Everyman: A Dramatization of Death

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SOURCE: Goldhamer, Allen D. “Everyman: A Dramatization of Death.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59, no. 1 (February 1973): 87-98.

[In the following essay, Goldhamer examines the psychological view of Everyman as a work regarding death as a learning experience.]

Everyman is commonly regarded as the finest of morality plays and one of the greatest medieval dramas. Modern scholarship on the play has two general concerns. A long-standing question has been raised as to its relationship to the Dutch play Elckerlijc: there has been disagreement as to whether one was the direct source of the other or if both plays derived from a lost source.1 A second question has been Everyman's position in medieval theology, particularly the play's presentation of the doctrine of salvation and its relation to or derivation from various medieval works on the subject of death, especially within the ars moriendi tradition. Many analogues have been found not merely for the doctrine of the play but also for its dramatic structure.2

Studies have successfully placed Everyman within the medieval theological outlook on death and have indicated the doctrinal meaning of such personages in the play as Knowledge and Good Deeds. It is not the intention of this article to review or to take direct issue with such findings for they present an important understanding of the play. However, Everyman has much additional significance and power. Even for a modern audience which does not necessarily subscribe to the play's solution of its protagonist's problems, the experience of witnessing the play is a strong one. In order to understand the play's greatness, one should bear in mind that Everyman's presentation of death is highly unusual. The dramatization of death usually occupies the latter portion of the final act of a play and is often handled sensationally or sentimentally. In Everyman the hero begins to die near the opening of the play, and the focus of the drama is on a man involved in the stages of death. However, Everyman's end is not the result of a lingering illness. The author avoids all reference to physical degeneration until the very end; he does this in order to focus on the hero's attitudes towards the process he is undergoing.

In presenting this drama of a dying man, the author drew upon medieval death literature, as previous studies have indicated. But of equal significance to the identity of his source material is his alteration of it. In order to demonstrate that a man can come to terms with his own death, the playwright severely alters the tone of medieval death literature and at the same time pays very close attention to the psychology of his hero. A modern clinical study to which I shall have recourse, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's On Death and Dying, argues that dying persons proceed through a series of attitudes towards death.3 The similarity between the stages of death pointed out by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and those through which Everyman passes reinforces the notion that the author of Everyman possessed profound insight into the mind of a dying person. We tend to view with scepticism and even alarm the application of modern psychology to early literary works. It is therefore necessary to emphasize at the outset what should be rather obvious: There is no reason for us to assume that earlier ages possessed any less profound insight than our own into the matter of death.

The author of Everyman presents the hero's changing attitudes towards death and towards himself as the result of a series of encounters with other characters. In order to trace these changing attitudes, this article will examine the encounters of Everyman in the order in which they occur in the play. After it identifies each encounter, the article will indicate the author's departure from relevant medieval death literature and will discuss the hero's attitudes. By offering a profound psychological underpinning for traditional medieval views on death, the author of Everyman produced a work which is a product of its time yet transcends it.

At the play's opening, God, angry that man lives in sin and ignores him, sends Death to Everyman. The allegorical figure of Death is not unique to Everyman; he appears in other medieval plays. In Ludus Coventriae he comes to take Herod,4 and in The Castle of Perseverance, Death, about to reveal himself to mankind, says, “In all his works man is foolish. Much of his life he hath misspent.”5 In both of these dramas, however, the death figure does not appear until the play itself is nearing its end. Furthermore, the role of Death in these plays differs from his role in Everyman. In Ludus Coventriae Death addresses himself directly to the spectator (“See that you dread me night and day” [p. 177, l. 274]), and in The Castle of Perseverance Death does the same, then pierces the heart of Mankind. In neither instance is there an interchange between killer and victim. But in Everyman, Death's viewpoint is revealed not through a lecture to the audience but largely in response to Everyman's questions. Thus in Everyman Death appears both as an agent of vengeance and as the first teacher of the hero. This is entirely appropriate to a drama which emphasizes death as a learning experience.

