Everyman and Allegory

The Second Shepherd’s Pageant is comical and lighthearted, infusing even its concluding vision of the Nativity and Adoration with folksy language and humor. To early audiences, the characters would have been familiar flesh-and-blood figures—homely shepherds plying their trade; complaining about the weather, economic hardship, and the trials of marriage; and caught up in some common circumstance, in this case the intrigue that ensues upon the theft of one of their sheep.

The characters in Everyman, though they would have been portrayed by human actors, are largely abstractions. Even the human entities Fellowship, Kindred, and Cousin (i.e. friends and family), as well as Everyman himself, are representative entities rather than specific individuals. The remaining figures, excepting the Angel and Doctor, are aspects or extensions of the central character himself.

The primary literary mode of the play, then, is allegory. Allegories in literature typically consist of characters, events, places, and objects that correspond to some other set of persons, events, places, objects, or abstract concepts. Allegory has a long and complex history, but one feature of that history is pertinent here: allegorical theory and literature in the Middle Ages are based primarily on the discipline of biblical exegesis (i.e. interpretation). Allegory in this context is an interpretive method according to which the holy scriptures yield multiple levels of meaning, e.g. the literal and the anagogical (or “mystical”) meanings (there are more). The allegorical habit of thinking was deeply familiar to the likely authors of these plays, clerics trained to read the scriptures in this multi-leveled fashion. As we saw in our examination of SSP, however, lay audiences too were expected to perceive in literal characters and events intimations of their mystical and spiritual aspects.

In Everyman, abstract allegory is the predominant mode, and most of the abstract characters are psychological extensions of the titular hero. We might think of the play, therefore, as a species of psychodrama; for though the “action” takes place on an open stage and is distributed across a range of distinct characters, the whole is an allegorical representation of an interior and universal struggle—the struggle of a representative Christian with the mortality of the flesh and the immortality of the soul. Though relatively simplistic in design, the play in this sense recalls the more sophisticated illusion of psychological depth that we saw in Chaucer’s Pardoner, and anticipates Shakespeare’s greatest achievements, characters whose interior worlds seem as real as our own.

Discussion Prompts

The intersection of sin, punishment, mercy, and death is central to the play’s vision of human experience. Examine God’s monologue near the beginning of the play (ll. 22-63); describe the convergence of these four concepts; and comment on any aspect of the speech you find interesting. Do not hesitate to refer to other parts of the play if you wish.

Note that at almost exactly halfway through the play (l. 462) there is a shift in the types of characters Everyman encounters. How do the characters in the first half differ from those in the latter, and why might this matter?

Are there any moments in the play where the physical action or stance of a character or characters suggests some kind of allegorical meaning?

Though lacking the elements of broad farce that make SSP so enjoyable, Everyman does include moments of grim humor. Identify one such moment and describe why it is funny. Even better: identify a moment that is some combination of humorous and sad or frightening.

There is a moment in the latter half of the play when Everyman exits the stage to see a priest and receive the sacrament of Extreme Unction—the preparation for death that combines final Confession, the Eucharist, and anointing with oil (ll. 705-48). While he is gone, Knowledge and Five-Wits engage in a dispute about priesthood (ll. 749-70). Comment on any aspect of this interlude you find striking. For example, why is it there at all? What purpose does it serve? And what is the outcome of the debate? Is the issue resolved? If so, in what sense? Is it significant that Everyman’s encounter with the priest takes place offstage—that it is not part of the dramatic action?

The only characters who stay with Everyman until the moment of death are Knowledge and Good Deeds. Several questions come to mind. First, what is the significance of Knowledge remaining right up until the last moment? What would the play have us learn (remember docere!) from the persistence of Good Deeds into the grave with Everyman?

Two final questions, related perhaps to the previous: why is the character of Death absent from the play at the moment of Everyman’s death? Indeed, what is the significance of Death’s minimal role, entering at l. 63 and exiting at l. 183, never to appear again?