As a morality play, Everyman is full of references to Christian scripture, practices, and beliefs. However, the parallels to the Christ story go beyond mere allusions and are even implicit in the plot of the play itself. The play begins with the leading character, Everyman, being confronted by the knowledge of his own upcoming death, when the character Death approaches him and advises him to, “See thou make thee ready shortly,/For thou mayst say this is the day/That no man living may ‘scape away” (“Everyman” lines 181-183). Death is telling Everyman to prepare, because his time in this world was coming to an end. With this knowledge, Everyman then embarks to find his friends and family to see if they might go with him to help him face his death. In a similar vein, when Jesus and his disciples were preparing for The Last Supper, Jesus told them that his “‘appointed time is near’” (New International Version, Matt. 26:18). Both Everyman and Jesus began their journeys towards death with the awareness of that approaching death.
When Everyman approaches the people he held close in life--Fellowship, Kindred, and Cousin*--they each make a great show of support for him, only to end up abandoning him in his time of need. Fellowship claims, “I will not forsake thee to my life’s end,” (“Everyman” line 213), only to recant that with, “I will not go that loath journey--/Not for the father that begat me!” (268-269). Kindred and Cousin make similar assertions of, “we will live and die togither./In wealth and woe we will with you hold,” (324-325), only to end with, “ye shall go alone” (354) and “Trust not to me...I will deceive you in your most need” (357-358). Everyman was refused by his friends and family three times, after they had professed that they would not. This is similar to the interaction Jesus had with Peter, where he tells Peter that, “‘you will disown me three times’” (NIV, Matt. 26:34). In the verses before and after this statement, Peter declares his absolute loyalty to Jesus, saying that he would not abandon him even when everyone else did, yet later in the chapter, Peter does do what Jesus predicted and denied his friend three times.
At the very end of the play, Everyman is accompanied into his grave by Good Deeds while Knowledge watches over. These two characters, both women, are the only ones to be with him when he passes from this world into the next, just as “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb” (NIV, Matt. 28:1) of Jesus. They were also amongst the crowd watching when he died, and they returned to visit him after his death, much like Knowledge and Good Deeds. It is in these instances that we can see Jesus reflected in Everyman, and through him, in our humanity as well. This perhaps is the real purpose of Everyman--to not just demonstrate the importance of living a good Christian life but to show how every man can live like Jesus.
*For the sake of this post, I have not considered Goods one of the people that refuses Everyman, because Goods did not beforehand promise unyielding loyalty. All the other characters listed proclaimed their devotion to Everyman before abandoning him.
Works Cited
“Everyman.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams, 9th ed., A, W.W. Norton & Co., 2012, pp. 36–108.
New International Version. BibleGateway, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026&version=NIV. Accessed 28 September 2020.