themes, images, and plot combine to make Everyman a peerless artistic achievement.
Helen S. Thomas (essay date 1960-61)
SOURCE: Thomas, Helen S. “The Meaning of the Character Knowledge in ‘Everyman’.” Mississippi

Quarterly 14, no. 1 (winter 1960-61): 3-13.
[In the following essay, Thomas discusses representation of the character Knowledge in Everyman as a
Wisdom figure.]
The problem that has troubled scholars for many years is whether in the play Everyman,1 which is, as its title
states, a “treatyse” in the manner of a “morall playe,” the important character Knowledge really signifies
14
“knowledge.” The intention of the play is to show to the sinner summoned by death the path to salvation
through the sacraments of the Church. The...
Thomas F. Van Laan (essay date 1963)
SOURCE: Van Laan, Thomas F. “Everyman: A Structural Analysis.” Publications of the Modern Language
Association LXXVIII, no. 5 (December 1963): 465-75.
[In the following essay, Van Laan analyzes the dramatic structure ofEveryman, which he argues contributes to
the success of the religious drama.]
The high value of Everyman has been provocatively asserted in T. S. Eliot's description of it as “perhaps” the
only English drama “within the limitations of art.”1 Eliot writes this while discussing the lack of form in post-
Kydian drama and thus implies that the source of this value is the play's formal unity. David Kaula has taken...
John Conley (essay date 1969)
SOURCE: Conley, John. “The Doctrine of Friendship in Everyman.” Speculum XLIV, no. 3 (July 1969): 374-
82.
[In the following essay, Conley examines the portrayal of friendship inEveryman, comparing it to medieval
doctrine of friendship.]
The plot of Everyman obviously consists of a test of friendship made by a worldly young man when he
suddenly learns that God has summoned him to his reckoning. The doctrine of friendship in this morality is
accordingly worth examining even though our conclusion can be anticipated, namely, that this doctrine
consists of the essential commonplaces of the mediaeval doctrine of friendship.1 As in certain...
V. A. Kolve (essay date 1972)
SOURCE: Kolve, V. A. “Everyman and the Parable of the Talents.” In Medieval English Drama: Essays
Critical and Contextual, edited by Jerome Taylor and Alan H. Nelson, pp. 316-40. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1972.
[In the following essay, Kolve considers the Parable of the Talents as a possible source for some of the topics
discussed in Everyman.]
Many scholars at work over several decades have done much to discover the sources of Everyman. We have
learned that it owes something to the traditions of the Dance of Death, to confessional manuals, to treatises on
the art of holy dying, to a medieval schema that divides all human endowments...
15
Allen D. Goldhamer (essay date 1973)
SOURCE: Goldhamer, Allen D. “Everyman: A Dramatization of Death.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59, no.

1 (February 1973): 87-98.
[In the following essay, Goldhamer examines the psychological view ofEveryman as a work regarding death
as a learning experience.]
Everyman is commonly regarded as the finest of morality plays and one of the greatest medieval dramas.
Modern scholarship on the play has two general concerns. A long-standing question has been raised as to its
relationship to the Dutch play Elckerlijc: there has been disagreement as to whether one was the direct source
of the other or if both plays derived from a lost...
Thomas J. Jambeck (essay date 1977)
SOURCE: Jambeck, Thomas J. “Everyman and the Implications of Bernardine Humanism in the Character
‘Knowledge.’” Medievalia et Humanistica 8, (1977): 103-23.
[In the following essay, Jambeck argues that Bernadine Humanism sheds much light on the principles
of Everyman.]
In his recent essay on the play Everyman V. A. Kolve addresses himself to what persists as “one of the most
difficult questions in Everymanscholarship. Namely, is the character Knowledge to be understood in something
like our modern sense of that term [scientia, intelligentia]? Or does it stand instead for the even then rarer, and
now archaic, medieval sense of...
Phoebe S. Spinrad (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: Spinrad, Phoebe S. “The Last Temptation of “Everyman.” Philological Quarterly 64, no. 2 (spring
1985): 185-94.
[In the following essay, Spinrad examines in-turn the temptations faced by Everyman, discussing the
significance of each for both the original audience and the contemporary reader.]
Because Everyman is virtually the last of the Catholic morality plays, we are often tempted to analyze it in
terms of others of its kind: a soul struggles with temptations, falls into sin, is arrested by Death, and at the last
moment calls on the mercy of God and is saved. Within this linear analysis, many subanalyses are possible.
Lawrence V. Ryan, for...
16
William Munson (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: Munson, William. “Knowing and Doing in “Everyman.” Chaucer Review 19, no. 3 (1985): 252-71.
[In the following essay, Munson examines Everyman in terms of the play's dramatic rhythm in which the main
character alternates between learning something and then acting on that knowledge.]
Until recently criticism has stressed the dramatic distinction of Everymanmore than thematic reasons for its
atypicality as a morality play.1 A recent reading, however, argues for a special connection of the play with
Bernardine humanism, in which man is “an active agent in the work of his own redemption”:…
Murdo William McRae (essay date 1986)
SOURCE: McRae, Murdo William. “Everyman's Last Rites and the Digression on Priesthood.” College
Literature XIII, no. 3 (fall 1986): 305-09.
[In the following essay, McRae examines Everyman's portrayal of the priesthood.]
Interpreters of Everyman often remark that when V. Wyttes and Knowlege digress on the priesthood, and
offstage Everyman receives his last rites, the play exhibits the sacramentalism of the devotio moderna, the
movement to reform the church from within that began in the low countries in the late fourteenth century.
Since the digression preaches the enduring value of the sacraments as it admonishes priests to lead exemplary...
Ron Tanner (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: Tanner, Ron. “Humor in “Everymanand the Middle English Morality Play.” Philological
Quarterly 70, no. 2 (spring 1991): 149-61.
[In the following essay, Tanner refutes critics who claim that Everyman lacks humor, pointing to the dramatic
irony of the work.]
Nothing in the canon of English drama sounds more dreary or uninviting than the “morality play.” As W. R.
Mackenzie observes, “While we may find ourselves approving highly of the conditions in life which are the
results or natural accompaniments of morality, we feel something peculiarly unlovely in the connotations of
the term itself.”1 If the morality play is ignored...
David Mills (essay date 1995)
SOURCE: Mills, David. “The Theaters of “Everyman.” In From Page to Performance: Essays in Early
English Drama, edited by John A. Alford, pp. 127-49. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995.
17
[In the following essay, Mills argues that the success and effectiveness ofEveryman lies in the “skillful
allusions to a range of different kinds of drama and allegory.”]
Everyman occupies a special place in the revival of medieval drama in England in the twentieth century. The
success it has enjoyed since the time of Edward Poel's revival of the play at London's Charterhouse in 1901 has
not only made it, in the words of Arnold Williams,...
Further Reading
CRITICISM
Garner, Stanton B. Jr. “Theatricality in Mankind and Everyman.” Studies in Philology 84, no. 3, (summer
1987): 272-85.
Compares Mankind and Everyman based on their performance on stage and their dependence on the

performance.
Potter, Robert. “Everyman in the Twentieth Century.” In The English Morality Play: Origins, History and
Influence of a Dramatic Tradition, pp. 222-45. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975).
Considers the treatment and reaction to Everyman in the twentieth century by directors, actors, audiences,
and critics.
Rendall,...
Everyman Analysis
 Everyman is an archetype, a character who stands in for every other man or person
like him. In effect, Everyman personifies the idea of what the average person is like. The
play uses this same technique to personify inanimate objects (in the character of Goods)
and abstract concepts (such as Fellowship and Kindred). By using personification, the
play allows individual characters to stand in for broader ideas.
 Everyman is a morality play designed to teach its audience a very specific
message: that we can only take our good deeds with us into the afterlife. At the end of the
play, a character called the Doctor comes on stage to deliver this exact message to the
audience, further cementing the lesson that Everyman learned during the play.
 Themes of life, death, and religion intertwine in Everyman. The primary lesson of
the play is that one's actions in life directly correlate to how one will be judged in the
afterlife. Sins and good deeds follow one after death, whereas material possessions fall
away. This is in keeping with Christian theology, but the play itself endeavors to impart a
universal lesson not limited to Christians.
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Analysis
Archetype
The word archetype is generally used to describe a character who represents a pattern from which all characters
or "types" are derived. The term derives from the work of Carl Jung, who expressed the theory that behind
every unconscious lies the collective memories of the past. In literature, the term is often applied to a character
type or plot pattern that occurs frequently and is easily recognized. In Everyman, Death is such a character, and
the audience would immediately recognize this character and his purpose in the plot.
Audience
Authors usually write with an audience in mind. Certainly the unknown author of Everyman intended this
drama to instruct the audience. Since few people were literate, a medieval writer could use drama to tell a story
or teach a moral. The lesson in this play is how to lead a proper religious life and prepare for death and God's
judgement.
Character
The actions of each character are what constitute the story. Character can also include the idea of a particular
individual's morality. Characters can range from simple stereotypical figures to more complex multi-faceted
ones. Characters may also be defined by personality traits, such as the rogue or the damsel in distress.
Characterization is the process of creating a life-like person from an author's imagination. To accomplish this
the author provides the character with personality traits that help define who he will be and how he will behave
in a given situation.
Everyman differs slightly from this definition, since each character is little more than a "type." The audience
does not really know or understand the character as an individual. For instance, Fellowship represents little
more than a quality, not an...
Places Discussed
Journey to Paradise
Journey to Paradise. Long journey from life to death that Death orders Everyman to make. Everyman is to take
with him his full book of accounts; he must be careful, as he has done many bad deeds and only a few good
ones. When he reaches Paradise, he will be required to account for his life. Death permits Everyman to take
with him on his journey any companions he wishes, but only Good-Deeds goes with him the entire way.
With several stops along the way, Everyman’s journey takes on a dual purpose. On one hand, the image of his
traveling from place to place to find a suitable companion is similar to a realistic trip; on the other, and on a
more spiritual plane, Everyman’s peregrination characterizes his quest for salvation. On this path, Everyman is
damned until he realizes that he must free himself of his sins before he is permitted to enter the heavenly
sphere. He can accomplish that task only with the help of the sacraments and his own good deeds.
House of Salvation
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House of Salvation. Place where Everyman receives the sacrament of penance from Confession. On a certain
level, the House of Salvation represents Heaven and is where the play begins—with God speaking about
humankind’s forgetfulness of his son’s sacrifice—and ends with the angel taking Everyman’s soul, as does
human life.
Historical Context
Cultural Changes in England
The end of the fifteenth century marked the end of the medieval period in England. The sixteenth century
brought with it the first of the Tudor kings and a period of relative peace following the civil wars that had
plagued England during much of the preceding century. And although it was still present in smaller, yearly
outbreaks, the threat of the Black Death (a plague that had killed a large portion of the European population)
had finally decreased. England at the beginning of a new century was becoming a good place to live. The first
of the Tudors, King Henry VII, formed alliances with neighboring countries and trade flourished in London.
The cloth made from the wool of English sheep became an important commodity in Europe trading.
The ascension of commerce, however, changed the face of England. Once a predominantly agrarian culture,
the cities of England—especially London— became more densely populated and urban. Farm lands were
enclosed, and displaced rural families fled to the larger cities, where crowding, unemployment, and plague
were a greater problem. The feudal order was ending, as well as the era of knights on horseback, who became
obsolete after Henry V proved that there was a more efficient way to win a battle. Literacy increased, too, as
moveable typesetting made books and other printed material more available.
Drama in the Fifteenth Century

