Historical Context

The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century morality play. Like John Bunyan's 1678 Christian novel The Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman uses allegorical and symbolic characters to examine the question of Christian salvation and what Man must do to attain it. The premise is that all the good and bad deeds you do in your life are counted by God after you die. Everyman tries to convince other characters to accompany him in the hope of improving his account. All the characters are also symbolic, each personifying an abstract idea such as Fellowship, Goods, and Knowledge. Everyman eventually comes to the realisation that he is alone and none of the things and people he deemed necessities were actually there to vouch for him.
The play was originally written in middle english during the Tudor period and the identity of the author is unknown. The play was apparently produced with some frequency in the seventy-five years following its composition, no production records survive. It is not proven, but it has been said that there is 'convincing' evidence that Everyman is a translation of the dutch play Elckerlijc, written in Dutch by Peter Van Diest, somewhere around the year 1470.


A modernized adaptation by Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, with Chiwetel Ejiofor in the title role, was performed at the National Theatre from April to July 2015.
This is version of the play that we are exploring.

Peter Van Diest
Little else is known of this writer; he has been identified with the Carthusian monk Petrus Dorlandus (1454–1507), who lived in Diest (in present-day Belgium) and wrote lives of the saints. This identification, however, is controversial among philologists.

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