Every Man Lines 1 - 523
Plot 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 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.
Character List: 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.
Character List: 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.
Major Themes: 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.
Character List: 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.
Major Themes: 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.
Major Themes: 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.
Major Themes: 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.
Context - Historical Background
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.
Character List: 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.
Character List: 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.
Character List: 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.
Character List: Knowledge
Guides Everyman from around the middle of the play, and leads him to Confession. 'Knowledge' is perhaps best defined as 'acknowledgement of sin'.
Major 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.
Major Themes: 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.
Character List: 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.
Major Themes: 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.
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.
Character List: 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.
Morality Play
These 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.