Death informs Everyman that he is God's messenger and that Everyman must make a journey to give God a reckoning. This warning that man must make a reckoning to God was a staple of cautionary literature on death. The admonition was often accompanied by a vision of the discomfort of the man being judged: “We must stand, frightened, before the judgment of the Lord and recite all we did and thought, seeing as though before our criminal gaze all our crimes—the books of consciousness thrown open in our faces. In bitter tears and bursting sobs we will find gone all means for ministering to us.”6 In Everyman, although Death warns the hero that “before God thou shalt answer” (107),7 there is no obvious, didactic play upon the terrible scene of judgment. Rather, Everyman is so very frightened by his immediate future—the journey he must make—that he does not consider his judgment after death. Thus the sense of his present, overwhelming problems is kept before the viewer.

Everyman does not recognize Death: “I know thee not. What messenger art thou?” (114). This failure of recognition stems in part from Death's sudden appearance to the hero. The notion of death's sudden appearance was also a commonplace of medieval literature. George Gascoigne translates a passage from Innocent III's De Contemptu Mundi: “Mishapes fall sodeynly when they are least suspected or loked for. Sodeynly calamytie rusheth in at dores, sicknesse invadeth a man, and death steppes in, whome no man can eskape.”8 Hélinant writes in Les Vers de la Mort, “You take that one in his youth, at 28 or 30 years, who considers himself to be in his prime.”9 The ideas which are emphasized here—death appears when least expected; the man visited by death is often in his prime—are taken over by the author of Everyman but are presented with an understatement that lends them far more force than they usually have: “O Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind!” (119).

Death has to inform Everyman of his identity. The nature of Death's message should have suggested it to the hero. Everyman's failure to recognize him betrays his refusal to face death, and this failure of man to consider his own death is another commonplace of medieval literature. The speaker in Lydgate's “Dance of Death” cautions the reader: “O ye folks, hard-hearted as a stone, which to the world have turned entirely, as though it should last forever, where is your intelligence and providence to see beforehand the sudden violence of cruel death?”10 Here, as in Everyman, the failure to consider death is attributed to concern for worldly matters. But whereas the poem's preacher accuses his listeners of being “hard-hearted as a stone,” the author of Everyman chose a more effective metaphor, which he plays on throughout the drama: Everyman is “blind,” as is his destiny. Death says, “He that loveth wealth I will strike with my dart, / His sight to blind” (76-77). A few lines later Everyman says, “To give a reckoning longer leisure I crave; / This blind matter troubleth my wit” (101-102). Unlike the “stone” simile in the passage quoted above, the “blind” metaphor indicates not only the uncertainty of Everyman's future but the reason for that uncertainty—Everyman's lack of self-knowledge.

When Everyman learns who Death is, he tries to buy time:

Yet of my goods will I give thee, if thou will be kind—
Yea, a thousand pounds shalt thou have—
If you defer this matter till another day.

(121-23)

Death's insistence that there can be no postponement is a reflection of the most common medieval statement on death: it may not be escaped. “Praised be you my lord for our sister, death of the body, from which no living man can escape,” says St. Francis.11 Eustache Deschamps declares in a ballade, “Thus surely it is with man and woman. In one moment we lose body, soul, and life.”12 In The Castle of Perseverance Death says, “Dreadful is my death-drawing; against me may no man stand;”13 in The Dance of Death Death announces, “I kill everyone; it is my way. All sons of Adam must die.”14 The author of Everyman gives very conspicuous play to the notion of death's inescapability. Death says to Everyman, “A reckoning [God] will needs have / Without any longer respite” (99-100). The idea is frequently repeated by Death that there is no escape and that the time is now (111-12, 115-18, 130, 144-45, 161, 183-84). However, the idea is presented skillfully: Death gives no lengthy speeches on this topic but returns to it as he counters Everyman's dismayed responses. Some of the sense of urgency in the play is conveyed by the replies of Death to the hero (“I give thee no respite. Come hence, and don't tarry!” [130]). Thus the cautionary material itself is shaped to build the sense of urgency.

Everyman's attempt to bribe Death is a fine means of dramatizing the hero's belief in the power of his possessions, a matter of great concern later in this drama. This belief was commonly presented in death literature and can be found, in potentially dramatic form, in a fourteenth century manuscript containing an English version of the Orologium Sapientiae, a very popular work on preparation for death: “I hear that horrible voice of death saying to me in this manner: ‘Thou art the son of death; neither riches, nor reason, nor kinsmen, nor friends, may deliver thee from my hand; for thy end is come, and it is deemed, and therefore it must be done.’”15 Everyman's effort to pay off Death is a skillful dramatic presentation; it not only foreshadows an important event, the hero's conversation with Goods, but is a valuable insight: a wealthy man in a very tight situation applies a method which we suppose had worked for him in the past. Death's response to Everyman dismays the hero, not merely because it is a flat refusal to be bribed, but because it shows Death as incorruptible:

For, if I would receive gifts great,
All the world I might get;
But my custom is completely contrary.

