Everyman

Everyman is an English morality play from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, of unknown authorship, in which God, displeased that mankind has grown too absorbed in worldly riches, sends Death to summon the character Everyman to give an account of his life before God's judgment. Faced with sudden death, Everyman begs first for more time and then for company on the journey, and in turn asks Fellowship, Kindred and Goods, personifications of friendship, family and wealth, to accompany him, only to have each refuse once they understand that the journey is to the grave. Only Good Deeds, who has lain weak and neglected because of Everyman's sinful life, is able to accompany him, and even Good Deeds must first be strengthened by Knowledge and by Everyman's confession and repentance before the two can descend into the grave together while the other virtues remain behind. Structured as a sequence of allegorical encounters rather than a conventional plot, the play was designed to dramatize the doctrine that only a person's own good deeds, and not friendship, family or wealth, can accompany them past death. Everyman is the best known and most frequently revived example of the medieval English morality play, and its allegorical death-summons structure has been reworked by later dramatists into the twenty-first century.