Everyman: "O Death, Thou Comest When I Had Thee Least in Mind"

Same, Buddy, Same.

[The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, public domain]

"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil¹

Everyman is an allegory and a morality play. Morality plays were popular in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. (Everyman was published sometime after 1485.) Literature follows life; thus, we see the mystery and miracle plays (such as The Second Shepherds’ Play) which focused on biblical stories and saints’ lives, respectively, slowly edged out by a work such as Everyman—focused on ordinary humans and individual morality. If the modern age is defined largely by the rise of the individual (and I think it is), then Everyman is one key gateway to that age. Morality plays deal with the question, “What must one do to be saved?” If we think of “salvation” as coming to mean something different in modern times (something more like “happiness”), then this is essentially the same question asked by literature for all the centuries that have followed.

As an allegory, Everyman is a work in which everything is symbolic: spiritual, immaterial realities are represented by visible, material characters, objects, or events. Allegories well suit the medieval age, a world that is still enchanted by the understanding that the natural world has moral and spiritual meaning. When moderns like us read allegories, it’s easy to view them as overly simplified, lacking nuance and moral complexity. But that is, I think, because we live in a disenchanted world (as Charles Taylor describes it in A Secular Age). The symbols in an allegory seem “obvious” to use because we can see only the obvious in them. We moderns have to drill down to begin to see the complexity that is naturally carried when material objects are assumed to inhere with spiritual meaning.

As with the best allegories (The Pilgrim’s Progress, written a couple of centuries later, comes to mind), the story here is pretty simple on the surface level. Death comes for Everyman. (Spoiler: Everyman is each one of us.) Everyman is taken by surprise. (“O Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind!” [line 119]). Everyman tries to bribe Death into leaving him be, but it doesn’t work (lines 120-23). Everyman tries to get someone, anyone, to go with him at least, so he doesn’t have to make this journey (several times it is called a “pilgrimage”—where have we heard that before?) alone. And that is where the details of the drama get interesting …

The play is so rich with human psychology as well as theology that it stands up quite well today. Of course, Everyman turns first to Fellowship to go with him—the guys, the girls, whatever the case may be. And of course Fellowship turns out to be a fair-weather friend. (We all know those, don’t we? Ugh.) Over and over, Fellowship says (basically), “Don’t worry, man. I’ve got your back. I will do anything for you! … Oh, um, yeah. Except for that …” (Is this what Meatloaf meant, maybe?)

Everyman wises up a bit. Blood is thicker than water, right? So even if your friends abandon you, you still have your family, right? But no, as it turns out. Neither Kindred nor Cousin will be caught dead going on this trip with Everyman. Cousin has a toe cramp, for goodness sake (line 356)! (So typical of some cousins, amiright?) Can Everyman at least take his stuff—Goods—with him? Nope. No dice.

And now things get even more interesting, theologically speaking. Everyman is, obviously, deeply and centrally religious. One of the main characters is God himself, after all! And in this case, the drama is specifically Catholic—although one cannot read it and not hear the footsteps of the coming Reformation chasing Everyman to his grave.

Abandoned by friends, family, and possessions, Everyman (understandably) thinks that perhaps he can at least be accompanied to death by the Good Deeds he has done over the course of his life. But Good Deeds lies in the ground, bound and weakened by Everyman’s sin, so Good Deeds calls upon his sister Knowledge. Knowledge says she will go with Everyman! Hooray! Now, I read Knowledge not as intellectual knowledge but rather what we Baptists call “saving knowledge.” I think the text supports this reading because Knowledge leads Everyman to Confession. Catholics “go to confession,” but Protestants also believe we must confess our sin in order to be saved. This is one place where the brilliance of the play shines: the theological truth it conveys here is the truth of the universal church, regardless of sect or denomination.

With the saving knowledge and confession of sins, Everyman’s Good Deeds now mean something and have strength enough to stand with him. Then Everyman’s personal qualities come into play as he journeys on: Discretion, Strength, and Beauty. All he is left at this point is himself. And yet, as he nears his destination, these, too, part from him: first Beauty, then Strength, then Discretion, and then all his senses (Five Wits). (What really does constitute our whole self, anyway? That is too existential a question for today.)

Only Good Deeds enters the grave with Everyman. Now, this aspect of the play might, again, be considered a teaching of the Roman Catholic church. Yet, most Protestants believe that those who do enter heaven will be judged for their good deeds even after receiving salvation by faith in Christ alone. So in that sense, our deeds do indeed make that journey with us.  

Everyman is greeted and welcomed into eternity by the Angel. Such a powerful and beautiful near-ending.

But because this is a morality play, a character enters to make clear (as if it weren’t already) what the moral of the story is. The way to salvation is not friends or family or personal qualities. Salvation begins first by abandoning Pride (long understood to be the greatest and first sin among the seven deadly sins that get a shout-out in lines 36-37). Once death comes, it is too late to turn back for a do-over, the Doctor warns: “For after death amends may no man make” (line 912).

Notably, Everyman emerged in the context of the plague or the Black Death. It is connected to the tradition of Danse Macabre (or “dance of death”).² One-third of the population across Europe was wiped out by the plague in its various waves. Some locales lost two-thirds of their citizens. Death was everywhere. People didn’t need to be reminded that it was likely to show up when we have it “least in mind.” But they did need to know how to prepare for it. Though we don’t know the author of this play, at least one other close version of it existed around the same time as a Flemish play. Scholars disagree about which version is the original, but that matters little. The truth of this morality play is the same, both then and now (minus a few theological quibbles): death comes for Everybody.

But Everyman isn’t just a theological work, and we ought not treat it as solely that. It is a literary work, a work of art, a thing of beauty as well as truth. Let’s not overlook its remarkable literary qualities.

I’ve already mentioned that Everyman is like The Pilgrim’s Progress in being an allegory. Yet the two works are different in distinct ways. Everyman is simpler, even sparse. It is an easy play to produce because characters simply come and go from the scene, offering powerful soliloquies in addition to the tense dialogues.

Despite this simplicity, there is also a complexity in the play’s structure. It is written in poetry that uses couplets and quatrains, but not with a regular pattern. It has touches of camp, here and there. There are no acts, no symmetries, no discernible pattern or proportion. Long ago (I cannot remember where), I read that this work resembles a Gothic cathedral: intricate, uneven, dark, and wondrous.

Like all great literature, Everyman is of its time and transcends its time. It is very particular in its characterization, its form, its theology, and its literary qualities. And yet it speaks to all times—not only in centering on the universality of death, but also on the way human nature and cultures never change.

The lament of God that opens the play is one that could describe our own day just as well:

I perceive, here in my majesty,

How that all creatures be to me unkind,

Living without dread in worldly prosperity;

Of ghostly sight the people be so blind,

Drowned in sin, they know me not for their God;

In worldly riches is all their mind,

They fear not my righteousness, the sharp rod. (lines 22-28)

This play could easily have been called Everyone, Everyday, Everyplace, as well as Everyman.

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Next week: Romeo and Juliet! Our guest writer, Jack Heller, recommends the Folger edition (whether print or online).

1. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.

2. Lots of fascinating history on Danse Macabre. Here’s a start: https://www.britannica.com/art/dance-of-death-art-motif