The Renaissance began in Italy during the fifteenth century, but it did not begin in England until the early part
of the sixteenth century; thus, Everyman really represents one of the last medieval plays to be written. For the
people of the medieval period, the Catholic Church was the center of their lives. Its...
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Everyman: Morality Play Study Guide
Everyman is one of the most famous and best known examples of a medieval morality play (see ‘The
Morality Play’). It is, in the words of Arnold Williams, “the morality play best known and most widely
performed in modern times”. Modern scholars are fairly sure that the play we know in English is in fact a
translation of the Dutch play Elckerlijc, which was published in 1495. A scholar called Dr. Logeman has
argued that the writer of Elckerlijc is Petrus Dorlandus, and that has been accepted by some scholars. We
know nothing about the person who translated the play into the English version we study today.
In many ways, it is a play startlingly different from our own ideas of drama – perhaps even more remote from
us in terms of construction, tone and genre than Shakespeare or (strangely) the Ancient Greek dramatists
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Setting aside Everyman himself – and that itself is debatable – the
characters are one-dimensional allegorical figures rather than representations of real people, the plot is made
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clear in the opening speech, and there are no twists or unexpected turns! Yet the Everyman has been a
hugely influential text in terms of English drama; Christopher Marlowe, for example, is clearly influenced by
the medieval morality play in his Dr. Faustus, which contains parades of personified sins and a dialogue
between Faustus’ good and evil angels. The moral of Marlowe’s play – the futility of worldly goods and riches,
and the value of faithful Christian observance – also has much in common with morality plays such
as Everyman.
We have no record at all of Everyman being performed in the medieval period. This has led to speculation
by some scholars about whether it was ever meant to be performed at all. David Miller, in particular, notes that
the original Dutch play might have been “intended for private reading, not for theatrical performance. Some
support may be given to this view by the description of it as a “treatyse … in maner of a morall playe” in the
heading to Skot's edition.” “Treatise” is a word more usually used of a written document which thinks about
and discusses a particular, and usually religious, issue.
Yet it is a fact that Everyman addresses the audience and speaks of its ideas being heard rather than read.
Noting the popularity in this period of the Miracle cycles, and a little later, of the morality-influenced Dr.
Faustus, it seems a little far fetched that the Everymanwould not have been performed at all – particularly
considering how popular it seems to have been in terms of printing.
There are four early sixteenth-century editions of Everyman that have survived to the modern day: two
complete printings by John Skot (likely a medieval spelling of Scott) which bear the title Here begynneth
a treatyse how the hye fader of heuen sendeth dethe to somon euery creature to come
and gyue a counte of theyr lyues in this Worlde, and is in maner of a morall playe (The
sumonyg of eueryman) and two texts which contain only fragments of the original work.
These four texts all date from the same period, somewhere between 1509 and 1531. Clearly, then, there was
demand for Everyman from readers of the period; though whether this means that it was performed (and
people wanted to buy a copy of the script) or whether it was just an incredibly popular text to read is, like so
much else written about Everyman, intelligent guesswork rather than serious, evidenced proposal.
Historically, Everyman was thought of only as an interesting historical document, rather than a play with
relevance and interest solely of itself. It seems to have largely disappeared during the Jacobethan period, and
only emerges when reprinted in Thomas Hawkins's The Origin of the English Drama in 1773. Even then, it is
important to note that it is anthologized only because of its historical, rather than its dramatic, interest.
It was not until 1901 that the revolutionary theatre director and scholar William Poel produced what may have
been one of the first ever performances of Everyman in Canterbury. Poel, the forefather of simple text-
focused stagings of classical plays, restored the play’s reputation, and following where he had led, another
production followed in 1902, which was reviewed by the Manchester Guardian, which praised the
production’s ‘‘amazing ingenuity, judgment and care''. Many critics were surprised to notice that the play had
real gravitas and solemnity – and was not merely a piece with some historical interest: it could touch an
audience in the modern day. A production in New York followed in 1903. Notably, in all three of these
productions, a woman played the part of Everyman.
Everyman is now often performed and widely studied in the disciplines of English Literature and drama.
Everyman: Morality Play Summary
A prologue, read by the Messenger asks the audience to give their attention and announces the purpose of
the play, which will show us our lives as well as our deaths (“our ending”) and how we humans are always
(“all day”) transitory: changing from one state into another.
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God speaks next, and immediately launches into a criticism of the way that “all creatures” are not serving
Him properly. People are living without “dread” (fear) in the world without any thought of heaven or hell, or
the judgment that will eventually come to them. “In worldly riches is all their mind”, God says. Everyone is
living purely for their own pleasure, but yet they are not at all secure in their lives. God sees everything
decaying, and getting worse “fro year to year” (from year to year) and so has decided to have a “reckoning of
every man’s person”. Are they guilty or are they godly – should they be going to heaven or hell?
God calls in Death, his “mighty messenger”. People who love wealth and worldly goods will be struck by
Death’s dart and will be sent to dwell in hell eternally – unless, that is, “Alms be his good friend”. “Alms”
means “good deeds”, and it is an important clue even at this stage that good deeds can save a sinner from
eternal damnation.
God exits, and Death sees Everyman walking along, “finely dressed”. Death approaches Everyman, and asks
him where he is going, and whether he has forgotten his “maker” (the one who made him). He then tells
Everyman that he must take a long journey upon him, and bring with him his “book of count” (his account
book as per God’s “reckoning”, above) which contains his good and bad deeds.
Everyman says that he is unready to make such a reckoning, and is horrified to realize who Death is. Everyman
asks Death whether he will have any company to go on the journey from life into death. Death tells him he
could have company, if anyone was brave enough to go along with him.
Fellowship enters, sees that Everyman is looking sad, and immediately offers to help. When Everyman tells
him that he is in “great jeopardy”, Fellowship pledges not to “forsake [Everyman] to my life’s end / in... good
company”. Everyman describes the journey he is to go on, and Fellowship tells Everyman that nothing would
make him go on such a journey. Fellowship departs from Everyman “as fast as” he
can. Kindred and Cousin enter, Everyman appeals to them for company, and they similarly desert him.
Everyman next turns to his “Goods and richesse” to help him, but Goods only tells him that love of Goods is
opposite to love of God. Goods too forsakes Everyman and exits. Everyman next turns to his Good Deeds,
but she is too weak to accompany him. Good Deeds’ sister Knowledge accompanies Everyman
to Confession, who instructs him to show penance. Everyman scourges himself to atone for his sin. This
allows Good Deeds to walk.
More friends – Discretion, Strength, Beauty and Five Wits – initially claim that they too will
accompany Everyman on his journey. Knowledge tells Everyman to go to Priesthood to receive the holy
sacrament and extreme unction. Knowledge then makes a speech about priesthood, while Everyman exits to go
and receive the sacrament. He asks each of his companions to set their hands on the cross, and go before. One
by one, Strength, Discretion, and Knowledge promise never to part from Everyman’s side. Together, they all
journey to Everyman’s grave.
As Everyman begins to die, Beauty, Strength, Discretion and Five Wits all forsake him one after another. Good
Deeds speaks up and says that she will not forsake him. Everyman realizes that it is time for him to be gone to
make his reckoning and pay his spiritual debts. Yet, he says, there is a lesson to be learned, and speaks the
lesson of the play:
Take example, all ye that this do hear or see

