Omar Abd-ElNasser

Everyman - Study Guide

No author is known for the play Everyman, and its history is the subject of some academic debate. A Dutch version of the play, called Elckerlijc, exists with a surviving printing dating from 1495. Four English editions of the work—two fragments and two editions with different word choices published by John Skot—have survived to the present. All four date from between 1500 and 1530. The scholarly consensus is that the English version of the play is a translation of the Dutch version. No author or translator is known for the English version; the information is lost to history. The Dutch version of the play is attributed in one of its translations to an author known only as Petrus from Diest. No further information about this person exists.

Overview

Author

Anonymous

Published

15th Century

Type

Play

Genre

Allegory, Drama, Religion

About the Title

The title Everyman is a reference to the title character of the play. He represents all of humanity, who must leave behind worldly concerns and make a moral accounting before God.

Plot Summary

Visit from Death

In an introduction a Messenger asks for the audience's attention. The action begins with God complaining that men have become thoroughly wicked and have taken for granted everything He has given them. He summons Death and commands him to bring Everyman to accounting.

Death obeys and comes upon Everyman walking alone. He asks Everyman if he has forgotten God, and tells him he must make a pilgrimage to the afterlife to be judged. This will be a journey from which he can never return. Everyman stalls, begging for more time. He complains he was not expecting Death. An exasperated Death tells him he should have known better and gives him a brief time to prepare himself.

Earthly Friends

Everyman laments his fate. He asks Fellowship, who represents his earthly friends, for help. Fellowship declares he would walk through hell with Everyman. However, he quickly changes his position when he realizes the afterlife is actually where Everyman is going. He says he will be with Everyman if he wants to enjoy life, but he will not go on this journey with him. Everyman turns to Kindred and Cousin, who make similar promises, but also abandon him when they learn where he is going. Everyman calls out to Goods, who represents his wealth and worldly possessions, saying he loved Goods best of all. Goods says he can fix any earthly problem but will only hurt Everyman's case with God, as love of wealth is a trap that damns souls.

Everyman calls out to Good-Deeds to come with him and speak to God. She says she would if she were not so weak from the weight of his sin. She directs him to her sister Knowledge, who will guide him. Knowledge brings Everyman to see Confession, who gives Everyman a penance to absolve his sins. Everyman performs his penance and prays to God for forgiveness. Once this is done, Good-Deeds is healed and able to come with him.

Knowledge and Good-Deeds advise Everyman to gather virtues to himself: Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five-Wits. The virtues urge Everyman to receive communion and extreme unction before he dies. Five-Wits and Knowledge discuss sacraments and how priests are God's actors on Earth, acknowledging the soul cannot receive salvation without their vital work. Everyman returns from the sacraments ready to go to his grave, but his earthly virtues—Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five-Wits—leave him as he dies. Knowledge stays with him until the end, but she cannot follow him after death. However, she hears the angels sing and knows Good-Deeds has gone with Everyman to heaven, where he has been saved.

Salvation

An angel affirms that Everyman has been saved, and a Doctor reiterates the lesson of the play:

Only Good-Deeds and no earthly possession, relation, or virtue may stand with a person's soul before God.
Good-Deeds must be robust enough to stand God's scrutiny.

There will be no chance to change after death. Those found wanting will be cast into eternal damnation and those who are righteous will be crowned in heaven.

Characters

Everyman

Everyman represents all of humanity. He has lived a sinful life during which he sought out pleasure and accumulated wealth. He did not engage in charity, nor did he consider his immortal soul. When Death comes to him, he begs, stalls, and tries to bribe his way out of consequences. He is upset that his friends and family will not help him though it is clear in their position he would do the same. Although Everyman begins the play afraid, confused, and hurt, he becomes calmer and braver through the faithfulness of Good-Deeds and the moral guidance of Knowledge. He is genuinely grateful for their friendship. Confession and communion soothe his soul, and by the end of the play, he is ready to die. He is distressed that his Strength, Beauty, Discretion, and Five-Wits will not come to the grave, but he is comforted by Knowledge and Good-Deeds. He ascends from the grave into heaven and is saved.

Death

Death travels at God's command. Death boasts about how he will "beset all who liveth beastly," with the implication that his power over the righteous is limited. Death will accept no bribery and chastises Everyman that he should have known Death would always come. Death is implacable (not able to be appeased) and repeats his unrelenting message. He comes for every person; this is his mission from God.

