Everyman and Its Dutch Original, Elckerlijc (review)

That Everyman’s story has been, and still is, all things to all men is evident from the many guises in which this tale was disseminated in Western European literature from the late Middle Ages onwards. It can in fact be traced back even to earlier, non-Christian models and variations. The Dutch Elckerlijc appeared in print in the late fifteenth century and soon translations and adaptations followed. Everyman was published between 1510 and 1535 in the Low Countries and Germany both in the vernacular and in Latin, the latter of which was used as school drama. The translation and adaptation of the Dutch text for the English market demonstrates that, notwithstanding the differences in style and presentation of the two texts, the subject matter was of interest to readers and audiences on both sides of the Channel. And how could it be otherwise: Elckerlijc/Everyman is set against a background shaped by contemporary reality, a mercantile society in which time is money and keeping ahead of the game is not always compatible with the best moral practice. Into this environment the protagonist is brought up short against the values of a different reality (life after life on earth) and found woefully unprepared and disbelieving. The subsequent process of being stripped of all that one holds dear and considers important is painful and frightening. It is however precisely the change necessary to think of Everyman’s impending journey not as an end but as a beginning (as something that ought to have been calculated in the whole journey of life), and this is poignantly portrayed. The author and the adaptor/translator bring this process “to life” for their intended audience and readership by making use of various venerable traditions of representation of this life-to-death pilgrimage.

Although the editors’ focus is on Everyman, they pay due attention to the original text Elckerlijc, its textual history, its dissemination in Latin and in German, its use by Catholic as well as Protestant adaptors and translators, and its translation into a text deemed suitable for an English audience. Pleasingly, the Dutch text is included in this edition, a fact that immediately increases the scholarly value of the enterprise as a whole. The form chosen solves a problem too: as one cannot have three facing pages, Elckerlijc and Everyman are on facing pages and the editors have made room at the bottom of each Elckerlijc page for a translation into modern English. It is not clear whose translation this is but presenting it in this way works well.

The Dutch text presents itself as “een schoon boecxken, ghemaect in den maniere van eenen speele ofte esbatemente” (a lovely little book made in the manner of a play or drama; 16); the English text is offered slightly differently: “here beginneth a treatyse … and is in manner of a morall play” (17). The Dutch is slightly ambiguous: it is a book in the form of a play. There are other examples of printed texts meant for reading and yet laid out in a dramatic form: Mariken van Nieumeghen has a similar textual ambivalence. Elckerlijc is reputed to have won a prize at a Rhetoricians competition but that fact has never been substantiated; Mariken almost certainly was a reading text but laid out in what was clearly thought to be an appetizing form, that of a play. There is no contemporary evidence for performance of either text and yet they have been found to be very suitable for performance in modern times. Similarly, Everyman has had to wait until the twentieth century before being staged (1907).

The Dutch text fits seamlessly into the tradition of the Rhetoricians in terms of language, use of allegory, subject, and setting. Their poetic and dramatic activities began in the first decades of the fifteenth century and their societies, the Chambers of Rhetoric, developed into the most prominent disseminators of popular education and entertainment in...