(127-29)

Everyman's first encounter is with a figure completely out of his own milieu.

Let us pause to consider the psychological states of Everyman in this first encounter. He has learned that he is to die. His failure to recognize Death when he first appears to him was caused in part by Everyman's desire to deny what was happening to him:

To give a reckoning longer leisure I crave.

(101)

Full unready I am such reckoning to give.

(113)

Denial appears to be a common, if not universal, initial response to terminal illness. In her modern clinical study of terminally ill persons, On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identifies the first three stages of the dying process as denial, anger, and bargaining.16 Although the correspondence is by no means exact (Everyman's anger does not appear until later encounters), it is remarkable that two of these stages are clearly to be noted in Everyman's opening interview.

Kübler-Ross explains bargaining as an attempt to “buy” time, for example, by promising God that one will behave especially well. “In our individual interviews [with terminally ill persons] … we have been impressed by the number of patients who promise ‘a life dedicated to God’ or ‘a life in the service of the church’ in exchange for some additional time.”17 As the discussion of Everyman's attempt to bribe Death indicated, the author of Everyman chose to present the bargaining in a manner that would suit the personality of the hero.

In his interview with Death, Everyman was told that he might bring someone with him if he could find anyone willing to keep him company. We may therefore observe of Everyman's opening encounter that it not only has initiated his death, but at the same time has begun a learning process; Everyman learned that he might take a companion with him. His conversation with Death has also taught him the impossibility of postponement and of keeping his earthly goods forever. However, his response thus far has been to the most overwhelming piece of information: that he must die. Everyman, reacting to this knowledge, asserted the feelings common to those who learn they must die—denial and desire for delay.

Everyman's next encounter is partially a response to the information that he may bring someone with him. The hero seeks to find a friend to accompany him on the journey. The problem of the reckoning, posed in the first encounter, is at this point in the play less important to Everyman than is sharing his news and, hopefully, the voyage he must undertake. Fellowship enters and swears his friendship with words heavily ironic: “I will not forsake thee to my life's end” (213). But Everyman has some fear that the news he is about to impart will not be well received, for he says, cautiously,

If I my heart should to you reveal,
And then you turn your mind from me
And would not me comfort when ye hear me speak,
Then should I ten times sorrier be.

(224-27)

With further irony Fellowship replies, “For, in faith, and thou go to hell, / I will not forsake thee by the way” (232-33). But when Everyman finally tells him of the particular journey he must undertake, Fellowship wants no part of it:

But, if I should take such a voyage on me,
I know it well, it should be to my pain;
Also it maketh me afraid, certainly.

(249-51)

Medieval death literature repeatedly makes two remarks about friends. The true friend will encourage the dying person to consider his need for salvation: “Like as the health of every man consisteth in the end, [let] every man then much busily take heed to purvey him for to come to a good end, whiles that he hath time and leisure. To this might much well serve a fellow and true friend, devout and commendable, which in his last end [may] assist him truly; and that he comfort and courage him in steadfastness of the faith, with good patience and devotion, with good confidence and perseverance.”18 However, one is likely to discover, at the time of death, that one's friends have deserted him: “Where are all your friends who promised you fair and greeted you kindly on the paths and streets? Now … all forsake you.”19 The reason for this desertion is often not given. Occasionally, however, the dying man makes a request, which is then refused: “My friends I implored that they give me some ‘almesse’ from the abundance of their spiritual wealth and good works in my great need for my soul's well-being and also for relief and reformation of my sins; but their answer was No.”20 The firmness of the friends' refusal here is repeated in Everyman, but the request which was made of them in the excerpt above differs from the request which Everyman makes. The speaker in the poem translated above asks for “almesse,” while Everyman seeks company on the journey. Both requests cannot literally be granted. The transfer of “almesse” (meaning here “spiritual ‘credit’”) from one person to another is as impossible as Everyman's plea for companionship. But the request made by Everyman is more richly significant. The hero takes the notion of his journey quite literally at this point and hence fails to realize that what he needs from his friend is not a travelling companion but a person who can minister to him while he dies. Thus his impossible request reflects his failure, at this time in the play, to appraise his condition correctly. In other words, he seeks not what he could get but what cannot be given. The metaphor is richer than the “almesse” request above, because it not merely reveals ignorance but also points to the hero's failure to understand the precise crucial experience he is undergoing; its significance extends beyond the theological error mentioned in the poem.

