What is a morality play? A morality play is a form of medieval drama that developed in the late fourteenth century and flourished throughout the sixteenth century. The usual subject is the saving of a human soul. The central figure is Man in the sense of humanity in general. The characters represent abstractions such as good deeds, death, and so on. In a typical morality play, the forces Good and Evil are engaged in a struggle for the soul of an individual. Morality plays spoke to medieval man's anxiety about being prepared for death, or dying well. The overall impact of the morality play is moral instruction. Everyman is the most famous of these plays in English. Everyman is a morality play because the characters represent abstractions, it teaches a moral, and it spoke to Everyman's anxiety about being prepared for death.
             Every character within this play represents a different characteristic of the main character Everyman. The characters are symbols. Beauty, Strength, and Discretion are some of the different characteristics that were expressed in Everyman. These characteristics are assumed to make up a person. Knowledge also makes up whom a person can be. The most important characteristic in a person is good deeds. Everyman had many important characteristics in his life. However, when Everyman went to the afterlife, the only thing that went with Everyman was his knowledge and his Good Deeds. Death was an important character in Everyman. Death symbolized a messenger of god. He was the figure that went down to Earth to retrieve Everyman and take him to the afterlife. Death was the deliverer of Everyman's initiative to find something to accompany him to his forever journey, to heaven or to hell. Death was the character that changed lives.
             Everyman like most morality plays is a play that teaches a moral. The moral in this play is if you do good deeds and obtain as much knowledge that you possibly c...