SOURCE: McRae, Murdo William. “Everyman's Last Rites and the Digression on Priesthood.” College Literature XIII, no. 3 (fall 1986): 305-09.

In the following essay, McRae examines Everyman's portrayal of the priesthood.

Interpreters of Everyman often remark that when V. Wyttes and Knowlege digress on the priesthood, and offstage Everyman receives his last rites, the play exhibits the sacramentalism of the devotio moderna, the movement to reform the church from within that began in the low countries in the late fourteenth century. Since the digression preaches the enduring value of the sacraments as it admonishes priests to lead exemplary lives, it is for Lawrence V. Ryan both “theologically essential” and “dramatically appropriate” (731).¹ In a similar vein, Thomas F. VanLaan reads the digression as a remedium to sin, V. Wyttes' naming of the sacraments effecting an “incantatory defeat” (472) of vice.² Finally, in their authoritative recent edition of the play, Geoffrey Cooper...