The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century morality play by an anonymous English author, printed circa 1530. It is possibly a translation of the Dutch play Elckerlijc (Everyman).
Like John Bunyan's 1678 Christian novel The Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman uses allegorical characters to examine the question of Christian salvation and explain that Man must have a relationship with God to attain it. To develop that relationship, his strength, wisdom, senses, beauty and discretion is not helpful. The relationship with God is strengthened through his adherence to rules established by the Church – the partaking of the Eucharist, confession, penance, and participation in last rites, thus redeeming him and preparing him for eternal salvation.
Summary
The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind. In the course of the action, Everyman tries to convince other characters to accompany him in the hope of improving his life. All the characters are also mystical; the conflict between good and evil is shown by the interactions between the characters. Everyman is being singled out because it is difficult for him to find characters to accompany him on his pilgrimage. Everyman eventually realizes through this pilgrimage that he is essentially alone, despite all the personified characters that were supposed necessities and friends to him, which ultimately do not lead him closer to Christ. Everyman learns that when you are brought to death and placed before God, your Good Deeds (which in the play include following Church practices of Eucharist, confession, penance and last rites) draw him into salvation with Christ.
Sources
The play was written in Middle English during the Tudor period, but the identity of the author is unknown. Although the play was apparently produced with some frequency in the seventy-five years following its composition, no production records survive.[1]
There is a similar Dutch-language morality play of the same period called Elckerlijc. In the early 20th century, scholars did not agree on which of these plays was the original, or even on their relation to a later Latin work named Homulus.[2][3] By the 1980s, Arthur Cawley went so far as to say that the "evidence for … Elckerlijk is certainly very strong",[4] and now Davidson, Walsh, and Broos hold that "more than a century of scholarly discussion has ... convincingly shown that Everyman is a translation and adaptation from the Dutch Elckerlijc".[5]
Setting
The cultural setting is based on the Roman Catholicism of the era. Everyman attains afterlife in heaven by means of receiving the Catholic Sacraments, in particular Confession, Penance, Anointing of the Sick (Unction), and receiving the Eucharist.
Synopsis
The oldest surviving example of the script begins with this paragraph on the frontispiece:
Here begynneth a treatyſe how þe hye Fader of Heuen ſendeth Dethe to ſomon euery creature to come and gyue a counte of they're lyues in this worlde, and is in maner of a morall playe.
Here begins a treatise how the high Father of Heaven sends Death to summon every creature to come and give account of their lives in this world, and is in the manner of a moral play.
After a brief prologue asking the audience to listen, God speaks, lamenting that humans have become too absorbed in material wealth and riches to follow Him, so He commands Death to go to Everyman and summon him to heaven to make his reckoning. Death arrives at Everyman's side to tell him it is time to die and face judgment. Upon hearing this, Everyman is distressed, so begs for more time. Death denies this, but will allow Everyman to find a companion for his journey.[6]
Everyman's friend Fellowship promises to go anywhere with him, but when he hears of the true nature of Everyman's journey, he refuses to go. Everyman then calls on Kindred and Cousin and asks them to go with him, but they both refuse. In particular, Cousin explains a fundamental reason why no people will accompany Everyman: they have their own accounts to write as well. Afterwards, Everyman asks Goods, who will not come: God's judgment will be severe because of the selfishness implied in Goods's presence.[7]
Everyman then turns to Good Deeds, who says she would go with him, but she is too weak as Everyman has not loved her in his life. Good Deeds summons her sister Knowledge to accompany them, and together they go to see Confession. In the presence of Confession, Everyman begs God for forgiveness and repents his sins, punishing himself with a scourge. After his scourging, Everyman is absolved of his sins, and as a result, Good Deeds becomes strong enough to accompany Everyman on his journey with Death.[8]
Good Deeds then summons Beauty, Strength, Discretion and Five Wits to join them, and they agree to accompany Everyman as he goes to a priest to take sacrament. After the sacrament, Everyman tells them where his journey ends, and again they all abandon him – except for Good Deeds. Even Knowledge cannot accompany him after he leaves his physical body, but will stay with him until the time of death.[9]
Content at last, Everyman climbs into his grave with Good Deeds at his side and dies, after which they ascend together into heaven, where they are welcomed by an Angel. The play closes as the Doctor enters and explains that in the end, a man will only have his Good Deeds to accompany him beyond the grave.[10]
Adaptations
