by a very few, and never acted at all, until some one drew it from its dark hiding-place and once more put it upon the stage.  Since then, during the last few years, it has been acted often.  And as, happily, the actors have tried to perform it in the simple fashion in which it must have been done long ago, we can get from it a very good idea of the plays which pleased our forefathers.  On the title-page of Everyman we read:  “Here beginneth a treatise how the high Father of heaven sendeth Death to summon every creature to come to give a count of their lives in this world, and is in the manner of a moral play.”  So in the play we learn how Death comes to Everyman and bids him follow him.

But Everyman is gay and young.  He loves life, he has many friends, the world to him is beautiful, he cannot leave it.  So he prays Death to let him stay, offers him gold and riches if he will but put off the matter until another day.

But Death is stern.  “Thee availeth not to cry, weep and pray,” he says, “but haste thee lightly that thou wert gone the journey.”

Then seeing that go he must, Everyman thinks that at least he will have company on the journey.  So he turns to his friends.  But, alas, none will go with him.  One by one they leave him.  Then Everyman cries in despair:—­

    “O to whom shall I make my moan
    For to go with me in that heavy journey? 
    First Fellowship said he would with me gone;
    His words were very pleasant and gay,
    But afterward he left me alone. 
    Then spake I to my kinsmen all in despair,
    And also they gave me words fair;
    They lacked no fair speaking,
    But all forsake me in the ending.”

So at last Everyman turns him to his Good Deeds—­his Good Deeds, whom he had almost forgotten and who lies bound and in prison by reason of his sins.  And Good Deeds consents to go with him on the dread journey.  With him come others, too, among them Knowledge and Strength.  But at the last these, too, turn back.  Only Good Deeds is true, only Good Deeds stands by him to the end with comforting words.  And so the play ends; the body of Everyman is laid in the grave, but we know that his soul goes home to God.

This play is meant to picture the life of every man or woman, and to show how unhappy we may be in the end if we have not tried to be good in this world.

    “This moral men may have in mind,
    The hearers take it of worth old and young,
    And forsake Pride, for he deceiveth you in the end,
    And remember Beauty, Five Wits, Strength, and Discretion,
    They all at the last do Everyman forsake,
    Save his Good Deeds; these doth he take. 
    And beware, — an they be small,
    Before God he hath no help at all. 
    None excuse may be there for Everyman.”

BOOKS TO READ

Everyman:  A Morality (Everyman’s Library).