The Work
Everyman is a late medieval English morality play of anonymous authorship, surviving in four printed editions from around 1510-1530 (the printers Pynson and John Skot both produced versions) and closely related to the Dutch play Elckerlijc (c. 1495), whose priority over the English version has been debated but is now generally accepted by scholars. The play is approximately 920 lines of rhyming couplets and alternating verse patterns, divided into a single continuous dramatic action lasting approximately fifty minutes in performance.
The play's dramatic situation is simple and unvarying: God sends Death to summon Everyman to give a reckoning of his life before the divine judgment seat. Everyman, terrified, attempts to find a companion to accompany him on his journey. Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Goods (material wealth) all refuse, each for reasons that expose the limits of worldly relationships and possessions. Knowledge joins him and leads him to Confession, from whom he receives penance. Five Wits, Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Knowledge all accompany him to his grave - but all abandon him at the last, including Knowledge. Only Good Deeds - who has been too weak to move while Everyman was in sin but grows stronger as he is shriven - accompanies him into the grave and before the judgment seat.
The play has been revived continuously since its rediscovery in the nineteenth century and is performed more frequently than any other surviving medieval English play.
Biblical Engagement
Hebrews 9:27 ('And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment') is the play's theological premise and the theological message of Death's summoning speech: 'Every man I will beset that liveth beastly / Out of God's laws, and dreadeth not folly. / He that loveth riches I will strike with my dart, / His sight to blind, and from heaven to depart - / Except that Alms-doing be his good friend, / In hell for to dwell, world without end.' The inevitability of death and the necessity of subsequent judgment are the doctrinal pillars on which the entire dramatic action rests.
Matthew 25:14-30 (the parable of the talents) is the dominant implicit text behind the 'reckoning' that God demands. In the parable, the master returns and demands an account of what the servants have done with what was entrusted to them; in the play, God sends Death to demand exactly such an account from Everyman. The language of 'reckoning' - Everyman's account-book of his deeds - draws on the commercial vocabulary of the parable and on the broader medieval tradition of the account-book of deeds that would be presented at the Last Judgment.
Revelation 20:12 ('And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works') is the eschatological image that underlies the play's judgment theology. The 'books' of Revelation 20 - the records of deeds - are the theological basis for Everyman's account-book, and the image of standing before God to be judged according to works is the play's climactic dramatic scene (which occurs offstage, signaled by the angels who receive Everyman).
The Catholic sacramental theology of penance is the operative theological framework for the play's middle section. Everyman's encounter with Confession - and the reception of the penance that Good Deeds recommends - reflects the medieval doctrine of the sacrament of penance: contrition, confession, and satisfaction (penance) as the three parts of the sacramental process by which the sinner is restored to a state of grace that enables Good Deeds to accompany him to judgment. The play is, in this sense, a dramatization of medieval Catholic soteriology: salvation through sacramental grace cooperating with human moral effort.
The Eucharist enters explicitly in the play's final sequence, where the Doctor figure (a priestly instructor) urges the audience to 'Take example here by this morality, / How we shall bring our soul at liberty, / Keep well the Hour of Death in memory, / And remember your soul be prepared, / For it is brought by Christ's precious grace.' The sacramental system - penance and Eucharist - is the theological means by which Everyman's Good Deeds are enabled.
Author and Context
The play's authorship is anonymous; the relationship to the Dutch Elckerlijc remains debated, though most scholars now hold that Elckerlijc is the original and Everyman the translation/adaptation. The English play shows evidence of adaptation: some passages read more naturally as translations from Dutch than as original English composition.
The play was written in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, in the context of a flourishing tradition of didactic Christian theater in the Netherlands and England. The morality play tradition - in which abstract moral and spiritual qualities were personified as dramatic characters - was the dominant form of pre-Reformation religious theater, and Everyman is its masterpiece: the play that reduces the tradition to its essential structure and performs it with the greatest economy and impact.
The social context of the play's original performance is significant: it was written for lay audiences, not for scholars or clergy, and its theology is popular rather than sophisticated. The message is simple, urgent, and practical: death is coming, worldly goods and relationships will not help you, the sacraments of the church will, and only a life lived in accordance with God's law will produce the Good Deeds that can accompany you to judgment.
Structure and Allegory
The play's allegorical method is consistent and transparent: every character represents what their name says they represent, and the dramatic action is a sustained theological argument about what actually matters in the face of death. The progression of characters who desert Everyman - Fellowship, Kindred, Goods, Beauty, Strength, Discretion, Knowledge - is carefully ordered: the worldly relationships go first, then the natural endowments, then even the spiritual capacities, because in the moment of actual death everything falls away except the moral quality of one's life (Good Deeds) and the grace received through the sacraments.
The play's final scene - in which Everyman descends into the grave and a Doctor delivers the moral directly to the audience - is one of the most direct fourth-wall breaks in medieval drama and one of the most effective. The homiletic frame that the Doctor provides makes explicit what the play has dramatized: take this as a warning, prepare your souls, and remember that in death only Good Deeds will accompany you.
Reception History
The play was rediscovered and edited by Wilhelm Creizenach in the nineteenth century and quickly became the most frequently studied and revived of all medieval English plays. William Poel's 1901 production in London (with Everyman played by a woman) established the modern staging tradition and introduced the play to Edwardian theater-goers. It has been performed in cathedrals, churches, theaters, and schools across the English-speaking world ever since, and remains the most reliable gateway to medieval Christian dramatic literature.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal's German adaptation (1911) - Jedermann - which transforms the play into a more explicitly Catholic elaboration, has been performed annually at the Salzburg Festival since 1920 and is perhaps the most frequently performed play in the German-language theatrical tradition.
Theological Significance
The play's theological significance lies in its dramatization of the medieval Catholic understanding of the Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Its insistence that Good Deeds - moral conduct sustained throughout life and strengthened by the sacraments - is the only companion at death is a concentrated statement of the medieval soteriology that Luther would challenge with his doctrine of justification by faith alone. Everyman can be read as the theological position that the Reformation was responding to.
Legacy
The play's legacy is primarily theatrical: it established a model of serious religious drama that later playwrights - from Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral to Brian Friel's Translations - have drawn on and transformed. Its simple structure and powerful emotional logic have made it perennially effective in performance, and its central dramatic question - what will accompany you at death? - retains its urgency for every generation.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should work with Hebrews 9:27-28 (once to die, then judgment), Matthew 25:14-30 (talents and reckoning), Revelation 20:11-15 (Great White Throne judgment), Psalm 23 (the LORD my shepherd through the valley of the shadow of death), Luke 16:19-31 (Dives and Lazarus - what wealth does and does not do at death), and Matthew 25:31-46 (sheep and goats - judgment by acts of mercy).
Further Reading
- A.C. Cawley (ed.), Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays (Dent/Dutton, 1956) - the standard student edition. - Thomas F. Van Laan, 'Everyman: A Structural Analysis' (PMLA, 1963) - the most influential scholarly reading of the play's architecture. - Peter Happé, English Drama Before Shakespeare (1999) - essential context for the morality play tradition.