In an important essay first published in 1972, V. A. Kolve pointed out that most distinctive part of Everyman's language, essential verbal matrix of the deals with economic exchanges and the account book the protagonist must present to God at his special judgment. (1) Kolve's study, which draws on exegetical tradition to argue that the source behind the sources of Everyman is the Parable of the Talents found in Matthew 25:14-30, (2) does well to stress the foregrounding of financial terminology in Everyman, but notable aspects of that pervasive motif remain unexamined. Besides the language of accountancy and lending that it shares with the parable, Everyman also repeatedly invokes the concept of donation; and all of these ideas function in relation to material wealth, which also features prominently in the text but appears in Kolve's interpretation, like the coins in patristic readings of the parable, to represent human qualities, capabilities, and resources in general. (3) Moreover, the view of Everyman developed in relation to the Parable of the Talents joins most other discussions of the play, before and since, in making the protagonist's sinfulness seem unparticularized in nature and abstract in representation. Morality plays are intended to present matter of universal import, but this does not mean that their representations lack all specificity. While the events and characters in these works instantiate what their writers take to be general principles, the portrayals that illustrate those principles always proceed from and were understood within contexts investing them with cultural meaning. Interpretations of Everyman that consider only its theological ideas set aside many features of the text that contribute to the vision it promotes of the social world and the people who constitute it. In this essay we will suggest that the play's economic language has literal as well as metaphorical significance: there is good reason to believe that Everyman is less about mismanaging figurative assets than it is about loving the wrong kind of wealth. This reading, too, has a scriptural foundation, also in the Gospel of Matthew: nolite thesaurizare vobis thesauros in terra ubi erugo et tinea demolitur ubi lures effodiunt et furantur Thesaurizate autem vobis thesauros in caelo ubi neque erugo neque tinea demolitur et ubi lures non effodiufit nec furantur ubi enim est thesaurus tuus ibi est et cor tuum. (Matt. 6:19-21) (4) [Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through, and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal. For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.] (Douay-Rheims) Although Jesus' admonition has a metaphorical element (the idea that there is another kind of treasure more enduring than material riches), a firmly practical orientation underlies these words and their devaluation of earthly wealth. This passage's interest in social application is made even clearer by its context in Matthew 6, which includes statements that teach the observance of alms and declare that one cannot serve both God and money. (5) In not relying solely on theoretical formulation or figurative meaning, which may leave a challenging interpretive distance between the affirmation of principle and its practical realization, these verses from the Sermon on the Mount differ from the genre of the parable with its characteristically oblique logic. Indeed, the gospel accounts sometimes thematize the opacity of parables as their hearers ponder these compact narratives and struggle to grasp their bearing on lived experience. (6) Jesus' words here, by contrast, explicitly link attitude with action so as to demand not only reflection on the lesson, but its execution. We find the same practical orientation and the same moral in Everyman, which may almost be read as an extended gloss on this scriptural text. …