A modern stage production of Everyman did not appear until July 1901 when The Elizabethan Stage Society of William Poel gave three outdoor performances at the Charterhouse in London.[11] Poel then partnered with British actor Ben Greet to produce the play throughout Britain, with runs on the American Broadway stage from 1902 to 1918,[12] and concurrent tours throughout North America. These productions differed from past performances in that women were cast in the title role, rather than men. Film adaptations of the 1901 version of the play appeared in 1913 and 1914, with the 1913 film being made with an early color two-process, Kinemacolor.[13][14]
1917 Jan 5 Los Angeles Evening Express ad for world premiere of The Play of Everyman by Sterling
Another well-known version of the play is Jedermann by the Austrian playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which has been performed annually at the Salzburg Festival since 1920,[15] and adapted into film several times. Jedermann received an English language adaptation in 1917, The Play of Everyman. The 1917 adaptation was performed at the Trinity Auditorium in Los Angeles, followed by a run at the Burbank Theater in Burbank, California, and was translated and adapted by George Sterling with "Richard" Ryszard Ordynski and music by Victor Schertzinger. The Sterling adaptation was performed again in 1936 at the Hollywood Bowl with music by Einar Nelson.
Frederick Franck published a modernised version of the tale entitled "Everyone", drawing on Buddhist influence.[16]
A direct-to-video film of Everyman was made in 2002, directed by John Farrell, which updated the setting to the early 21st century, including Death as a businessman in dark glasses with a briefcase, and Goods being played by a talking personal computer.[17]
In 2014, London theatre company Scena Mundi Theatre (then Little Spaniel Theatre) staged a production of Everyman at St Bartholomew the Great, a Church in the City of London. The play, directed by Cecilia Dorland, played on the church's medieval setting and kept the Middle English text intact. A strong ensemble piece using music and singing, it was very well received by critics.
The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts alongside angels and demons, who are engaged in a struggle to persuade a protagonist who represents a generic human character toward either good or evil. The common story arc of these plays follows "the temptation, fall and redemption of the protagonist".
The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, finalised in 1571, are the historically defining statements of doctrines and practices of the Church of England with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. The Thirty-nine Articles form part of the Book of Common Prayer used by the Church of England, and feature in parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion, as well as by denominations outside of the Anglican Communion that identify with the Anglican tradition.
Confession, in many religions, is the acknowledgment of sinful thoughts and actions. This may occur directly to a deity or to fellow people.
Penance is any act or a set of actions done out of repentance for sins committed, as well as an alternate name for the Catholic, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession. It also plays a part in confession among Anglicans and Methodists, in which it is a rite, as well as among other Protestants.
In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for (forgiven) sins". The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions…"
Absolution is a theological term for the forgiveness imparted by ordained Christian priests and experienced by Christian penitents. It is a universal feature of the historic churches of Christendom, although the theology and the practice of absolution vary between Christian denominations.
Elckerlijc is a morality play from the Low Countries which was written in Dutch somewhere around the year 1470. It was first printed in 1495. The play was extremely successful and may have been the original source for the English play Everyman, as well as many other translations for other countries. The authorship of Elckerlijc is attributed to Peter van Diest, a medieval writer from the Low Countries.
In the Catholic Church, the Seal of Confession is the absolute duty of priests or anyone who happens to hear a confession not to disclose anything that they learn from penitents during the course of the Sacrament of Penance (confession). Even where the seal of confession does not strictly apply – where there is no specific serious sin confessed for the purpose of receiving absolution – priests have a serious obligation not to cause scandal by the way they speak.
Everyman is a stock character in drama, originally appearing in mediaeval morality plays.
The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them.
Medieval theatre encompasses theatrical in the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century. The category of "medieval theatre" is vast, covering dramatic performance in Europe over a thousand-year period. A broad spectrum of genres needs to be considered, including mystery plays, morality plays, farces and masques. The themes were almost always religious. The most famous examples are the English cycle dramas, the York Mystery Plays, the Chester Mystery Plays, the Wakefield Mystery Plays, and the N-Town Plays, as well as the morality play known as Everyman. One of the first surviving secular plays in English is The Interlude of the Student and the Girl.