How they that I loved best do forsake me,
Except my Good Deeds that bideth truly.
Commending his soul into the Lord’s hands, Everyman disappears into the grave with Good Deeds.
An Angel appears with Everyman’s Book of Reckoning to receive the soul as it rises from the grave. A
doctor appears to give the epilogue, in which he tells the hearers to forsake Pride, Beauty, Five Wits, Strength
and Discretion – all of them forsake “every man” in the end.
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Everyman: Morality Play Character List
Messenger
The first character to appear. The Messenger has no role within the story of the play itself, but simply speaks
the prologue outlining what the play will be like.
God
Appears only at the very beginning of the play. Angry with the way humans are behaving on Earth, God
summons Death to visit Everyman and call him to account.
Death
God's "mighty messenger", who visits Everyman at the very start of the play to inform him that he is going to
die and be judged by God.
Everyman
The representative of "every man" - of mankind in general. He dresses in fine clothes, and seems to have had
led a wild and sinful life. Throughout the course of the play, he is told that he is going to die (and therefore be
judged) and undergoes a pilgrimage in which he absolves himself of sin, is deserted by all of his friends apart
from good deeds, and dies.
Fellowship
Represents friendship. Everyman's friend and the very first one to forsake him. Fellowship suggests going
drinking or consorting with women rather than going on a pilgrimage to death.
Kindred
A friend of Everyman's, who deserts him along with Cousin. 'Kindred' means 'of the same family', so when
Kindred forsakes Everyman, it represents family members deserting him.
Cousin
A friend of Everyman's, who deserts him along with Kindred. 'Cousin' means 'related', so when Kindred
forsakes Everyman, it represents family members - and perhaps close friends - deserting him.
Goods
Goods represents objects - goods, stuff, belongings - and when Everyman's goods forsake him, the play is
hammering home the fact that you can't take belongings with you to the grave.
Good Deeds
Good Deeds is the only character who does not forsake Everyman - and at the end of the play, accompanies
him to his grave. Good Deeds represents Everyman's good actions - nice things that he does for other people.
Knowledge
Guides Everyman from around the middle of the play, and leads him to Confession. 'Knowledge' is perhaps
best defined as 'acknowledgement of sin'.
Confession
Allows Everyman to confess and repent for his sins. There is some confusion in the text about whether
Confession is male or female.
Beauty
One of the second group of characters who deserts Everyman in the second half of the play.
Strength
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Discretion
Five Wits
Represents the Five Senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. One of the second group of characters who
deserts Everyman in the second half of the play.
Angel
Appears at the very end of the play with Everyman's Book of Reckoning to receive Everyman's soul.
Doctor
A generic character who only appears to speak the epilogue at the very end of the play. His equivalent in the
Dutch play Elckerlijc is simply called 'Epilogue'.
Everyman: Morality Play Glossary
allegory
a form of metaphor in which abstract ideas or principles are represented as concrete - as characters, figures, or
events. In Everyman, for example, abstract ideas like good deeds and strength are represented as people named
Good Deeds and Strength.
alms
good deeds
baleys
whip
book of count
literally is a "book of account": the same as a book of reckoning
book of reckoning
see "reckoning": the "book of reckoning" is the book in which, in Christian doctrine, all a person's sins and
good deeds are recorded
cousin
in medieval English, not the same as the modern version: it is a more general term meaning "member of the
same family"
dread
(medieval English) fear
fain
(medieval English) glad
fellowship
friendship, company
forsake
desert, leave behind, run away from
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Job
a character in the Old Testament who maintained his faith in God even when tested with severe hardship and
misfortune
kind
(in medieval English) kindred, family, blood relations
quick
(medieval English) alive
reckoning
"reckoning" means literally "counting up", but colloquially, a "day of reckoning" is the time when man will be
judged by God, and all his actions and behaviour taken into account
richesse
(medieval English) riches, wealth
sacrament
in the words of Augustus of Hippo, "a visible sign of an invisible reality". A sacrament is a manifestation of
God's presence in a concrete form - most typically, in the way that Christians believe Jesus to be physically
present in the Communion bread and wine.
tapster
an inn keeper, pub owner or tavern keeper
timorous
nervous, frightened, shy
treatise
a long consideration of a certain subject in depth
unkind
(medieval English) undutiful
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Everyman: Morality Play Themes
Transitoriness
Life is transitory, and the very opening of the play announces that it will show us "how transitory we be all
day" in our lives. The play documents Everyman's journey from sinful life to sin-free, holy death - and its
key theme is how we can't take things with us beyond the grave. Life is transitory - always changing, always in
transition, always moving towards death. Only heaven or hell is eternal.
Sin
One way of looking at the play and Everyman's forsaking friends is by grouping them according to the seven
deadly sins. It's certainly true that each sin could be found in the play, but sin itself is a wider theme in the
play: Everyman has to absolve himself of sin to go to heaven.
Death
That the play is about death is foregrounded when, early in the play, a personified Death appears at God's
summons. Death's role is to bring people to judgment. Though the play doesn't particularly explore our
emotional response to Death, it is important to note that Everyman's pilgrimage is to the grave - and that the
whole play is a consideration of what man must do before death.
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey taken to a sacred or religious place, and it has often been noted that Everyman's
journey through the play is in some sense itself a pilgrimage: a religious journey taken, ultimately, to heaven.
Medieval writers often compared life to a pilgrimage: a transitory journey to an ultimately spiritual goal.
Comparisons might also be made with those in holy orders, who, like Everyman, must learn to live without
belongings and let go of the things they are attached to in order to progress on a spiritual journey.
Worldly Goods
Everyman is - notably - deserted by his Goods about halfway through the play, and told that love of Goods is
opposite to love of God. For Everyman, who is finely dressed, and whose friend, Fellowship, holds a new
robe in high esteem, part of the progression of the play is learning not to be attached to worldly goods, and to
focus his attention instead on things with spiritual value.
Reckoning and judgement
Everyman has to clear his book of reckoning before he can progress to heaven, and one of the things the play
considers is how humans will be judged after they have died. God is furious that humans are living a
superficial life on earth, focusing on wealth and riches, without worrying about the greater judgment that is to
come - and, notably, Everyman's own judgment - his ability to understand his life - becomes gradually more
and more enlightened on his pilgrimage towards his heavenly reward.
Earthly versus spiritual
At the beginning of the play, God is furious that humans are concerning themselves with worldly things and
not with their ultimate spiritual judgment - and whether they will dwell in heaven or hell. People are "living
without dread in worldly prosperity". The play constantly explores the conflict between worldly concerns,
riches, clothes and relationships, and the need to focus on spiritual welfare, heaven and hell and God's
judgment.
Everyman: Morality Play Quotes and Analysis

That of our lives and ending shows
How transitory we be all day.
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l.5-6
This quote, from the Messenger's opening speech is interesting for several reasons: it, right at the start of the
play, announces that the play has a moral purpose, and foregrounds the play's dual concerns with our lives as
well as our deaths (our "ending"). Moreover, the play's emphasis on transitoriness is expressly stated in the
very first speech.
Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet
Which in the end causeth the soul to weep.
l.13-14
This quote from the Messenger's opening speech foregrounds the play's exploration of sin and damnation right
at the beginning of the play. It is one of many quotes in this play exploring the ideas of beginnings and endings
(the play itself, of course, shows "of our lives and ending").
GOD
...all creatures be to me unkind,
Living without dread in worldly prosperity.
l.23-4
This quote comes right at the beginning of God's first speech, and speaks of his anger with "all creatures of the
earth" (perhaps suggesting that Everyman perhaps represents, more than every man, but every creature!). The
conflict between the spiritual and the earthly is immediately raised: God is angry that people focus on "worldly
prosperity" without thinking about damnation and sin.
GOD
Go thou to Everyman
And show him in my name
A pilgrimage he must on him take
Which he in no wise may escape
And that he bring with him a sure reckoning
Without delay or any tarrying.
l.66-71
God instructs Death to go to Everyman and take him on the pilgrimage towards judgement. It is an interesting
quote for several reasons. Firstly, the shorter verse lines (the first two, unusually for this play, are lines of
iambic trimeter) might imply increased tension, and certainly set these staccato lines apart from the ones that
follow it. Secondly, God seems to imply that Everyman's "pilgrimage" will be from dying into death, an
unusual metaphor in this period (a pilgrimage is usually life to death). Thirdly, and lastly, it also shows how
God himself requires a "sure reckoning" - for Everyman to be clear of sin - if he is to be admitted to heaven.
EVERYMAN
Yet of my good will I give thee, if thou will be kind
Yea, a thousand pound shalt thou have,
And defer this matter till another day.
l.121-3
This is Everyman attempting to bribe Death to postpone his death. It is a comical moment, but one interesting
to examine for Everyman's own worldly, wealth-orientated way of thinking. One of the lessons Everyman will
learn by the end of the play is that money, in fact, is not the solution to all problems.
FELLOWSHIP
For, in faith, and thou go to hell,
I will not forsake thee by the way.
l.232-3
This is Fellowship speaking before he hears of the nature of Everyman's pilgrimage. He, like so many of
Everyman's other false friends, makes many promises about keeping faith with Everyman which turn out to be
false; there is also a dark irony in his hyperbolic use of "and thou go to hell" (meaning "even if you were going
to hell") - of course, that is exactly where Everyman might end up going.
GOODS
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My love is contrary to the love everlasting.
But if thou had me loved moderately during,
As to the poor give part of me,
Then shouldest thou not in this dolour be.
l.430-3
Goods cruelly reveals to Everyman that love of goods is in fact opposite to love of God and love of the divine.
It is notable that Goods and Good Deeds are symmetrically positioned in the play: they are, of course, opposite
behaviours - as Goods here points out. If Everyman had only given some of his money to the poor, Goods
could have become Good Deeds - but he didn't, and now must pay the price.
EVERYMAN
In the name of the Holy Trinity
My body sore punished shall be.
Take this, body, for the sin of the flesh!
He scourges himself
l.611-14
It is notable that, in the lines before Everyman physically scourges himself, he draws out the play's ongoing
juxtaposition of the worldly and the spiritual. His body will suffer for the sins of flesh, but his soul will be
redeeemed; undergoing worldly pain will lead to spiritual salvation, just as worldly pleasure can lead to
spiritual damnation.
There is no emperor, king, duke, ne baron,
That of God hath commission
As hath at least priest in the world being.
For of the blessed sacraments pure and benign
He beareth the keys...
l.713-17
Five Wits talks about the holiness of priests, shortly before Everyman exits the stage to receive the sacrament
and extreme unction. The play has a dual stance on priest: here, it espouses their holiness and closeness to
good, and later in Five Wits' long speech in their praise, he says that they have more power than any angel in
heaven. Later, though, Knowledge puts the alternate perspective that sinful priests are a bad example totheir
flocks.
KNOWLEDGE
Sinful priests giveth the sinners example bad;
Their children sitteth by other men's fires, I have heard,
And some haunteth women's company
With unclean life, as lusts of lechery.
l.759-63
This is the other side of the play's examination of priests, and Knowledge, here opposing Five Wits' earlier
speech in praise of them, points out that some priests commit abuses - and therefore implies that not all priests
are indeed holy. It is, again, the conflict between the earthly and the spiritual: some priests are too concerned
with earthly pleasures, and forget spiritual judgement. This section is also notable as it raises a theme which
was politically very important at the time the play was written - it was a factor in the Protestant Reformation
which began some 20 years after Everyman was published.
Everyman: Morality Play Summary and Analysis of Section 1 (l.1-183)

