(ca. 1500) medieval drama
Though the author of the English play Everyman is unknown, he was probably an Englishman who translated it from a copy of a Dutch play of the same name at the beginning of the 16th century. Everyman is an example of a morality play, a type of medieval drama that addressed the questions of how to live a good Christian life and how best to prepare for death.
Everyman conveys the message that preparation for death requires giving up worldly possessions, repenting of sins, asking God for mercy, and submitting oneself to be judged on the merit of works, or good deeds. Everyman (who, as his name suggests, represents the average person) is summoned by Death and finds he is not ready to be called to God for his “reckoning,” for he has spent his life pursuing wealth. One by one, the friends Everyman calls upon for help desert him, and in his increasing isolation and despair he learns finally that only knowledge and good deeds will benefit him in the final judgment. The play teaches that knowledge includes both self-knowledge, arrived at by using the five wits or senses, and knowledge of God, made possible only through humility.
The story-type of the false friends first appears in an oriental collection of fables called Barlaam and Josaphat, which was a popular sourcebook for medieval sermons. Everyman is often praised for its natural language, which is not elevated or obscure. The play makes the moral points that death is the end of all things, and wrongdoing, while it may be enjoyable at the moment, always carries penalties in the end. Scholar A. C. Cawley calls Everyman “one of the finest, if not one of the most typical, of medieval Catholic moral plays.” See also William langland.
Editions of Everyman
Cawley, A. C., ed. Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays. New York: Everyman’s Library, 1965.
Coldewey, John C., ed. Early English Drama: An Anthology. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993.
Conley, John, et al., eds. The Mirror of Everyman’s Salvation. Amsterdam: Rodopi Editions, 1985.
Works about Everyman
Beadle, Richard, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Gilman, Donald, ed. Everyman & Company. New York: AMS Press, 1989.
Wickham, Glynne. The Medieval Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
