“O Ghostly Treasure, O Ransomer and Redeemer!”: Economic Expressions in Everyman

Abstract

Everyman is not a typical morality play as it lacks the broad humor of many morality plays that portray the vices as clowns that try to lure the Everyman figure away from salvation. What makes the play remarkable, undoubtedly, is the play’s economic language and concepts of wealth. Instead of humor, it is the play’s network of commercial lexicon that highlights the play’s distinction from other morality plays. Accordingly, this paper takes notice of the English writer’s use of the language of economy throughout two different systems of beliefs concerning wealth: the first is Everyman’s handling of his material goods, and the second is his debt to God. Our focus would be the language of purchase, of gift-giving, of lending, and of bookkeeping in Everyman so as to examine how the English dramatist makes use of the language of divine judgement and the language of trade to create the drama of Everyman’s reform and salvation. The key words, images and tropes are identical: reckoning and other commercial terms, account, the account book. This commercialism is in tension with the thesis of the play about worldly wealth, yet this is not surprising as medieval penitential manuals often use a commercial lexicon. But in Everyman, the divine economy operates in concert with the material economy so as to create the play’s larger structure of meaning: What should Everyman do with his money to save his soul? The moral of the play is interesting inasmuch as it insists that not God’s grace but charity works in the daily life are essential for salvation.