Everyman in Performance

Abstract

Although Everyman is not at all representative of the English morality plays, it nevertheless occurs frequently as a part of tertiary courses of mediaeval studies, and even in generalized studies of English literature. Often, in fact, it constitutes a student's only sample of mediaeval and Renaissance drama. The people who set the courses are justified in this choice of text on philosophical grounds, since Everyman raises the two fundamental human problems—of death and aloneness. (It is probably less important that some will now judge the playwright's solution to these problems to be simplistic, inadequate or unbelievable.) The many modern productions prove that Everyman is rightly selected for special study on dramatic
grounds as well, It is pre-eminently a work which shines in performance.