Everyman

Everyman

  • Submitted By: rubenjrod
  • Date Submitted: 02/26/2014 8:58 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1529
  • Page: 7
  • Views: 1

Everyman is an English morality play written sometime near the end of the 15th century. It is a dialogue showcasing various apparitions—God, Death, Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, Goods, Good Deeds, Knowledge, Confession, Beauty, Strength, Discretion, Five Wits—existing in congress with a character named Everyman who is in essence every man (and possibly every woman); a story which tells of a member of the human race in assembly with his vices and virtues. All of these abstract ideas come together to teach those reading/viewing the play certain moral lessons, in particular, non-secular/dogmatic lessons about our judgement in the eyes of God. As a play Everyman is simple, it is easy to digest and narrow in focus. However, in studying Everyman’s use of style and of language, and the surrounding history and culture of its birth, and the way in which Everyman grabs hold of humanities’ innate fear of death, we can better understand the culture and people of Everyman’s time and therefore its importance as formative english literature. For “the study of theatre as a cultural institution, whether educational or entertaining in purpose, can be a tool in understanding cultural mentality” (Knoell 2).
It’s important to note: Everyman may not be a wholly original piece. A Dutch morality play titled Elckerlijc existed as early as 1495 and tells of another “Everyman” in a similar story. Which copied which has yet to be conclusively verified but it’s likely that Everyman is an adaptation of Elckerlijc and not the other way around. That being said, Everyman is an ideal example of a medieval morality play and “it is clear from the text that Everyman remains similar to the Medieval dramatic ideas of didacticism and use of allegory” (Knoell 13).
The play opens with God proclaiming his dissatisfaction with humanity. He states: “... all the creatures be to me unkind” and “Everyman liveth so after his own pleasure,/ And yet of their life they be nothing sure”—a...

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