Everyman

Like other morality plays of the medieval and Tudor periods, the style of Everyman is primarily didactic, imparting a spiritual and moral message upon the audience. More specifically, the play argues that an attachment to such “worldly” concerns as riches, friends, and family, can serve as a distraction from worship of God and therefore an impediment to reaching heaven after death. The Messenger who opens the play comments upon the play’s didactic style: 

The story saith, — Man, in the beginning, 
Look well, and take good heed to the ending, 
Be you never so gay! 
Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet, 
Which in the end causeth thy soul to weep, 
When the body lieth in clay. 
Here shall you see how Fellowship and Jollity, 
Both Strength, Pleasure, and Beauty, 
Will fade from thee as flower in May. 
For ye shall hear, how our heaven king
Calleth Everyman to a general reckoning: 
Give audience, and hear what he doth say.

Cite this Quote