Fellowship's rejection of Everyman leaves the hero in a bitter frame of mind:

          … ye would be ready!
To go to gaiety, pleasure, and play
Your mind will sooner apply,
Than to bear me company in my long journey.

(276-79)

Everyman asks Fellowship to accompany him part of the way, “till I come outside the town” (291), but Fellowship “will not a foot … go” (293). There is the suggestion here and elsewhere in this portion of the play that Fellowship not only will not make the journey with Everyman but that he resents the news which Everyman has brought. His hostile reception implies the inability of friends to accept one's terminal state. Fellowship seems most eager to depart after he hears of Everyman's condition. Thus Everyman learns something about the uniqueness of his present plight: it is treated in a hostile way by one's friends.21 However, Everyman is perhaps too stunned to remain bitter. He seems to accept their rejection of him: “Farewell, good Fellowship! For thee my heart is sore. / Adieu forever! I shall see thee no more” (299-300). Here he is learning to appraise his present state accurately and to judge its alienating effect upon others. But he is not quite ready to die alone.

Everyman's next encounter, with his relatives, dramatizes a common lament of medieval death literature: “my kin, my neighbours, my friends, my servants, be not favourable to me.”22 But unlike the dying person in this quotation, Everyman is shown to be learning at the very time he is rejected. We can observe this in the care with which Everyman broaches the subject of his impending death to Kindred and Cousin—a caution he learned from his previous encounter with Fellowship:

Now shall I show you the grief of my mind:
I was commanded by a messenger,
That is a high king's chief officer,
He bade me go on a pilgrimage to my pain.

(328-31)

Nevertheless, Everyman's relatives reject him as did Fellowship, and he dismisses them from his mind, almost peremptorily, as though it were too painful a matter to consider at length:

Ah, Jesus, is all come hereto?
Lo, fair words maketh fools fain:
They promise, and nothing will do, certainly.

(378-80)

Therefore, it is certain that, talking to his friends and relatives, Everyman has been impelled to consider and to define the experience he is undergoing:

FELLOWSHIP:
… if we took such a journey.
When should we again come?
EVERYMAN:
Nay, never again till the day of doom.

(259-61)

Everyman has clearly, and of necessity, begun to come to terms with his own situation, in part because he has needed to explain it to others.

After having been rejected by his friends and relatives, Everyman turns to his first love, the possessions he had accumulated during his life. Repeatedly he tells himself how much these things mean to him:

All my life I have loved riches.

(388)

… all my life I have had joy and pleasure in thee.

(408)

… I have thee loved; and had great pleasure All my life-days on goods and treasure.

(427-28)

A, Good, thou hast had long my heartfelt love.

(457)

The effect of these statements is both sadly humorous and moving. Everyman is a fool, but he is desperate and very human.

Everyman's love of goods finds many analogues in medieval death literature. Itself a form of covetousness, love of goods was frequently conceived as the sin most common to a dying man. Innocent III had written (Gascoigne's translation) that of the “three causes especiall that make men desirous to live and lothe to dye,” “the greatest cause is the third, which is a love and sweetenesse conceaved of this lyfe, the goods and commodyties of the same, wherewith who so is possessed, it can not be avoided, but unto him the very reme[m]bra[n]ce of death which taketh fro[m] him that he loveth, must be sower & bitter, as the scripture saith.”23

As Everyman's statements to Goods indicate, the author well presents the notion expressed by Innocent III that the dying man deeply regrets having to leave his goods. The play combines this idea with another common notion, that love of goods is harmful to the soul.

GOODS:
[Your love of me] is to thy damnation, without lying.
For my love is contrary to the love everlasting.

