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    A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Everyman"
    A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Everyman"
    A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Everyman"
    Ebook37 pages21 minutes

    A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Everyman"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Everyman," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535822893
    A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Everyman"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Everyman" - Gale

      4

      Everyman

      Anonymous

      1500

      Introduction

      Everyman was first published in England early in the sixteenth century. This English play is now thought to be based on an earlier Dutch play, Elckerlijc, published in 1495. It is unknown if Everyman was ever staged in the era in which it first appeared. The title page states Here begynneth a treatyse. This implies that the text may have been intended as reading material. Frequently, authors composed a treatise containing dialogue to create an additional emphasis on an idea, in this case a preparation for God’s judgment. Such works were often created without any intention of performance. This may be true for Everyman; however, even if it was not performed, it is clear that the text was very popular, since there are four separate editions from the first half of the sixteenth century that have survived to this day. Frequent reprintings indicate that the text was bought and read a great deal, if not performed.

      Although none of the characters in Everyman have any depth, the influence on later drama is especially clear when readers compare the medieval character archetypes with those created for Elizabethan drama. Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus is often cited as an example of how the medieval morality play influenced later theatre. Marlowe’s characters would be easily recognizable to anyone who had read Everyman. There is also the same emphasis on worldly goods and on knowledge. But Marlowe takes the ideas in Everyman even further and argues that even knowledge can be perverted. But the same idea that man can seek forgiveness and salvation through contrition still appears. Everyman is considered one of the most accessible of the medieval morality plays because the language is closer to modern English and the story is clearly

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