Everyman is the best surviving example of the medieval drama known as the morality play. This genre employs allegory to dramatize the moral struggle that a Judeo-Christian ethic sees as universal in every
individual.
Everyman portrays a carousing Everyman who is informed by Death of his approaching end. First, he is deserted by his false
friends: his casual companions, his kin, and his wealth. He falls back on his Good
Deeds, his Strength, his Beauty, his Intelligence, and his Knowledge. These assist him in making his Book of
Accounts, but at the end, when he must go to the grave, all desert him save his Good Deeds alone. The play makes its
"grim" point that we can take with us from this world nothing that we have
received, only what we have given.
Everyman differs from its contemporary biblical pageants since it does not dramatize biblical persons and episodes but personifies the good and bad qualities of mankind and shows them in
conflict. Rather than representing a phase in the spiritual history of man, Everyman's morality is complete in itself and is restricted to depicting the spiritual biography of the human
microcosm.