"My condicion is mannes soule to kill" \-\- Everyman's Mercantile Salvation

Abstract

That is atypical of medieval English drama is becoming a commonplace. While an occasional scholar will still attempt to show the play's continuity with other medieval English drama, critics point regularly to the representation of evil in as lacking the spirit of the vice characters more familiar from Macro manuscript like Mankind or Castle of Perseverance. (1) A recent practice on the part of English-speaking scholars has been to blame the Flemish (2) origins of for this lack of what Robert Potter labels typically English figures, (3) and for other perceived shortcomings of the English version. On the other hand, W. M. H. Hummelen points out that sinnekens,' comparable to the English vices and perhaps more consistent, are a key feature of the dramatic structure of Rederijker drama. (4) So if such characters actually represent a shared element between the English and Rederijker traditions, where then are Myscheff, Nowadays, Nought, or New Gyse? (5) For that matter, given the eschatological nature of Everyman's subject matter, where are the popular devil figures, like Castle of Perseverance's famous Belial with gunnepowdyr brennynge In pypys in hys handys and in hys erys and in hys ars whanne he go the to batayl (6) or outside the Macro manuscript, (7) the memorable Tutiuillus from the Towneley Judgment? (8) Perhaps the lack of gunpowder, fire, and brimstone are an indicator of the play's indoor performance, (9) but more importantly one must ask--since is all about salvation, why is it not more directly about either resisting temptation or a more iconic Judgment Day, and why is the best joke the tepid tempter Cosyn's crampe in my to? (10) answer to the first of these questions may be that does not actually represent Every Man, as a reader might so naturally assume, but rather Every Merchant. play's focus on the tension between Goodes and Good Dedes, in particular its choice to use the inanimate Goodes rather than a more energetic tempter figure as its primary signifier of material sin, draws sharp connections between and other English texts exploring spiritual problems of how to balance material success with spiritual success in the form of salvation. In its use of the common English pun on and in the play's advocacy of confession and charitable donation as a method for escaping from the trap of profit, echoes Piers Plowman. In the play's suggestion that good deeds and particularly alms can be a primary route to salvation and an antidote to evil, it echoes the more clearly mercantile emphasis on eleemosynary charity of the York Mercers' Last Judgement, and the charitable restitution and inheritance-laundering of The Childe of Bristowe. Paradoxically, the origin of in a Flemish rhetoricians' play shows the way to Everyman's place in the English tradition, but not in the way that a critic might assume, through the dramatic tradition. While Jacqueline Vanhoutte argues that as a translation Everyman does not belong in the original English canon the origin of should actually guide our search for its role in an English literary context other than the relatively small group of morality plays or moral comedies. (11) Spurred on by the fact that trade connections with the Low Countries were central to England's economy, critics must examine instead English literary traditions with mercantile connections, and before that, the representations of avarice in late estates satire and related texts. Looking at in this larger context, one can see that in the terms of the primary representation of evil here, Goods, the Everyman-translator builds on Elckerlijc's use of imagery already close to the late medieval English tradition of representing Avarice. This imagery then ties more closely to the Flemish play's distinctly if not extremely mercantile representation of Avarice's cure. …