(429-30)

In the penitential poems of the period, the dying man often complains that his trust in goods was misplaced: “All my trust was in my goods, more than in God who sent them to me. Wealth made me very proud. Desire and pleasure overcame me. I never ceased trying to get goods. I didn't care how. I neither gave nor lent to the poor. Therefore I blame myself for my woe.”24 Not only is the love of goods a sin and hence cannot aid one's salvation, but the very possession of them will come to naught. Their ownership will pass on to someone else, a cause of great discomfort to the dying.

The psychological significance of Everyman's interview with Goods is evident. Death had warned Everyman that he himself was not subject to bribes. Now Everyman learns, from Goods himself, that they are not his to control: “Merely for a while I was lent thee” (440). The very objects of which he was before so certain and which made life pleasant—“Goods: Sir, and ye in the world have sorrow or adversity, / That can I help you to remedy shortly” (401-402)—are now of no assistance. Everyman's current situation requires an aid for death, not life.

The hero has reached a state analogous to the depression described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross as the fourth stage of the dying process.25

EVERYMAN:
Thus may I well my self hate.
Of whom shall I now counsel take?

(478-79)

The self-hatred which signals for us Everyman's depression is caused not merely by his utter failure to find a solution to his problems but also by the complete inability of those to whom he has turned to give him help. The hero's attachment to goods was more affectionate than to his friends and relatives. Goods's rejection of him is a profound blow because his own predilection, his first love, cannot aid him in his current crisis. Thus none of the objects of prior affection can ease his state. He has reconsidered the objects of his love and found them wanting. In a statement which could easily apply to Everyman himself, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross notes, “It appears that people who have gone through a life of suffering, hard work, and labor, who have raised their children and been gratified in their work, have shown greater ease in accepting death with peace and dignity compared to those who have been ambitiously controlling their environment, accumulating material goods, and a great number of social relationships but few meaningful interpersonal relationships which would have been available at the end of life.”26

Everyman's next encounter is signalled when the hero decides, rather abruptly, to turn for help to his good deeds:

Of whom shall I now counsel take?
I think that I shall never speed
Till that I go to my Good Deed.

(479-81)

The playwright's attention to Everyman's psychological state is of great importance here, because Everyman is taking the first step towards a solution of his problems. Everyman's mind moves from goods to good deeds. He sees his need, in depression, to recall his worthy contribution to life. Association of ideas—recalling his morally harmful acts, accumulating goods—leads him to think of his morally valid deeds. His death state has progressed by stages to a weighing of his moral worth. Neither his friend nor relatives could provide him with the comfort of a satisfactory assessment. Only he can perform that. Everyman attempts to come to terms with himself and does so in a moral context; that is to say, Everyman can accept his present state if he can see himself as a morally good person. It is therefore no accident that his thoughts of good deeds lead him to knowledge—a consideration and acceptance of his moral worth as an individual. One may note that the statements made by Everyman in this latter portion of the play bear a striking resemblance to those of the patients of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross whose interviews with the doctor are reported in her chapter entitled “Fifth Stage: Acceptance.”27

It is Good Deeds herself, or Everyman's contemplation of them, which leads him to knowledge of himself in a moral context:

GOOD Deeds:
I have a sister that shall go with you also,
Called Knowledge, which shall with you abide.

(519-20)

Everyman greets Knowledge with great pleasure and, it would seem, with an attitude a bit premature:

In good condition I am now in every thing.
And am wholly content with this good thing.

(524-25)

As we have said, knowledge here represents both self-analysis and its product. The former meaning stems from what is happening to Everyman within the death process. Thus far, the only profitable mental step he has taken has been to consult Good Deeds—to begin to regard himself as a worthy individual. Knowledge, self-analysis, teaches Everyman that his dying state can be dealt with mentally—by coming to know, not about friends and relatives, but about self. This state of Everyman's person is comparable to that described by Kübler-Ross as acceptance. Both authors make quite clear that “acceptance” refers both to situation and to self. Without acceptance of the latter, there can be no acceptance of the former. Although Everyman is not yet able to accept himself fully, he realizes, as seen in the lines quoted above, that he can work out a set of attitudes that will make his present state tolerable.

