1. Everyman
A Morality Play

2. Everyman Morality Play Late medieval genre
Encouraged by the church and civil authorities because they taught social and moral values through amusing dramatic actions.
Morality characters are allegorical; plot’s action must be interpreted as teaching something about the human condition.
Often dramatize man’s struggle to avoid vice and seek virtue.

3. Everyman
In England:
Dramatized the progress of the Christian’s life from
innocence sin
sin repentance
repentance salvation
Dramatized the progress of the Christian’s life
from innocence to sin, and from sin to repentance and salvation.

4. Everyman
Allegory
Form of extended metaphor in which objects and persons within a narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself.
Two levels of meaning
Literal
What the figures do in the narrative
Symbolic
What the figures stand for, outside the narrative

5. Everyman Allegory May involve personification of Abstract qualities
Truth, Beauty
An event
Death
Another sort of abstraction
In Spenser’s Faerie Queen
Una = the one True Church
Historical personage
Piers Plowman = Christ

6. Everyman
Allegory
Characters, events, and setting may be historical or fictitious.
Test is that characters, etc., must represent meanings independent of the action described in the surface story.

7. Everyman Allegory On the surface:
Everyman is about a man who sets out on a journey and the people he meets.
Book I of the Faerie Queene is about a knight killing a dragon and rescuing a princess.

8. Everyman
Allegory
On the allegorical level both stories concern the duties of a Christian and the way to achieve salvation.

9. Everyman
Allegory
Frequently (but not always) concerned with matters of great importance.
Life and death
Damnation and salvation
Social or personal morality and immorality
Also used for satiric purposes.

10. Everyman Allegory is used throughout the play The names of characters
Sins and bonds that tie Good Deeds to the ground
Confession is a river as well as a Holy Man
Contrition is a garment
Death is a literal hole in the ground

11. Everyman Reflects views of the medieval church:
Life is a struggle between good and evil.
Salvation is the central goal of life.
Things of this world are fleeting and insignificant.
The Church is a necessary guide to salvation.

12. Everyman Key question the playwright addresses:
What must a man do to be saved?

13. Everyman Characters Everyman God Death
Allegorical representations of the worldly things and spiritual attributes which will affect his salvation

14. Everyman
The playwright intends the central character (Everyman) to represent every human being
Death is a universal human experience.

15. Everyman Death appears unexpectedly in Everyman.
Suggests that one should always be prepared at any time to die.
Everyman is shocked when Death arrives.
He is not prepared for his reckoning with God.

16. Everyman In time of need, he is deserted by His casual companions
His kinsmen
His wealth
He can take none of these things with him to the grave

17. Everyman
Everyman can only take with him what he has given: his Good Deeds.
However, his Good Deeds are sick and weakly.
His sins have rendered her too weak to stand
He has neglected Good Deeds
Has placed too much emphasis on things such as Fellowship and Goods.

18. Everyman
Goods
Immobilized because the chests and bags of gold are lying upon him
Suggests that earthly possessions weigh one down in the quest for salvation.
If Everyman had loved Goods less/more moderately and had given some to the poor, he would not be weighted down by them now.

19. Everyman
Recurring point is made that man can take nothing with him from this world that he has received, only what he has given.
Once Everyman goes through the various offices of the Church, his Good Deeds can rise and speak for him.
Having been redeemed, Everyman and his Good Deeds descend into the grave.

20. Everyman Doctor comes to stage to reiterate the moral of the story:
“For, after death, amends man no man make.”