Everyman is a morality play and Antigone is a tragedy. In Everyman, like all morality plays, there is an attempt to show the conflict between good and evil and the ways in which a good Christian faces death. The structure allegorically dramatizes characters such as Everyman, Good Deeds, and Avarice. Everyman receives a summons from Death and tries to get his friends to make the journey with him, but only Good Deeds remains faithful to him on his journey. Good Deeds represents a talented person who wastes their talents and ends of being cast into the dark because of it. Death explains to Everyman the Parable of the Talents when he asks for an accounting of his life. Everyman must justify to God, “How thou hast spent thy life and in what wise” (Everyman 109). The structure of Everyman follows the allegory of Christian redemption. A messenger, God and Death demand the account book from Everyman and Death gets him to prepare for his pilgrimage. He loses all of his companions (Fellowship, Kindred and Cousin, Good Deeds) and then has a period of penance (Confession, Knowledge of sin and the scourge of penance), “Contrition it is / That getteth forgiveness; / It pleaseth God passing well” (Everyman 645-647). Knowledge urges Everyman to seek a priest and receive unction. After a digression on the priesthood we see Everyman’s bodily progress toward death, wherein he loses beauty, strength, discretion, and five-wits. Knowledge, however, stays behind until he is sure where Everyman shall become. After descending into the grave, knowledge hears the Angels sing and they welcome Everyman by telling him “thy reckoning is crystal clear” (Everyman 898). The Doctor then ends the play by giving us the moral that we must have a clean reckoning at the time of our death to be saved from everlasting fire (ignem eternum!).
Antigone is a tragedy though debate exists as to whether she,
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