The peculiarly Christian procedure of Everyman's coming to terms with himself should not conceal from us the universality of his emotional problem and of his efforts to deal with it. Knowledge leads Everyman to Confession, acknowledgement of faults. Everyman can look at his weaknesses now in a new context rather than merely being depressed by them, for he sees the value of the act of self-appraisal—his own peace of mind. Everyman's act of penance, which he begins after talking to Confession, consists of beating himself; but this painful act, of reconsideration of faults, brings release. He is able to see himself as a whole person and to accept his good deeds even while admitting his weaknesses. Not only is it not difficult to envision a dying man doing this; it seems a necessary act if one is to die at peace with oneself.

The analogues for this latter portion of the play are frequently cautionary in nature. The images they present are either of the dying man bewailing his sins or of the preacher warning him that he will soon do so: “Ah, we think to live and sin for a long time and afterwards at the end to cease all our sins, to weep and repent and so to go to heaven.”28 Thus part of the power of Everyman derives from its showing precisely what the cautionary literature implies should be, but probably will not be, done. Everyman presents the dying man coming to terms with his good and bad acts and, by doing so, with death itself. The hero has come a considerable distance from the frightened figure whom Death ordered and Relatives rejected. The walking of Good Deeds indicates Everyman's ability to acknowledge his good acts, because he has acknowledged his bad ones. He is a step nearer to facing his own death successfully.

After Everyman puts on the cloak of contrition, Good Deeds and Knowledge tell him to summon—along with Discretion, Strength, and Beauty—Five Wits, which faculty is commonly mentioned in medieval death literature and is handled by the playwright for his own purposes. For example, the usual statement about the five wits is that they were given to man by God for his benefit but that man badly misuses them. In a penitential lyric, the dying man confesses, “My five wits I have often misused; I cast my sight at many vanities and often offend with my hearing; my smelling and tasting I misuse; my hands have easily sinned. Thus have I governed my five wits and in sin misspent my entire life.”29 In Everyman, however, the Five Wits are not a further cause for the dying man's despair but a means for his self-understanding and salvation.

The summoning and appearance of Discretion, Strength, Beauty, and Five Wits indicate Everyman's wholeness—his healthy state, excellent condition—within the dying process. The fact that they will journey to death with him, whereas his friend and relatives would not, once again emphasizes the point that the dying process demands a coming to terms with oneself. Thereafter Everyman visits a priest, who ministers the final rites and who is a true friend to him in his dying state.

Having come to terms with himself and with his present condition, Everyman now eagerly seeks to die:

And now, friends, let us go without longer respite.

(776)

The death is conceived of as a journey, an activity, not a passive state:

Now set each of you on this rod your hand.
And quickly follow me.

(778-79)

This description of the dying man is at odds with the usual images of physical decay and agony. In Petrarch's Secretum Meum, Augustine describes the last minutes of life in a tone and with images typical of much death literature: “We must envision the effect of death covering every part of our body, the extremities grown cold, the chest sweating fever, the side pulsing in pain, the vital spirit sinking and weeping, each glance filled with tears, the forehead contracted and pale, the cheeks sagging and discolored,” and so forth.30 One should bear in mind, in this connection, that Everyman is not portrayed as an old man, and his death is caused by Death's “dart” (76), not by lingering disease. Therefore the author is able to concentrate on Everyman's state of mind, rather than the decay of the body, and to portray that state as a journey. Helen S. Thomas indicates the play's relation to medieval journey allegories, remarking that “in Everyman the search for salvation is both a journey, though not to Jerusalem, and a lesson in the ars moriendi.31 The journey in death literature is usually conceived of as taking place after dying, when the soul travels to its destination. In Everyman, however, the psychological voyage of the hero begins long before his death and is presented as a far more active endeavor than that undertaken by most characters in journey allegories, where the dreamer-narrator is often a passive witness to the events he observes.

Everyman's new attitude towards death, a result of his own voyage, is underlined by such a remark as,

Friends, let us not turn again to this land,
Not for all the world's gold.

(790-91)

The contrast here with his earlier attitude towards Goods is obvious and striking. His perceptions have altered. He has learned.

But his learning has not ended. As he is about to enter his grave, one by one Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits leave him. Everyman is greatly saddened at their refusal to remain with him, and we observe that, even at the very end of life and having come to terms with himself, man can still feel sorrow at ceasing to be what he once was. (Everyman's sorrow here bears a similarity to what Kübler-Ross refers to as a second type of depression.)32 At the very last moment of life, Knowledge also deserts him: his awareness of self and of the process through which he has been is no longer existent or necessary. Only Good Deeds descends with him into the grave, suggesting Everyman's final, ultimate memory of himself—what he chooses to recall in his very last moment.

