SOURCE: Van Laan, Thomas F. “Everyman: A Structural Analysis.” Publications of the Modern Language Association LXXVIII, no. 5 (December 1963): 465-75.

In the following essay, Van Laan analyzes the dramatic structure of Everyman, which he argues contributes to the success of the religious drama.

The high value of Everyman has been provocatively asserted in T. S. Eliot's description of it as “perhaps” the only English drama “within the limitations of art.”¹ Eliot writes this while discussing the lack of form in post-Kydian drama and thus implies that the source of this value is the play's formal unity. David Kaula has taken Eliot to mean “that nothing in the play is extraneous to the central homiletic purpose, that all elements of style, structure, and theme are governed by the conventions of allegory.”² Yet the emphasis on Everyman's homiletic purpose and allegorical conventions does not sufficiently explain either its critical esteem...