Morality Play
Everyman is also the title of a fifteenth-century English morality play whose eponymous protagonist is "called" by death and must account for his life on earth before God. About the play, Roth said the following in a late 2005 interview:
The classic is called Everyman, it's from 1485, by an anonymous author. It was right in between the death of Chaucer and the birth of Shakespeare. The moral was always "Work hard and get into heaven", "Be a good Christian or go to hell". Everyman is the main character and he gets a visit from Death. He thinks it's some sort of messenger, but Death says, "I am Death" and Everyman's answer is the first great line in English drama: "Oh, Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind." When I thought of you least.
Read more about this topic: Everyman (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words morality and/or play:
“Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Why don’t you put something on the phonograph, a low-down mean blue. Play it over and over again until you crack it and get sick of it and then go back to work. I do it all the time.”
—Robert Rossen (1908–1966)