Thus the play contains a long series of leave-takings, beginning with Fellowship and ending with Knowledge. It dramatizes portions of the Dying Creature's lament. He says, “My worldly friends have forsaken me. I have cried and called after them to answer for me; and they have answered me full straitly and unfriendly that they neither dare nor can, nor will answer for me, nor excuse me; and shortly they be departed from me. My Good Angel first, Reason, Dread, and Conscience and my Five Wits, hasteth them from me-ward, and leaveth me destitute and alone: and where to have succour I wot not, nor help.”33 It is unnecessary to comment on Everyman's many departures from this lament. Perhaps we may summarize the differences between Everyman and the ars moriendi material from which it in part derives by suggesting that the differences are those of tone and purpose. Whereas the ars moriendi literature tends to be strident or even hysterical in tone, Everyman is serious; whereas the death literature of the Middle Ages saw its function as warning the individual that, given his sinful nature, a dignified death was a very remote possibility, Everyman presents such a death as a reality, and offers hope to the viewer.

The psychological view of Everyman is that the dying experience is a learning process. This experience is also an individualizing process. Everyman becomes a man, fully conscious of his situation, its effects on others and on himself. The focus on the interior nature of the process is seen in the fact that the latter part of the play views allegorical figures who almost exclusively represent aspects of Everyman himself. We note that the play is primarily concerned with Everyman in the last stage of death: acceptance. This is inevitable, given the didactic Christian nature of the work. The interpretation contained herein is not intended to supplant that meaning but to suggest that the play's power stems in no small way from its author's psychological understanding of the death experience. This understanding was possibly easier to come by at a time when the dying were not shut off behind hospital walls.

Finally, Everyman informs its audience of many things. We observe that the death process can be examined face to face, in a manner which neither sensationalizes nor melodramatizes it. The play shows us that death itself is a subject worthy of presentation in dramatic form. We learn that it need not be extremely painful to see someone in the process of dying. Everyman is involved in intense mental activity, and for him the experience is a learning process. The play also suggests that this experience is a very heightened one—to be wrong once is all that is necessary to teach you. There is a sense of dignified urgency throughout the play. Lastly, death is viewed as a journey. That its end need not be painful is evident. Everyman's descent to meet his final destiny may perhaps call to mind the exit of Marlowe's Faustus, unwillingly dragged by devils as a visual reminder that he has failed, where Everyman succeeded, in coming to terms with death.

Notes

  1. See Henry de Vocht, Everyman: A Comparative Study of Texts and Sources (Louvain: Librairie Universitaire, 1947); R. W. Zandvoort, “Everyman—Elckerlijc,Etudes Anglaises, 6 (Feb. 1953), 1-15; A. C. Cawley, ed., Everyman (Manchester: The University Press, 1961), pp. ix-xiii.

  2. See Cawley (pp. xiii-xxiv); John Conley, “The Doctrine of Friendship in Everyman,Speculum, 44 (July 1969), 374-382; Wallace H. Johnson, “The Double Desertion of Everyman,” American Notes and Queries, 6 (Feb. 1968), 85-87; H. Kossmann, “Felawship His Fer: A Note on Eueryman's False Friend,” English Studies, Supplement, 45 (1964), 157-160; Lawrence V. Ryan, “Doctrine and Dramatic Structure in Everyman,Speculum, 32 (Oct. 1957), 722-735; Genji Takahashi, A Study of Everyman with Special Reference to the Source of Its Plot (Japan: Ai-iku-sha, n.d.); Helen S. Thomas, “The Meaning of the Character Knowledge in Everyman,Mississippi Quarterly, 14 (Win. 1960-61), 3-13, and “Some Analogues of ‘Everyman,’” Mississippi Quarterly, 16 (Spr. 1963), 97-103; Thomas F. Van Laan, “Everyman: A Structural Analysis,” PMLA, 78 (Dec. 1963), 465-475; Henry de Vocht. (See note 1.)

  3. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (1969; rpt. New York: Macmillan Paperbacks Edition, 1970).