The title page of Everyman announces the play as a “treatise” of “how the High Father of Heaven sendeth
death to summon every creature to come and give account of their lives in this world”, as well as informing the
reader that this treatise is “in manner of a moral play”.
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The first two characters to enter are God, “in a high place” on the stage or performance space, and
a Messenger, who delivers a prologue. The Messenger’s prologue asks the audience to give their attention
and listen to the “matter” (the content) of this “moral play”. The Messenger then announces the purpose of the
play:
That of our lives and ending shows
How transitory we be all day. (l.5-6)
The play will show us our lives as well as our deaths (“our ending”) and how we humans are always (“all day”)
transitory: changing from one state into another. Clearly, from the very beginning, the play is clear that it is to
be a play about the human experience, as well as one with an absolute focus on morals.
The Messenger continues to tell the audience that, though sin initially might seem sweet, it will cause “the soul
to weep” eventually, when you are dead and the body “lieth in clay”. He also informs us that Fellowship,
Jollity, Strength, Pleasure and Beauty will fade away from us “as flower in May”.
God speaks next, and he immediately launches into a criticism of the way that “all creatures” are “unkind” to
him (“unkind”, in this context, means “undutiful” – not serving God properly). People are living without
“dread” (fear) in the world without any thought of heaven or hell, or the judgment that will eventually come to
them. “In worldly riches is all their mind”, God says. People are not mindful of God’s law, or his prohibition of
the seven deadly sins (and, God reminds us, they are “damnable” – they send you to hell).
“Every man liveth so after his own pleasure,
And yet of their life they be nothing sure” (l.40-1)
Everyone is living purely for their own pleasure, God tells the audience, but yet they are not at all secure in
their lives (“nothing sure” ). God sees everything decaying , and getting worse “fro year to year” (from year to
year) and so has decided to have a “reckoning of every man’s person”. This “reckoning” is a counting up, an
audit, of people’s souls. Are they guilty or are they godly – should they be going to heaven or hell?
God, disappointed in humankind, calls in Death, his “mighty messenger”. Death says that he will travel
throughout the world and “cruelly outsearch both great and small”. He is going to “beset” (perhaps meaning
"attack" or "deal with") every man who “liveth beastly” (lives in a beastly way). People who love wealth and
worldly goods will be struck by Death’s dart and will be sent to dwell in hell eternally – unless, that is, “Alms
be his good friend”. “Alms” means “good deeds”, and it is an important clue even at this stage that good deeds
can save a sinner from eternal damnation.
God exits, and Death sees Everyman walking along. The text specifies that Everyman is “finely dressed”.
Death approaches Everyman, touches him with his dart, and asks him where he is going, and whether he has
forgotten his “maker” (the one who made him). Everyman asks Death who he is, but Death replies that he is
sent to Everyman by God. Death then tells Everyman that he must take a long journey upon him, and bring
with him his “book of count” (his account book as per God’s “reckoning”, above) which contains his good and
bad deeds. Everyman must begin his journey towards death.
Everyman says that he is unready to make such a reckoning, and it is then that Death reveals to Everyman who
he really is. Everyman is horrified: “O Death”, he says, “thou comest when I had thee least in mind”.
Everyman then offers to give Death “a thousand pound” if he will postpone this whole matter “till another
day”. Death, though, says that he places no value on gold, silver or riches, and asks Everyman to come with
him.
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Everyman pleads with Death: his book of reckoning, he says, is not ready. He begs for “God’s mercy”, and
asks Death to spare him until he has a way of sorting it out. If, he says, he can have just twelve years, he can
make his book of reckoning “so clear” that he would have no “need to fear”. Death refuses.
Everyman then asks Death whether he will have any company to go on the journey from life into death. Death
tells him he could have company, if anyone was brave enough to go along with him. Death then asks
Everyman if he believes that his life and his “worldly goods” are given to him. When Everyman says he
thought they were, Death tells him that they were only “lent” to him. Everyman cannot take things with him
once he has died. After refusing once more to grant Everyman more time, Death exits.
Analysis
Reading the Everyman can be a strange experience for a modern reader: it is entirely different to our own
modern notions of what theater and drama should be. To begin with, where we might expect a play to
gradually unravel its plot and any moral purpose it might have, the Everyman states it before we have even
met a character. Printed on the title page is the purpose of the play, so the reader can be in no doubt; and in
performance, the first thing that happens is the Messenger’s entrance, who begins by telling the audience that
this will be a “moral play” about our “lives and ending”.
The Everyman is also an emphatically Christian play, which exists to promote the Christian ideology and
religion. It assumes a good knowledge of Catholic doctrine and of the Christian faith – and its original
audience would probably have had this knowledge. Their experience, therefore, of the play would have been
very different to our own. The church in the medieval period was a seat of political as well as religious power,
and fear of the devil, sin and hell would have been culturally commonplace. It seems likely that the message of
the play would have struck some fear into the hearts of its original audience in a way it no longer does today.
The play also announces its own moral ambition: to teach its audience how to behave and how not to behave in
the eyes of God in order to attain salvation.
There is, however, no record of Everyman being performed in the medieval period at all, and, bearing in
mind we know so little about the play, we have very little information about how, in what conditions, or where
it might have been originally performed.
The play immediately foregrounds its purpose, and introduces a key theme: ‘how transitory we be all day’. The
transience of man’s life – how short lived we are – is a central theme of Everyman: focusing our minds not on
the soon-finished concerns of our worldly life, but the eternal afterlife which will follow. There is also no
dramatic tension established: the Messenger tells us that Fellowship, Jollity, Strength, Pleasure and Beauty will
all fade from us “as flower in May” – in other words, all these things, which in the world are considered
valuable, are transitory and will merely fade away when you die. You can’t take them with you. The ending of
the play, then, is announced at the very beginning – there is no mystery about whether or not Everyman’s so-
called friends will desert him.
Thus, the Messenger’s opening speech also begins the play’s concern with beginnings and endings: the play
shows of our “ending” as well as our “lives”, and warns us “in the beginning” to “take good heed to the
ending”. So at the beginning of the play, we are invited to think about the end; just as, as the Messenger
continues to explain, sin seems fantastic “in the beginning”, but “in the end” causes the soul to weep. There is a
natural rhythm, then, in the play – and a recurring theme – of the relationship between beginning and ending:
and the importance of planning ahead, of thinking about where the end point might be, of considering the
consequences of any particular action.
It is fascinating to a modern audience that God begins by expressing his disappointment in a superficial world,
obsessed with worldly riches and renown and not paying enough (if any) respect to the spiritual things of real
worth: a charge that could be levelled at our own modern world as much as the world in c.1500 when the play
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was originally written. Everyman – whose name provides us with the clue that he represents all of mankind:
every man – is clearly no exception to this rule. He clearly cares about expensive, fine clothing (he is “finely
dressed” upon entering) and, when he wants Death to postpone his day of reckoning, his immediate recourse is
to money, offering Death a thousand pounds as a bribe.
Ron Tanner, writing in the Philological Quarterly, has shown very persuasively that there is humour
in Everyman, paying particularly interesting attention to Everyman’s negotiation with Death:
What makes the exchange between Death and Everyman humorous is Everyman's attempts
at negotiation. First he asks for an extension of time, then he tries to bribe Death… it is
ridiculous to attempt such bargains. This is the end, after all. “Now, gentle Death,” says
Everyman, still hoping to slip away, “spare me till tomorrow.” The humor here is that Death
is anything but gentle or noble: one has only to imagine the ghastly figure of death looming
over the now flattering Everyman to appreciate the irony. Everyman's words are doubly
ironic since his request for respite has dwindled from twelve years to only one day.
What Tanner’s comments particularly illuminate is the unusual tone of Everyman, which is one of its most
interesting features. Is this scene intended as straightforwardly hilarious? Clearly not, for even Tanner sees the
darkness in the presence of Death himself “looming over… Everyman”. Yet Tanner’s emphasis on the humor
in the play is persuasive, and remind us that, if indeed Everyman was performed, it is possible that it could
serve at once as both entertainment and moral education. As any student of Chaucer will know, it is perfectly
possible to combine drama and comedy, seriousness and lightness in the same text.

