EVERYMAN. Here I crye God mercy! GOOD DEEDS. Shorte oure ende, and mynysshe1 our payne. Let vs go, and neuer come agayne. EVERYMAN. Into thy handes, Lorde, my soule I commende. 880 Receyue it, Lorde, that it be not lost. That shall be saued at the day of dome. 885 KNOWLEDGE. Now hath he suffred that we all shall endure. . [Enter the Doctor as an Epilogue.] DOCTOR. This morall men may haue in mynde. Ye herers, take it of worth,1 olde and yonge! And forsake Pryde, for he deceyueth you in the ende. And remembre Beaute, Five Wyttes, Strength, and Dy[s]crecyon, 905 They all at the last do euery man forsake, Saue his Good Dedes there dothe he take Before God he hath no helpe at all. None excuse may be there for euery man. Alas, how shall he do, than? 910 This play was written about 1475; and, as numerous allusions in the text show, it is to be assigned to the neighborhood of Cambridge. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it illustrates the beginning of professionalism in the drama. It was acted by a company of apparently six players (the parts of Mercy and of Titivillus could easily be assumed by one man), who gave their performance in a public inn-yard (cf. 11. 29, 554, 722, 725) for gain-at one point, ll. 448-65, they halt the play in order to collect money from the audience. The properties they were required to carry are negligible little more than their costumes; and possibly they limited their dramatic activities, as did the plowboy morris-dancers, to the Christmas holiday season (cf. II. 54, 62, 316, 325, 381, 539). The result of thus professionalizing the drama is readily apparent in the text: the moral element is reduced to a minimum, and even the sole representative of good, Mercy, is deliberately made fun of with his ponderous Latinistic diction and his saccharine talk; the humor becomes at times exceedingly vulgar; and the literary skill of the writer is unusually poor. Possibly the author merely reworked an earlier and more serious morality, eliminating the moral element, and accentuating in his own way the comic features. The manuscript is found in the collection of moralities formerly in the possession of the Rev. Cox Macro (see page 255, note 1). I have based the present text on that in The Macro Plays, edited by F. J. Furnivall and A. W. Pollard, for the Early English Text Society, 1904; but I have checked doubtful readings with the photographic facsimile of the manuscript issued by J. S. Farmer, and I have made use of the edition by Manly, Specimens, 1896. I have noted the principal, but not all the minor, emendations adopted from Manly (M.). All additions to the manuscript are set in square brackets, and changes duly recorded in footnotes. The punctuation, the use of capitals, and the stage-directions are my own. |