  4. See K. S. Block, ed., Ludus Coventriae or The Plaie called Corpus Christi, Early English Text Society, Extra Series No. 120 (1922; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1960), pp. 174-177; Cawley (p. 30, n. 63. See note 1).

  5. Mark Eccles, ed., The Macro Plays, Early English Text Society, No. 262 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), p. 85, ll. 2780-2781. In order to facilitate the reading of this article, I have translated the names of characters and all passages from Middle English and foreign languages. Citations are to editions of the works which I have translated.

  6. (?) St. Columba, “Altus Prosator,” The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, ed. Stephen Gaselee (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), p. 32, ll. 205-216.

  7. All citations, including line numbers in parentheses, refer to Cawley's edition of Everyman. I have translated and altered spelling of the Everyman passages. (See notes 1 and 4.)

  8. “The Droomme of Doomes Day,” The Complete Works of George Gascoigne, ed. John W. Cunliffe (Cambridge: The Univ. Press, 1910), 2, p. 233.

  9. Hélinant, Les Vers de la Mort, ed. Fr[edrik] Wulff and Em[manuel] Walberg, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot, 1905), pp. 23-24, st. xxxv, ll. 4-6.

  10. John Lydgate, trans., The Dance of Death, ed. Florence Warren, Early English Text Society, Original Series No, 181 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford Univ. Press, 1931), p. 2, ll. 1-6.

  11. “Il Cantico delle Creature,” Il Cantico di S. Francesco, ed. Gerolamo Fuzio (Molfetta: Tipografia Mezzina, 1965), p. 20, ll. 27-28.

  12. “Balade DCCCCLXIX,” Oeuvres Complètes de Eustache Deschamps, ed. Auguste Quex de Saint-Hilaire, Société des Anciens Textes Français, 5 (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot, 1887), p. 204, ll. 8-9.

  13. The Castle of Perseverance, ed. Mark Eccles, p. 85, ll. 2791-2792. (See note 5.)

  14. The Dance of Death, ed. Florence Warren, p. 80, ll. 39-40. (The lines here quoted are from a French version. British Museum Additional MS. 38858. See note 10.)

  15. “A Chapter Taken from the Orologium Sapientiae,The Book of the Craft of Dying and Other Early English Tracts Concerning Death, ed. Frances M. M. Comper (London; Longmans, Green, 1917), pp. 107-108.

  16. Kübler-Ross, chs. 3, 4, 5. (See note 3.)

  17. Kübler-Ross, p. 84. (See note 3.)

  18. “The Art and Craft to Know Well to Die,” Comper, p. 87. (See note 15.)

  19. “Death,” An Old English Miscellany, ed. Rev. Richard Morris, Early English Text Society, Original Series No. 49 (London: N. Trübner, 1872), p. 175, ll. 97-102.

  20. Hoccleve's Works Vol. 1, The Minor Poems, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, Extra Series No. 61 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1892), p. 194, ll. 424-429.

  21. Kübler-Ross argues along similar lines when she points out the anger and guilt with which families often meet the news that a close relative is terminally ill (ch. 9, See note 3).

  22. “The Lamentation of the Dying Creature,” Comper, p. 138. (See note 15.)

  23. Gascoigne, p. 442. (See note 8.)

  24. “I Wite My Self Myne Owne Woo.” The Middle English Penitential Lyric, ed. Frank Allen Patterson (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1911), p. 58, ll. 41-48.

  25. Kübler-Ross, p. 85. (See note 3.)

  26. Kübler-Ross, p. 265. (See note 3.)

  27. Kübler-Ross, ch. 7. (See note 3.)

  28. “Sinners Beware!.” Morris, p. 78, ll. 181-186. (See note 19.)

  29. “General Confession of Sins,” Patterson, p. 49, ll. 36-42. (See note 24.)

  30. Francesco Petrarca, “Secretum Meum,” ed. Enrico Carrara, in Prose, ed. G. Martellotti et al., La Letteratura italiana; storia e testi, 7 (Milano: R. Ricciardi, 1955), 54.

  31. Thomas, “The Meaning of the Character Knowledge in Everyman,” p. 6. (See note 2.)

  32. Kübler-Ross, pp. 86-88. (See note 3.)

  33. “The Lamentation of the Dying Creature.” Comper, p. 160. (See note 15.)

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