Left alone on stage, Everyman tells the audience he could “weep with sighs deep!” He has no company, and
feels very alone – and, as well as that, his book of reckoning is “full unready” (completely unready for God’s
judgement). He then asks a direct question, perhaps to the audience, or perhaps rhetorically:
How shall I do now for to excuse me?
I would to God I had never be get!
Everyman sees no way to excuse himself, and wishes he had never been born. He says that he fears “pains
huge and great”. Moreover, as he notes in a short, bleak sentence “the time passeth”. It is then that Everyman
has the idea of appealing to Fellowship, and telling him about what has happened. Everyman says that he
trusts Fellowship, because the two of them have been “good friends in sport and play” together for “many a
day”.
Fellowship enters, and Everyman addresses him “to ease my sorrow”. Fellowship sees that Everyman is
looking sad, and immediately offers to help. When Everyman tells him that he is in “great jeopardy”,
Fellowship pledges not to “forsake [Everyman] to my life’s end / in... good company”. Fellowship continues to
pledge his company and his determination to right whatever wrong has befallen Everyman – and Everyman
thanks him. Fellowship even states (with notable dramatic irony)
For in faith, and thou go to hell,
I will not forsake thee by the way.
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Fellowship, then, seems determined to accompany Everyman. Everyman then tells Fellowship that he is
commanded to go on a long, hard journey and eventually come up before God to be judged. It is on this
journey, Everyman continues, that he wants Fellowship to “bear me company / as ye have promised”.
Fellowship tells Everyman that he knows such a journey would be “to [his] pain”. He asks Everyman when
they’d come back from such a journey; Everyman replies “never again, till the day of doom”. “In faith”,
Fellowship says, “then will not I come there!” Fellowship tells Everyman that nothing would make him go on
such a journey. Everyman, understandably annoyed, reminds Fellowship that he promised he would
accompany him even to death.
Fellowship then says to Everyman that he’d happily accompany him while he ate, drank , made “good cheer”
or enjoyed the “lusty company” of women. Fellowship even offers to help Everyman commit a murder, but
reiterates that he will not go with him on his journey – even if Everyman were to give him “a new gown”.
Everyman realizes that Fellowship is only going to be his friend and companion when times are good.
Fellowship departs from Everyman “as fast as” he can.
Left alone on stage, Everyman soliloquizes, asking who he should turn to for help now that Fellowship has
deserted him. He decides to turn to his kinsmen, and quotes a proverb “Kind will creep where it may not go”.
At that, Kindred and Cousin enter. They say that they are at Everyman’s commandment, and that they will
“live and die together” with him, and stay with him “in wealth and woe”. Everyman tells them his story and
that he is to go on a painful pilgrimage from which he will never return. Kindred asks him what sort of
reckoning he is to make. Everyman replies that he must show how he has lived, how he has spent his days, all
the ill deeds that he has done, and all the opportunities to be virtuous which he has not taken up.
Cousin says he’d rather fast for five years on bread and water than accompany Everyman. Kindred, for his part,
tells Everyman to cheer up and stop moaning (“Take good heart to you, and make no moan”) – but all the
same, Everyman shall “go alone”. Several excuses follow as Everyman asks Kindred and Cousin to accompany
him: Cousin has “the cramp in [his] toe”, Kindred offers his maid to go with Everyman, and Cousin – finally –
adds that he has his own reckoning to make. Cousin and Kindred exit separately.
Left alone again, Everyman makes another soliloquy. He realizes that
Fair words maketh fools fain.
They promise and nothing will do.
Deserted by Fellowship, Cousin and Kindred, Everyman has realized that only fools are made glad by “fair
words”. People promise things – but do not intend to do anything.
Everyman concludes that his Goods could help him and make his “heart full light”. He calls to his “Goods
and richesse” to help him. Goods answers him:
I lie here in corners, trussed and piled so high,
Also in chests I am locked so fast,
Also sacked in bags...
Goods claims to be able to help Everyman, and Everyman again explains his situation and the pilgrimage on
which he must go. Everyman hopes that Goods might be able to help him with making his book of reckoning
better: for he has heard it said that “Money maketh all right that is wrong”.
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Goods, though, immediately says that he follows “no man in such voyages”, and adds that, far from cleansing
his book of reckoning, Everyman’s obsession with Goods has “blotted” it. “My love”, Goods adds, “is contrary
to the love everlasting”. Everyman is surprised and disappointed to hear this. He tells Goods that he is “false”
and a “traitor to God” who has caught him in a “snare”. Goods simply replies that Everyman did it to himself,
laughs at Everyman and exits.
Analysis
Having met the first batch of characters, it seems obvious to make a few comments about the nature of
character in the Everyman. The first thing to realize is that these are not characters as we understand them in
the modern sense, post-Shakespeare and Stanislavski. Though it is not true of all literature of this period, in
morality plays, there are usually allegorical figures rather than what we might consider “rounded characters”.
Allegory is a difficult literary device to understand and explain: a form of metaphor in which abstract ideas or
principles are represented as concrete characters, figures, or events.
What does this mean? Well, rather than the writer spending any time or energy trying to make a character
resemble a “real person”, or to be emotionally convincing, complicated (in terms of personality, behaviour or
action) or surprising, the writer makes a character simply represent – or personify – one attribute. Rather than a
character being “Hamlet” and full of contradictions (maybe a coward, maybe a brave revenger; maybe a
misogynist, maybe a good boyfriend and son; maybe a Protestant, maybe a Catholic) you have a character
called “Fellowship”, who simply represents the idea of fellowship.
It is a far simpler, less rich, less complicated view of character than the modern one. It also means that there is
a strange double vision in the way that the play works. When Fellowship speaks, you are hearing the words of
the character Fellowship, friend to Everyman – but you are also hearing an attitude that might be in some way
associated with fellowship. If strength could speak, for example, what would it say? Critics have, in recent
years, really emphasized the problems of combining the moralistic and the dramatic in this way.
Fellowship, however, perhaps provides us with some clue to Everyman’s life previous to his visitation
from Death. He suggests, rather than making his pilgrimage, the two might undertake some feasting and
drinking and the company of women. He also, somewhat oddly, speaks of murder, as if, in the words of G.A.
Lester “it has been a regular means of entertainment for Everyman”:
But, and thou will murder, or any man kill -
In that I will help thee with a good will.
Everyman, remember, represents mankind generally – and clearly the sins that Fellowship suggests committing
are precisely the ones that God outlined at the beginning of the play. These sins are, perhaps, more serious than
simply the emphasis laid upon worldly goods in the first part of the play: though, significantly, Fellowship
would not even accompany Everyman, he says, for a “new gown” – developing the theme of rich clothing and
its association with worldly rather than spiritual value.
Goods, of course, arrives personified in the play, and like Fellowship, deserts Everyman, refusing to
accompany him on his pilgrimage. The structure of this part of the play, is, in effect, a list of the things that
you can’t take with you when you die, and it is interesting that the playwright chose to start with the concrete
examples of other people’s friendship and your belongings.
The pilgrimage itself, of course, is an important trope in medieval literature, providing the base for, among
many others, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. It is an interesting metaphor: life is a journey towards
God. Here, though, the emphasis is quite firmly laid on the fact that it is a journey that you ultimately make
alone. It is notable that the first friend to forsake Everyman is the only one to represent humans – Fellowship -
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and the forsaking friends who come later in the play are allegorical personifications of abstract qualities like
strength or goods. The message is bleak, but clear: other people will immediately desert you. It also provides
an interesting connection with religious orders (monks and nuns) who swear a vow of poverty – like
Everyman, they must lay aside their worldly goods.
Stylistically, it is also worth noting the continual use of proverbs by the writer of Everyman. Everyman himself
speaks two in this section. Firstly, after the departure of Fellowship, he comments that “Fair words maketh
fools fain” (Nice words only make idiots happy) as he has realised that he cannot trust promises that people
make. Interestingly, though, he also ruminates that he has heard the proverb “Money maketh all right that is
wrong” (Money rights every wrong – money solves every problem) which leads him to turn to his goods. It
might be a true dictum of our earthly world that you can buy your way out of any problem; but it is certainly
not true at all of the Christian spiritual world which Everyman will travel to after his death. The ironic use of
this proverb reiterates the play’s emphasis on spiritual value over worldly goods.

Everyman is left alone and asks
O, to whom shall I make me moan
For to go with me in that heavy journey?
He recaps how he has been deserted, one after the other, by Fellowship, his kinsmen, and
his Goods (whom, he says, he “loved best”). He feels ashamed that he did not realize that Goods brought
people towards hell – and says that he himself is “worthy to be blamed”. He decides to turn to Good
Deeds but worries that she is so weak that “she can neither go nor speak”.
When Good Deeds enters, she does not need to hear from Everyman about his pilgrimage or that he has been
summoned to make his account – she knows already. Good Deeds says that Everyman’s book of account
would be in great shape if only he had focused his attention on her. As he has not spent any time with Good
Deeds, though, she is weak and cannot go with him. She does, though, have a sister who can accompany
Everyman – Knowledge.
Knowledge enters and tells Everyman “I will go with thee and be thy guide”. Everyman is delighted. With
Knowledge by his side, Everyman decides to go and find Confession in the House of Salvation. Confession
is then “seen at a distance within the House of Salvation”. Everyman kneels to him and asks for mercy.
Confession, like Good Deeds before him, knows already of Everyman’s sorrow, but can give him the comfort
of “a precious jewel” called “penance”. Jesus, Confession continues, suffered on the cross for mankind, so man
in turn must remember Jesus in suffering himself by undergoing the “scourge of penance”. Confession tells
Everyman to fulfill this penance, and that Knowledge will tell him how he can clear his account book
with God.
Everyman makes a long prayer to God, begging for forgiveness and mercy. At the end of this speech, he “strips
off his fine clothes” and “takes the scourge”. Knowledge says now Everyman can “make his reckoning sure”.
Everyman continues to scourge himself “for the sins of the flesh”. With that, Good Deeds is suddenly able to
walk; she gets up and announces she is able to go with Everyman. This makes Everyman’s heart light, and he
scourges himself even faster than he did before.
Knowledge then hands Everyman the Garment of Contrition, which he is to put on to rid him from sorrow. The
Garment, Knowledge tells Everyman, “pleaseth God passing well”. Everyman puts on the garment.
Everyman’s reckoning is now clear and he is ready to go on his way.
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Analysis
Students often struggle with the verse form of the Everyman. You often see it called iambic tetrameter or
iambic pentameter, but in fact, the verse form is more irregular than that. To take two lines at random, for
example, and highlight using CAPITAL LETTERS a strong beat, leaving a weak beat in lower case, would
look something like this:
WASH fro ME the SPOTS of VICE unCLEAN
that ON me NO sin MAY be SEEN
It is certainly true that the second of these two lines is a regular line of iambic tetrameter, but the first is
missing an initial weak stress if it is a line of pentameter. The writer also regularly employs lines which have
far too many or too few beats to be a pentameter or tetrameter line: like, for example, “O glorious fountain, that
all uncleanness doth clarify” (l.545). We might best describe the verse form as irregular rhyming verse (which
tends towards rhyming couplets).
This section begins with one of Everyman’s soliloquies. Everyman soliloquizes several times during the play,
and a soliloquy is a speech made by a character who is alone on stage, sometimes addressed to the audience,
but sometimes intended more as “spoken thought” – as if the character is talking to him or herself. As we have
no information about the original stage history of Everyman, it is impossible to say whether or not Everyman
might have addressed an audience directly with his problems, though if he did, the stagecraft itself would
provide a neat encapsulation of Everyman’s own role in the play: Everyman talking to every man. His
problems, shared with the audience, would become their problems – which, considering Everyman represents
humankind, they are anyway!
Why, some students often ask, does Everyman not immediately go to his grave once his Good Deeds has
emerged? Though it is not stated particularly clearly in the play, it likely would have been common knowledge
among Everyman’s original audience. Christian doctrine teaches that good deeds are of no use to a man in a
state of sin: and, just as Catholics today believe, Everyman must cleanse himself of sin before he can progress
to make his reckoning and be rewarded for his good deeds.
It is Good Deeds’ sister, Knowledge, who takes over at this point as Everyman’s “guide”, who perhaps, rather
than knowledge in a more general sense, could be said to represent “acknowledgement of one’s own sin”.
Everyman has to face up to and repent for his own actions. It is interesting that we do not really see Everyman
commit sin; his sins, of course, have been committed before the play begins, which is the reason that God
calls Death to visit Everyman in the first place.
Victorian critics read the play through the lens of the seven deadly sins, and it is certainly true that all of those
sins seem to be underlined in either Everyman or one of his friends at some point during the play. We have
already seen how Fellowship wants to feast, drink and consort with women (gluttony and lechery) and the odd
mention of murder as a form of entertainment (wrath). Everyman’s fine clothes and his lofty offer to bribe
Death with a thousand pounds might be seen as representing pride and covetousness. All of Everyman’s
friends, as G.A. Lester has noted, “by their unwillingness to go on the journey could be said to exemplify
sloth”, and Goods shows a “recognized form of envy” in showing such delight in Everyman’s bad fortunes.
Everyman’s “scourge” is usually interpreted as Everyman whipping himself; an example of the common
medieval idea that physical pain would teach man to be sorry for his sins. It is still a practice today in some
forms of Christianity. That this is depicted on stage (rather than just described) is perhaps unusual, though it is
perhaps an essential step in this section’s point-by-point examination of the road to salvation as late medieval
Christianity taught it: contrition (feeling sorry for the sin), confession (confessing the sin), absolution (making
amends for the sin) and finally satisfaction and salvation. It is another interest moment to consider tone. Might
Everyman’s scourging be depicted as bloody and painful, a reminder of the grisly consequences of sin? Would
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it shock the audience with its realism, or simply be a symbolic representation of absolution? It is almost
impossible to say with any certainty, though it is an important choice for any modern production.
The sharp-eyed reader may well have noted that line 552 refers to “Shrift” (meaning confession) as the
“mother of salvation”, where lines 539-40 make it quite clear that Confession is a “holy man”. Is Confession a
male or a female? The critic Cawley (editor of one of the best regarded editions of the play) believes this to be
intended figuratively – the idea of “mother” is metaphorical rather than literal – though it could just as easily
be a mistake in the extant text.

