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. 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. 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.