A realist exploration of everyman as a morality play

This paper explores the allegorical and didactic features of Everyman (1508) as a morality play, in order to examine the implications of these features in contemporary reality. Using realism as its analytical framework, this paper situates the elements of morality plays within the postmodern reality. The personification of abstract qualities as attributes of characters within the play, gives life to sensitive human qualities that help in shaping the feature and/or identity of man especially, as the attempts to negotiate the forces of good and evil in the contemporary society. This paper finds that man’s struggle and experiences in the medieval era is not time bound. To this end therefore, this paper explores through the lens of the realist theory those issues and man’s struggle with the forces of good and evil virtue and vice as it relates to the contemporary man.