Everyman is ready to go on his pilgrimage, but Good Deeds stops him, telling him he needs three more
people to accompany him: Discretion, Strength and Beauty. Knowledge also adds that Everyman
needs to call his Five Wits along to counsel him. Everyman calls them all to him, and they all enter. Each
tells Everyman that they will be his adviser, his help and his comfort. Everyman seems happy, and says that
now he has everything he could need to go on his pilgrimage.
Knowledge tells Everyman to go to Priesthood to receive the holy sacrament and extreme unction. Knowledge
then makes a speech about priesthood, and how priests are a means to become close to God via the seven
sacraments and their teaching of holy scripture. God has given priests more power than to any angel in heaven,
Knowledge says. Everyman exits to go and receive the sacrament. Knowledge continues by making a speech
damning sinful priests, who father children and have relationships with women. Sinful priests “giveth...
example bad” to the people, Knowledge continues.
Everyman re-enters with a crucifix, having received the sacrament and extreme unction. He asks each of his
companions to set their hands on the cross, and go before. One by one, Strength, Discretion, and Knowledge
promise never to part from Everyman’s side. Together, they all journey to Everyman’s grave.
Everyman feels faint and cannot stand. Everyman announces to his friends that he must creep into the earth and
sleep. Beauty is terrified and asks “What, shall I smother here?” (“What, am I supposed to suffocate here?”).
When Everyman says, “Yea”, Beauty turns and leaves, swearing not to come back for “all the gold in thy
chest”. After Beauty leaves, Strength quickly follows suit. Everyman reminds Strength that he promised to stay
with him, but Strength simply tells him that he is a “fool to complain” and leaves.
Moreover, as Everyman notes that “Both Strength and Beauty forsaketh me”, Discretion tells Everyman that he
too will leave him. Discretion says that he always follows Strength. Everyman begs Discretion to look with
pity on his grave, but Discretion refuses and exits. Everyman notes that
...when Death bloweth his blast

They all run fro me full fast.
Only Five Wits is left, and, though Everyman tells him he “took [him] for [his] best friend”, he too will no
longer stay with Everyman. Five Wits exits, and Everyman is left alone with Good Deeds: “O Jesu, help!”,
Everyman says, “All hath forsaken me”.
Good Deeds speaks up and says that she will not forsake him. Everyman is grateful. Everyman realises that it
is time for him to be gone to make his reckoning and pay his spiritual debts. Yet, he says, there is a lesson to be
learned:
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Commending his soul into the Lord’s hands, Everyman disappears into the grave with Good Deeds.
Knowledge wryly points out that Everyman has suffered something that “we all shall endure”. Angelic music
sounds, and an Angel appears with Everyman’s Book of Reckoning to receive the soul as it rises from the
grave. The Angel says that, because of Everyman’s “singular virtue”, his reckoning is “crystal clear” and his
soul will be taken into the “heavenly sphere”.
A doctor appears to give the epilogue. He tells the hearers to forsake Pride, Beauty, Five Wits, Strength and
Discretion – all of them forsake “every man” in the end. It is only Good Deeds who goes along with you ;
though, he adds, if the Good Deeds are only small, they will not help either. You cannot, the Doctor tells the
audience, make amends after your death. If your reckoning is not clear at death, God will say “Ite, maledicti, in
ignem aeternum” (Depart, cursed one, into eternal fire); yet he whose reckoning is clear will be “crowned”
“high in heaven”.
Analysis
There is, in this final section of the play, a horrible symmetry between the first set of forsaking friends and the
second. There is a real sense of dramatic irony and inevitability created: we, the audience or the reader, know
that Strength, Discretion, and Beauty (and their compatriots) will desert Everyman just as his earlier false
friends did. Notably, in the structure of the play, the two sets of friends take up approximately the same
number of lines. Yet there is a key difference: where the first set of false friends
(Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Goods) were things external to Everyman, the second set are
internal aspects of Everyman himself (Discretion, Strength, Beauty and Five Wits).
It is, perhaps, only with this second set of friends that the grim point of the play truly comes home to us. It is
not only your money and your fine clothes, your friends and relations that you cannot take with you beyond the
grave, but your intellectual and physical qualities – your intelligence, your strength and your beauty will all
depart from you. It is, in one sense, a play that makes a single point again and again, but it is one at the center
of Christianity: this life is a prequel to the next, and with almost everything that people in the world think are
valuable, you can’t take it with you once you are dead.
Except, of course, for one thing: Good Deeds. It is Good Deeds who movingly does accompany Everyman into
the grave. Within the play itself there is a certain amount of satisfaction derived from the fact that Everyman
the character has finally found a loyal friend, and, in performance, I suspect, a moving sense of resolution that
someone has not forsaken Everyman. The allegorical point, though, is also clear, and it reflects the Christian
doctrine of the time. After death, it is not what we have received that counts, but what we have given: we are,
in essence, rewarded only for our good deeds to others, rather than the worldly goods, knowledge or attributes
we have amassed.
Everyman, as Good Deeds accompanies him to the grave, seems to speak directly to the audience – now, in the
words of G.A. Lester “as firm in understanding as he was formerly in ignorance”:
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This is the moral of the play, oft-stated, and, at the end, made manifest in the resolution of the plot. It is a
traditional Christian teaching, and one that would have met with the strong approval of the Catholic Christian
Church dominant in England at the turn of the 16th Century.
Yet the play is not simply concerned with abstract morals or didactic relation of Christian teachings; in the
highly distinctive discussion of the priesthood, Everyman touches on a theme which would have been
perhaps shockingly contemporary to the original audience or reader: the role of the priesthood. For, though the
play certainly establishes the important religious role of priests in administering the sacrament and in being a
vessel for Christian teaching, it also examines the abuses of the clergy which were a controversial topic at the
time the play was written.
The sinful priests that Knowledge describes, who father children and have relationships with women, “giveth...
example bad” to the people – and were a common problem for the Catholic Church of the late medieval period.
There were numerous instances of priests having sexual relationships or fathering children (both forbidden for
the Catholic priesthood, then and today) and dissatisfaction with these abuses was one factor which led Martin
Luther to initiate the Protestant reformation in 1517, within 20 years of this play being written. It is an
important reminder that Everyman is not simply a moral lesson, but a play which engages with the problems
of its time, and speaks directly to the people who read or heard it in c.1500.
Everyman: Morality Play The Morality Play

Morality plays were popular in England for a long period which begins in the late medieval period and
continues right up to the end of Shakespeare’s writing lifetime – from about 1400 to 1600. The word
“morality” points the reader towards the genre’s central concern: dramatizing simple stories and events in a
way which reinforces or makes manifest Christian morals and teachings. More generally, “morality” can refer
simply to the matters of good versus evil, right versus wrong, and indeed, the morality plays often centrally
focus on the battle between good and evil.
David Bevington, in his hugely important book Medieval Drama has defined the morality play as “the
dramatization of a spiritual crisis in the life of a representative mankind figure in which his spiritual struggle is
portrayed as a conflict between personified abstractions representing good and evil”, and, though it does not
catch all of the surviving examples, this definition is a good starting point.
The moralities are certainly often peopled by – as Bevington suggests – “personified abstractions” and
allegorical figures (Strength and Mercy are two examples from Mankind and Everymanrespectively), but
there are also more general types (such as Fellowship and Cousin from Everyman), and one must also be
careful not to forget those exceptional characters who appear as themselves
(God and Death in Everyman and the popular devil character Titivillus in Mankind.
There are about sixty surviving morality plays, many of which are anonymous, and GradeSaver has
ClassicNotes online for Everymanand Mankind. There are two other important examples for the student of
the genre. First is Mundus et Infans, which adapts and explores the common morality theme of transience
and is one of the earlier recorded instances of the idea of the “ages of man”. The second is one of the longest
that survive, The Castle of Perseverance, which follows the life of Humanum Genus and is almost 4,000
lines long.
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Everyman: Morality Play Religious Drama
Theater and religion have been closely associated for many hundreds of years. We see, even in nativity plays
today, that the association between Christianity and theater is still alive, and yet it is often assumed that, like
the Puritans in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Church was more concerned with closing theatres than it was
with putting on plays.
Yet, as the morality play shows, the Church did in fact contribute to dramas which could provide moral
reassurance and Christian teaching as part of the theatrical event itself. There is no history of religious drama in
England prior to the Norman Conquests. To begin with, services were interrupted (on certain festivals, such as
Easter or Christmas), and priests would enact the religious event being celebrated, usually in Latin and,
initially, not in verse. Gradually, versification crept in, as did vernacular language: so, in the French drama of
the “Wise Virgins”, which dates at some point in the first half of the 12th century, the chorus speaks Latin,
while Christ and the virgins speak both Latin and French.
Gradually, the vernacular entirely took over the form, and the drama left the Church to take to the streets.
Often, as with the English mysteries, plays were performed on wagons in public places, or if following a
“Mystery Cycle”, stationary wagons would be stationed around a city, and the audience would move from one
play to the next. It became common for major religious festivals to be marked with some sort of dramatic
performance.
Mystery plays, of which the best known cycles are the York and Towneley (or Wakefield), dramatized key
events in the Bible, often in a humorous or irreverent way, and regularly transposing the characters into a
contemporary context. A “miracle play” usually just refers to a play dramatizing a religious event, though it
initially was a play dramatizing the life of a saint or martyr. A “mystery play”, usually associated with a
mystery cycle, is also a “miracle” play, though often one which dramatizes events from the life of Christ. A
“morality play” (see “The Morality Play”) is noted particularly for its use of allegorical characters.
Morality plays (see ‘The Morality Play’) introduced the idea of allegory, which added another, more complex,
layer to religious drama – yet both morality and mystery plays alike are notable for their use of humorous
means to give a serious message.
At the beginning of the twelfth century, we know that there was a play about St. Catharine performed at
Dunstable by Geoffroy (later abbot of St. Albans) and by the mid 1200s, it seems that religious drama was
commonplace in England. The trend continued throughout the next four hundred years, though by the
Reformation, it seems that the performance of mystery and miracle plays had almost disappeared from popular
culture.
Everyman: Morality Play A General Note on Character