Good-Deeds

Good-Deeds is earnest and true. She is the only character who is willing and able to come with Everyman after death to plead his case before God. She wants to help Everyman even when she is too weak to do so. She directs him to her sister, Knowledge, who provides Everyman with the guidance to achieve salvation. The state in which Good-Deeds is introduced is an important moral feature of the play. Because Everyman has been miserly and wicked, she is too small and weak to move, and the weight of his sin crushes her down. As Everyman pursues penance and righteousness, she becomes strong enough to stand as his advocate. Without a proper religious life and the intervention of the Church, she would have been unable to help him.

Knowledge

Like Good-Deeds, Knowledge is a wise and virtuous guide for Everyman. She represents knowledge in the specific sense of knowing the difference between right and wrong, and she guides Everyman to religion and correct behavior. Though she cannot follow Everyman after his death, she stays with him when all his other earthly friends have left him. He responds to her with genuine gratitude, and she stays by his grave after he passes.

God

God appears only once in the play to establish the moral state of humanity and to send Death for Everyman. Still, He is a constant presence in Everyman's quest for salvation. Everything that happens in the play is set out by God's design. He has laid out the conditions of Everyman's redemption and the path by which redemption can be accomplished. He has given power to His earthly representatives, the clergy. In the end, Everyman's reward is to be with Him.

Symbols

Allegorical Characters

Everyman is a famously allegorical work. With the exception of God, the Angel, the Messenger, and the Doctor, every character in the play should be read as standing in for a group of people or an abstract concept. Each of these characters is named for what they represent. Everyman himself, as his name states, represents every man or every member of humanity, with appetites, fears, and flaws common to all people. Some allegorical characters, such as Death, Good-Deeds, and Fellowship, are readily comprehensible to a modern audience, but others, such as Five-Wits, require slightly more explanation.

Everyman represents all people.
Death represents the end of life, which often comes suddenly and cannot be avoided or reasoned with.
Fellowship represents Everyman's friends in life, who are quick to turn their back on him in hard times.
Kindred and Cousin represent Everyman's family.
Goods, who claims he can solve any worldly problem, represents Everyman's wealth and possessions. Though Everyman has loved Goods best, love of Goods is a moral trap that has led him toward damnation.
Good-Deeds represents the good Everyman has done in life. At first she cannot move to help him plead his case before God because Everyman's sin weighs her down. She alone can go with him to the afterlife and help him when facing God's judgment.
Knowledge represents moral understanding of the difference between good and evil. She directs Everyman to a virtuous life and to the sacraments.
Confession is described as a holy man to whom Everyman should bow. He represents the sacrament of confession, which allows for the absolution of sins.
Beauty represents earthly beauty. While she is a good companion to Everyman, she will abandon him as he heads for the grave. Her choice represents the decline of aging.
Strength represents physical strength. Like Beauty, she will not go with Everyman to death, and her absence represents frailty as death approaches.
Discretion represents Everyman's ability to make wise decisions. Discretion departs after Strength, saying it is always so. His absence represents a lack of agency in one's twilight years.
Five-Wits represents Everyman's ability to perceive and understand. The five wits are traditionally defined as common sense (or "wit"), imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory. The term is related to the phrase "to have one's wits about them." Though Everyman loves him best of his new companions, Five-Wits also leaves, representing the difference between spiritual knowledge and worldly intelligence as well as the onset of dementia.

Pilgrimage

Throughout the play, Everyman's impending death is referred to as a "pilgrimage." This term characterizes Everyman's death as a holy journey he undertakes rather than something that happens to him. The responsibility for the quality of Everyman's death and subsequent judgment is placed on Everyman himself. It also casts the event not in terms of tragedy or injustice but in terms of a holy penance or quest to become more virtuous before God. In the play Death is not an end but a journey to another world. Though Everyman cannot return, he has emphatically not ceased to be. He has merely gone to be with God. The conceit (literary figure) also reminds the audience of the journey of life on which we are all embarked, encouraging us to consider our own journeys as pilgrimages.

Themes

Salvation

Salvation is both the central theme and the plot of Everyman. The story itself is an allegory for the path of a human soul to salvation. It is intended as moral and religious instruction for the audience.

