SOURCE: Ryan, Lawrence V. “Doctrine and Dramatic Structure in Everyman.” Speculum 32, no. 4 (October 1957): 722-35.

In the following essay, Ryan examines the dramatic structure of Everyman in relation to the moral and religious stance of the work.

As the title pages of the two early editions printed by John Skot make clear,¹ Everyman, like other examples of its kind, is conceived as a didactic work under a dramatic form: “Here begynneth a treatyse how ye hye fader of heuen sendeth dethe to somon euery creature to come and gyue a counte of theyr lyues in this worlde / and is in maner of a morall playe.” Thus, in any judgment of its effectiveness, one must bear this conception in mind. Yet no extended or adequate analysis of the play, from the point of view of the relationship between form and purpose, has so far appeared in print. Most of the...