One of the things that students often struggle with in reading the morality plays is the allegorical characters.
Allegorical characters and personifications are actually one of the things that define the morality play.
David Bevington, in his book Medieval Drama, defines the morality play as “the dramatization of a spiritual
crisis in the life of a representative mankind figure in which his spiritual struggle is portrayed as a conflict
between personified abstractions representing good and evil”, and, though it does not catch all of the surviving
examples, this definition is a good starting point.
Allegory can be a difficult literary device to understand and explain: it is a form of metaphor in which abstract
ideas or principles are represented as concrete characters, figures, or events.
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What does this mean? Well, rather than the writer spending any time or energy trying to make a character
resemble a “real person”, or to be emotionally convincing, complicated (in terms of personality, behavior or
action) or surprising, the writer makes a character simply represent – or personify – one attribute. Rather than a
character being “Hamlet” and full of contradictions (maybe a coward, maybe a brave avenger; maybe a
misogynist, maybe a good boyfriend and son; maybe a Protestant, maybe a Catholic) you have a character
called “Fellowship”, who simply represents the idea of fellowship.
It is a far simpler, less rich, less complicated view of character than the modern one. It also means that there is
a strange double vision in the way that the play works. When Fellowship speaks, you are hearing the words of
the character Fellowship, friend to Everyman – but you are also hearing an attitude that might be in some
way associated with fellowship. If strength could speak, for example, what would it say?
Critics have, in recent years, really emphasized the problems of combining the moralistic and the dramatic in
this way; and it has become one of the richest strains in examining the morality plays critically.
There is one thing to watch out for, though: the moralities are certainly often peopled by – as Bevington
suggests – “personified abstractions” and allegorical figures (Strength and Mercy are two examples from
Mankind and Everyman respectively), but there are also more general types (such as Fellowship
and Cousin from Everyman). It's also important not to forget those exceptional characters who appear as
themselves (God and Death in Everyman and the popular devil character Titivillus in Mankind.
Thoughtco.com
How to Study the Medieval Play 'Everyman'

Study Guide: Plot, Characters, and Themes
Everyman rehearsals at Berlin Cathedral. Anita Bugge/WireImage/Getty Images
by Wade Bradford
Updated September 10, 2017
Written in England during the 1400s, The Summoning of Everyman (commonly known