God's concern that Everyman has not yet earned salvation is the impetus for the play's action. The story follows Everyman as he turns away from mortal concerns toward heavenly virtues. When Death first finds Everyman, he is comedically ignorant of his spiritual obligations, having focused on pleasure and wealth throughout his life. He has not considered death or his soul.

Fear of death and of judgment spur Everyman to go to his worldly friends and possessions, but none of them will help him. Through this trial he comes to realize how much he has neglected spiritual matters. Goods in particular chides Everyman for the emphasis he put on wealth during his life. Goods says if Everyman had loved him less, Everyman would be in a better position with God. When Everyman accuses Goods of having betrayed him, Goods points out he could never have corrupted Everyman if Everyman had not been so greedy. This is a rude spiritual awakening for Everyman.

Everyman turns to his neglected spiritual side, seeking out Good-Deeds, who is faithful and true but too weak to help him. However, her sister Knowledge guides him. He must show humility before Confession and endure his penance with patience and fortitude. Through this process, Everyman undergoes a spiritual evolution and finds himself genuinely glad where before he had been in mortal terror. Everyman gains earthly virtues and participates in the sacraments of the church. As he secures his soul and grows closer to God, he takes greater comfort in God's plan despite his mortality. Finally, he declares himself ready to die.

In the end, Everyman goes willingly to God, having cleansed himself of his wrongdoing, and is accepted into Heaven. Left behind on Earth, Knowledge rejoices in his salvation.

Throughout the play the moral is repeated to ensure the audience gets the message: their souls are in the same peril as Everyman's unless they mend their ways. They will need to have their good deeds in order and the blessings of the church. If they have, through the mercy of God, salvation is available to every man.

Impermanence of Worldly Things

Everyman is ultimately a play about mortality. Everyman is initially motivated by his fear of Death. However, he finds again and again that those mortal things he has relied on abandon him at the hour of death. "Take example," he says to the audience at one point, "all ye that this do hear or see / How they that I loved best do forsake me." This impermanence is always presented in contrast to the eternal rewards of heaven.

When death is discussed in the play, it is referred to as a pilgrimage rather than an end. Death talks about it as a journey from which Everyman cannot return. Throughout the play Everyman seeks something he can bring with him into the afterlife. The answer is only his Good-Deeds, but the search illuminates many who will not or cannot join his voyage.

The first group of companions Everyman fails to bring with him are his worldly concerns: Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Goods. All of these betray Everyman despite their proclamations of support and turn out to have been false friends. His friends and family refuse to join him in adversity, and Goods reveals himself to be a trap for mortal souls. Goods in particular addresses his relationship to a mortal and dying Everyman. He makes clear he will stay in the world after Everyman leaves it and go into new hands, just as he came to Everyman's.

As Everyman grows in his spiritual understanding through Knowledge and Good-Deeds, he gains new companions: Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five-Wits. These characters represent virtues Everyman possesses as a good man. However, in the end they must also leave him as his mind and body fail and he goes to his grave. Though it has been a good thing for him to earn their companionship, it cannot last. Everyman responds to this with hurt, much as he did with his worldly friends. He had come to trust them. Yet, they were things of the world and will not pass into the afterlife.

However, in the end, Everyman can take nothing with him but the good deeds he has done. It is Good-Deeds who will argue for his salvation. Even Knowledge must stay behind.

Importance of the Church

Though good deeds are the mechanism of Everyman's salvation, his redemption would be impossible without the Church. His redemption begins with Confession and penance and continues in the form of the holy sacraments. The power and obligations of priests are discussed at length by the two characters representing the ability to know and think. Five-Wits declares

"The priest bindeth and unbindeth all bands,

Both in earth and in heaven;

Thou ministers all the sacraments seven ...

No remedy we find under God

But all only priesthood.

Everyman, God gave priests that dignity,

And setteth them in his stead among us to be;

Thus be they above angels in degree."

By giving priests the power to administer the sacraments, God has made them the keepers of human souls. They are the only people who can absolve the sins that bind Good-Deeds. Though Knowledge comes to Everyman before he participates in religion, she directs him toward it with enthusiastic support. Without the work of the Church, Everyman would not have been able to get into heaven even if his good works had been more robust.

Though the play emphasizes the need for the audience to focus on good works as the path to salvation, it also acknowledges the vital importance of religion.

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