EVERYMAN

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.
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 Knowledgeaccompanies 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 Angelappears 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.

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

One of the second group of characters who deserts Everyman in the second half of the play.
Discretion

One of the second group of characters who deserts Everyman in the second half of the play.
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

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

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.
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
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 Everymanwas published.

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 Everyman respectively), but there are also more general types (such
as Fellowship and Cousinfrom 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 Everyman and 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.

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 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 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 Everyman would 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.