The Sacrament of Penance is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, in which the faithful are absolved from sins committed after baptism and reconciled with the Christian community. During reconciliation, mortal sins must be confessed and venial sins may be confessed for devotional reasons. According to the dogma and unchanging practice of the church, only those ordained as priests may grant absolution.
The Divine Service is a title given to the Eucharistic liturgy as used in the various Lutheran churches. It has its roots in the Pre-Tridentine Mass as revised by Martin Luther in his Formula missae of 1523 and his Deutsche Messe of 1526. It was further developed through the Kirchenordnungen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that followed in Luther's tradition.
In the Catholic Church, the anointing of the sick, also known as Extreme Unction, is a Catholic sacrament that is administered to a Catholic "who, having reached the age of reason, begins to be in danger due to sickness or old age", except in the case of those who "persevere obstinately in manifest grave sin". Proximate danger of death, the occasion for the administration of Viaticum, is not required, but only the onset of a medical condition of serious illness or injury or simply old age: "It is not a sacrament for those only who are at the point of death. Hence, as soon as anyone of the faithful begins to be in danger of death from sickness or old age, the fitting time for him to receive this sacrament has certainly already arrived."
Jedermann. Das Spiel vom Sterben des reichen Mannes is a play by the Austrian playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is based on several medieval mystery plays, including the late 15th-century English morality play Everyman. It was first performed on 1 December 1911 in Berlin, directed by Max Reinhardt at the Circus Schumann. Since 1920, it has been performed regularly at the Salzburg Festival.
In the Lutheran Church, Confession is the method given by Christ to the Church by which individual men and women may receive the forgiveness of sins; according to the Large Catechism, the "third sacrament" of Holy Absolution is properly viewed as an extension of Holy Baptism. Unlike Roman Catholicism, the practice of private confession in the Lutheran Church is voluntary, not obligatory.
The Brome play of Abraham and Isaac is a fifteenth-century play of unknown authorship, written in an East Anglian dialect of Middle English, which dramatises the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac.
There are seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, which according to Catholic theology were instituted by Jesus Christ and entrusted to the Church. Sacraments are visible rites seen as signs and efficacious channels of the grace of God to all those who receive them with the proper disposition.
Everyman is a modern play produced by Charles Frohman and directed by Ben Greet that is based on the medieval morality play of the same name. The modern play was first performed in 1901 on tour in Britain. It opened in the United States in 1902 on Broadway, where it ran for 75 performances, followed by tours over the next several years that included four Broadway revivals.
Everyman, Op. 83, is a theatre score—comprising 16 numbers—for soloists, mixed choir, orchestra, piano, and organ by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius; he wrote the music in 1916 to accompany a Finnish-language production of the Austrian author Hugo von Hofmannsthal's 1911 play of the same name.
Cawley, A. C. (1984), "Rev. of The Dutch Elckerlijc Is Prior to the English Everyman, by E. R. Tigg", Review of English Studies, 35 (139): 434, JSTOR515829
Speaight, Robert (1954), William Poel and the Elizabethan revival, London: Heinemann, pp.161–168.
Tigg, E. R. (1939), "Is Elckerlyc prior to Everyman?", Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 38 (4): 568–596, JSTOR27704551
de Vocht, Henry (1947), Everyman: A Comparative Study of Texts and Sources, Material for the Study of the Old English Drama, vol.20, Louvain: Librairie Universitaire
Wilkie, Brian; Hurt, James, eds. (2000). Literature of the Western World, Volume I, The Ancient World Through the Renaissance (5thed.). Longman. ISBN978-0130186669.
Davidson, Clifford; Walsh, Martin W.; Broos, Ton J., eds. (2007). "Everyman and Its Dutch Original". Robbins Library Digital Projects, University of Rochester. Retrieved 20 February 2016.
Meijer, Reinder (1971), Literature of the Low Countries: A Short History of Dutch Literature in the Netherlands and Belgium, New York: Twayne Publishers, pp.55–57, 62, ISBN978-9024721009
Takahashi, Genji (1953), A Study of Everyman with Special Reference to the Source of its Plot, Ai-iku-sha, pp.33–39, OCLC8214306
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