. EVERYMAN.
Everyman: a Morality Play. With an Introduction and Notes. (A. H. Bullen. la.)—Mr. Bullen does the public a good service in presenting it with this charming brown-paper-covered libretto of Everyman, the morality play so successfully revived by the Elizabethan Stage Society. Seeing it on the stage, one wanted the words to read at home. And those who read it at home without having seen it acted will be moved to wish for a dramatic presentation. It is really much to be desired that some general push should be made for the reintroduction into everyday life of this and other simple and impressive "moralities." The perform- ances, first at St. George's Hall and afterwards at the Imperial Theatre, have demonstrated the possibility of acting the most solemn matter without offence to the most delicate instinct of reverence ; and they have also solved the mechanical problem of scenery. The raise-en-scene of Everyman, while exquisitely pretty and fully adequate, was simplicity itself. All the apparatus was such as might easily be carried about the country in the vans that travel from one fair to another, and set up in a very short time on a village green or within a churchyard ; and the play, acted to a village audience, would give sound instruction, religious, moral, theological. Whether one first makes acquaintance with Everyman in a book or on the stage, the predominating im- pression at the beginning is of a solemn and childlike nalvete of conception and expression. But as the drama develops the sense of simplicity gives place to realisation of the profound and subtle art of the composition. It is throughout an allegory and a "morality," a play with a purpose, a parable revealing an abstract and general spiritual truth through the medium of a concrete and particular example. But it is an allegory so absolutely and preg- nantly true to the facts of life, that it grips one with the full force of the kind of art that is commonly called individual and realistic; while the experience of Everyman, the protagonist of the drama, carries conviction to the heart of every man in the audience. The theme is one which might easily have lent itself to a handling full of terrorism. But the fifteenth-century priest —Englishman or Dutchman—who wrote The Summoninge of Everyman knew his business better. The only terror that enters Into the play is the natural terror of death. When the fidelity of Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Geodes has been put to the test and found wanting, it is quite natural that Everyman should turn for comfort to Good-Deedes, Knowledge, Priesthood, and Confession; and the tenderness with which he is received and comforted is as attractive as it is beautiful. Mr. Sidgwick con- tributes a critical and historical introduction, modernises the spelling, and explains difficulties of construction in a few simple footnotes. The play as now presented is perfectly easy reading.
Previous page