as Everyman) is a Christian morality play. No one knows who wrote the play Everyman. Historians
have noted that monks and priests often wrote these types of dramas.
Many morality plays were a collaborative effort by clergymen and residents (often tradesmen and
guild members) of the English town. Over the years, lines would be changed, added, and deleted.
Therefore, Everyman is probably the result of multiple authors and decades of literary evolution.
THEME
As one might expect from a morality play, Everyman has a very clear moral, one that is delivered in
the beginning, middle, and end. The blatantly religious message is simple: Earthly comforts are
fleeting. Only good deeds and God’s grace can provide salvation. The lessons of the play are delivered
in the form of allegorical characters, each one representing a variety of abstract concepts (i.e. Good
Deeds, Material Possessions, and Knowledge).
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BASIC STORYLINE
God decides that Everyman (a character who represents your average, everyday human) has become
too obsessed with wealth and material possessions. Therefore, Everyman must be taught a lesson in
piety. And who better to teach a life-lesson than a character named Death?
Man is Unkind
God’s chief complaint is that humans are ignorantly leading sinful lives, unaware that Jesus died for
their sins.
Everyman has been living for his own pleasure, forgetting about the importance of charity and the
potential threat of eternal hellfire.
Upon God’s bidding, Death summons Everyman to take a pilgrimage to the Almighty. When
Everyman realizes that the Grim Reaper has called upon him to face God and give a reckoning of his
life, he tries to bribe Death to “defer this matter till another day.”
The bargaining doesn’t work. Everyman must go before God, never to return to Earth again. Death
does say that our hapless hero can take along anyone or anything that may benefit him during this
spiritual trial.
Friends and Family Are Fickle
After Death leaves Everyman to prepare for his day of reckoning (the moment in which God judges
him), Everyman approaches a character named Fellowship, a supporting role that represents
Everyman’s friends. At first, Fellowship is full of bravado. When Fellowship learns that Everyman is
in trouble, he promises to stay with him until the problem is resolved. However, as soon as Everyman
reveals that Death has summoned him to stand before God, Fellowship ditches the poor guy.
Kindred and Cousin, two characters that represent family relationships, make similar promises.
Kindred declares: “In wealth and woe we will with you hold, / For over his kin a man may be bold.”
But once they realize Everyman’s destination, they back out. One of the funniest moments in the play
is when Cousin refuses to go because he has a cramp in his toe.
The overall message of the play’s first half is that relatives and friends (as reliable as they may seem)
pale in comparison to the steadfast companionship of God.
Goods vs. Good Deeds
After getting rejected by fellow humans, Everyman turns his hopes to inanimate objects. He talks to a
character named “Goods,” a role which represents Everyman’s material possessions and wealth.
Everyman pleads for Goods to assist him in his hour of need, but they offer no comfort. In fact, the
Goods chide Everyman, suggesting that he should have admired material objects moderately and
that he should have given some of his goods to the poor. Not wanting to visit God (and subsequently
be sent to hell) Goods abandons Everyman.
Finally, Everyman meets a character that will genuinely care for his plight. Good-Deeds is a character
who symbolizes the acts of charity and kindness performed by Everyman. However, when the
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audience first meets Good-Deeds, she is lying on the ground, severely weakened by Everyman’s many
sins.
Enter Knowledge and Confession
Good-Deeds introduces Everyman to her sister, Knowledge – another friendly character who will
provide good advice to the protagonist. Knowledge serves as an important guide for Everyman,
instructing him to seek out another character: Confession.
Everyman is led to yet another character, Confession. This part is fascinating to me, as a reader,
because I was expecting to hear a bunch of scandalous “dirt” on our main character. I was also
expecting him to beg forgiveness, or at least apologize for whatever sins he has committed. Instead,
Everyman asks for his vices to be wiped clean. Confession says that with penance Everyman’s spirit
may become clean once more.
What does penance mean? Well, in this case, it seems that Everyman undergoes a severe and
purifying form of physical punishment. After he “suffers,” Everyman is then amazed to discover that
his Good-Deeds are now free and strong, ready to stand by his side during his moment of judgment.
And the Rest
After this purging of the soul, Everyman is ready to meet his maker. Good-Deeds and Knowledge tell
Everyman to call upon “three persons of great might” and his Five-Wits (his senses) as counselors.
So Everyman calls forth the characters Discretion, Strength, Beauty, and Five-Wits. Combined, they
represent the core of his physical/human experience.
What follows is a fascinating discussion about the importance of the priesthood.
FIVE-WITS:
For priesthood exceedeth all other thing;
To us Holy Scripture they do teach,
And converteth man from sin heaven to reach;
God hath to them more power given,
Than to any angel that is in heaven
According to the Five-Wits, priests are more powerful than angels. This reflects the prevalent role in
medieval society; in most European villages the clergy were the moral leaders of society. However,
the character of Knowledge mentions that priests are not perfect, and some of them have committed
egregious sins. The discussion concludes with a general endorsement of the church as the surest path
to salvation.
Unlike the first half of the play when he begged for help from his friends and family, Everyman is
now relying on himself. However, even though he receives some good advice from each entity, he
realizes that they will not go the distance as he journeys closer to his meeting with God.
Like previous characters, these entities promise to stay by his side. Yet, when Everyman decides that
it is time for his body to physically die (perhaps part of his penance?), Beauty, Strength, Discretion,
and the Five-Wits abandon him. Beauty is the first one to take a hike, disgusted by the idea of lying in
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a grave. The others follow suit, and Everyman is left alone with Good-Deeds and Knowledge once
again.
Everyman Departs
Knowledge explains that he won’t be going into the “heavenly sphere” with Everyman, but he will
stay with him until he departs from his physical body. This seems to imply that the soul does not
retain its “earthly” knowledge.
However, Good-Deeds (as promised) will journey with Everyman. At the end of the play, Everyman
commends his soul to God. After his departure, an Angel arrives to announce that Everyman’s soul
has been taken from his body and presented before God. A final narrator enters to explain to the
audience that we should all head the lessons of Everyman. Everything in our lives is fleeting, with the
exception of our acts of kindness and charity.
http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/globaldrama/everyman-summary.html#.WdaWoVuCzIU
Summary of Everyman
The fifteenth century English medieval morality play Everyman is an allegorical play in which the audiences are
given moral lessons through the representations of abstract qualities as characters.
In this short play, a messenger comes to take Everyman who is having contented life without any thought of the
Day of Judgment in front of God. When he is summoned by the Death to go with him for the pilgrimage of the soul,
he pleads to grant him a more day. But, as Death is inevitable, it does not agree with the Everyman and reminds
him that it comes for all human beings in their own turn so none can make any delay. Then Everyman tries to seek
the companion who can travel with him till the face of God.
At first, he goes to his friends who are allegorically represented by the Fellowship. Fellowship shows great
concerns on his serious situation, but when he knows Everyman is on a trip to death, he immediately abandons
him. He then turns to his family, having strong faith in them that they would not desert him alone. But this time too
he is saddened by the relatives though he receives much of so-called love and support from them. Next, he looks
for the Goods, which he has spent much of his lifetime to collect for the pleasures and luxuries of life. But, sadly his
Goods, that are perishable and cannot travel with him in his pilgrimage, leaves him alone to wail over his poor fate.
Desperate Everyman now thinks about his own Good Deeds and calls for it. As his Good Deeds are few in
comparison to his Sins, it answers in a weak and a low voice from the dirt. His Good Deeds suggests him to take
advice from his Knowledge. Knowledge appears in front of him and makes him ready for the Confession of his sins.
After making a sincere regret of his past life, his Good Deeds gets power to rise from the dirt and accompany him.
The Good Deeds further suggests Everyman to call his other traits like Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits
who can help him in his preparation for the journey of pilgrimage. All of them are now happy to support him and
gives him some suggestions and wisdom to face the Death. They all wish to stand by him till his Death, but the
moment he faces Death, the first thing to disappear is Beauty, then his Strength, and then rest of his companions
except Good Deeds. Everyman now comes to know the universal truth that only the Good Deeds give us company
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up to grave. Everyman is received by an Angel and because of his sincere confessions, his sufferings, and his
Good Deeds, he is allowed to be into the kingdom of Heaven.
At the last of the play a Doctor, who is regarded as a wise and great theologian in the medieval era, appears on the
stage and concludes the play, giving its moral: nothing on the earth possesses the quality to go with man with him
after his death but the only Good Deeds. The Doctor warns the audiences saying that if the Good Deeds are too
small, it will not be enough to take on to the Heaven, but at the same time, if one makes sincere repentant of his
sins and wrong deeds, then the Fatherly Heaven belongs to him.
Ron Tanner, writing in the Philological Quarterly, has shown very persuasively that there is humour
in Everyman, paying particularly interesting attention to Everyman’s negotiation with Death:
(What makes the exchange between Death and Everyman humorous is Everyman's attempts
at negotiation. First he asks for an extension of time, then he tries to bribe Death… it is
ridiculous to attempt such bargains. This is the end, after all. “Now, gentle Death,” says
Everyman, still hoping to slip away, “spare me till tomorrow.” The humor here is that Death
is anything but gentle or noble: one has only to imagine the ghastly figure of death looming
over the now flattering Everyman to appreciate the irony. Everyman's words are doubly
ironic since his request for respite has dwindled from twelve years to only one day.)
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Everyman: Morality Play Essay Questions
1. 1
Imagine that you are the director of a production of Everyman. Describe the
choices you would make to bring the play to life, focusing on acting, set design,
costume, music and lights.
This question asks you to consider Everyman as a play in the theatre, and to consider
ways of translating it to the stage. Remember that we have no
evidence Everyman was performed on stage in the late medieval period, so it might
be worth you looking carefully at the text for clues as to how an original production
(if indeed there was one) might have dealt with the play in production.
2. 2
Everyman is primarily a play about death. Do you agree?
This question asks you to examine a statement about the play and consider how much
you agree with it. Remember that, with questions like this, it is always good to see
two sides to the story: in some ways the play is about death, but it is also about other
things - and a good essay will weigh up both sides before coming to a conclusion.
3. 3
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Is Everyman himself a sympathetic figure? Should he be?
This question asks you to consider the central character, Everyman, and consider
whether or not he has the sympathies of the audience, before looking more generally
at the role he has to play within the structure of the play as a whole should be
sympathetic. Do you feel sorry for him? Would a medieval Christian audience have
pitied him?
4. 4
Everyman's tone is extremely simple: like a reading from the Bible, it exists only
to reinforce the Christianity of its audience, not to shock them or change them
in any way. Do you agree?
This is another question that asks you to consider a statement made about the play. In
this instance, I would advocate disagreeing with the idea that Everyman's tone is
"extremely simple" (see the Summary and Analysis section of this note for more
information) - it is sometimes incredibly difficult to pin down. Remember to weigh
up arguments for the statement and against the statement before coming to a
conclusion.
5. 5
Allegorical characters simply make for boring, didactic drama. Do you agree?
This question asks you to look specifically at the use of allegorical figures -
in Everyman, this is almost every character except God, Death, the Angel and the
Doctor! How do they work dramatically - are they simply boring, two-dimensional
mouthpieces for a single viewpoint? Or, perhaps, can they be more complex and
more interesting? It is, again, helpful to weigh up both sides before concluding.
6. 6
Watch Ingmar Bergman's 1956 film 'The Seventh Seal', taking careful notes.
Compare and contrast the presentation of the relationship between man and
Death in both this film and Everyman.
This question asks you, somewhat unusually, to make a comparison cross-media,
between an old play and a more modern film. The two works do not necessarily have
any overt connection, but there is clearly good thematic reasons for considering them
together. Ask yourself first about Death - is he personified? How is he dressed? What
does he say? Why has he come? How does man react? Who is the 'Everyman' figure?
These questions should give you more than enough information to get started!
7. 7
Examine closely the discussion of the priesthood in this play. What do you think
is the purpose of the writer in including this material?
This question asks you to speculate about the writer's intention in the discussion of
the priesthood that happens in the final third of the play. Remember that two
46
opposing perspectives are put: there are speeches made praising priests, and some
condemning sinful priests. It might also be a good idea to look up some of the
religious and historical context for Everyman to understand more about clerical
abuses.
8. 8
Examine the presentation of God, Death and the Angel in Everyman, paying
attention to the doctrine of what they say, and the way they might be brought to
life on stage.
This question asks you to pay attention to the way the play dramatizes three figures
about whom the audience might already have expectations. Consider what they say
(and where its foundation is in Catholicism) but also how they say it - what sort of
character do they each seem to be? How might they be dressed?
9. 9
Examine the theme of clothing and garments in Everyman.
This question asks you to trace a theme throughout the play as a whole. Firstly, read
the text and note down any time clothes or garments are mentioned (don't forget
stage directions!). Then, try and construct a broader argument about what that theme
appears to mean - what is its relevance to the other themes and issues in the play?
10. 10
What do you think the allegory in Everyman is trying to teach its audience? How
is this message made clearer by being told using allegorical means?
This questions asks you to consider the play's use of allegory, to outline broadly what
you think the play is trying to teach its audience, and then to consider how the two fit
together. Why might some ideas be better told using allegory? Why might allegory
be a "good fit" for certain types of lessons? (See Summary & Analysis for Section 2
for more help).
11. 11
Compare and contrast Everyman with Mankind. Do you think the somberness of
the former or the humor of the latter is a more effective means of
communicating the Christian message?
This question asks you to read and compare two morality plays, and then to weigh up
which one you think is more effective. There is, remember, no single right answer to
this question, so you need to support your opinion with textual evidence. What do
you think the best way to teach is - through seriousness or through humor? What are
the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
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E-Notes: Everyman Recounts The Life and Death of Everyman, An Allegorical Figure Who Represents

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E-notes

(Literary Essentials: Christian Fiction and Nonfiction)

(Critical Survey of Literature for Students)

Alienation and Loneliness

(The entire section is 711 words.)

 Everyman, an allegorical figure who represents all of humanity.

God, who has decided to have a reckoning of all men.

The Five Wits

(The entire section is 1099 words.)

Everyman Critical Essays

An examination of the abstractions and their arrangement in Everyman reveals the

Everyman (Critical Survey of Contemporary Fiction)

A final set of abstractions representing bodily attributes--Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and

Kolve, V. A. “Everyman and the Parable of the Talents.” In Medieval English Drama:

Van Laan, Thomas F. “Everyman: A Structural Analysis.” PMLA 78, no. 5 (December,

In William Poel's 1901 staging in Canterbury, England, Everyman achieved dramatic

(The entire section is 827 words.)

Time and Timeless in Everyman and Dr. Faustus

Everyman (Literary Criticism (1400-1800)) - Essay

English morality play, written circa 1495.

Plot and Major Characters

Helen S. Thomas (essay date 1960-61)

SOURCE: Thomas, Helen S. “The Meaning of the Character Knowledge in ‘Everyman’.” Mississippi

(The entire section is 4165 words.)

Thomas F. Van Laan (essay date 1963)

(The entire section is 8706 words.)

John Conley (essay date 1969)

(The entire section is 4918 words.)

V. A. Kolve (essay date 1972)

Allen D. Goldhamer (essay date 1973)

SOURCE: Goldhamer, Allen D. “Everyman: A Dramatization of Death.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59, no.

(The entire section is 6748 words.)

Thomas J. Jambeck (essay date 1977)

(The entire section is 9093 words.)

Phoebe S. Spinrad (essay date 1985)

(The entire section is 4280 words.)

(The entire section is 7896 words.)

Murdo William McRae (essay date 1986)

[In the following essay, McRae examines Everyman's portrayal of the priesthood.]

(The entire section is 1710 words.)

Ron Tanner (essay date 1991)

(The entire section is 4902 words.)

David Mills (essay date 1995)

(The entire section is 9280 words.)

Compares Mankind and Everyman based on their performance on stage and their dependence on the

(The entire section is 269 words.)

(The entire section is 735 words.)

Drama in the Fifteenth Century

(The entire section is 732 words.)

Everyman: Morality Play Summary

Take example, all ye that this do hear or see

Everyman: Morality Play Glossary

Everyman: Morality Play Quotes and Analysis

Everyman: Morality Play Summary and Analysis of Section 1 (l.1-183)

How transitory we be all day. (l.5-6)

“Every man liveth so after his own pleasure,

And yet of their life they be nothing sure” (l.40-1)

Everyman: Morality Play Summary and Analysis of Section 2 (l.184-462)

I would to God I had never be get!

For in faith, and thou go to hell,

I will not forsake thee by the way.

Left alone again, Everyman makes another soliloquy. He realizes that

Fair words maketh fools fain.