"My Condicion is Mannes Soule to Kill"--Everyman's Mercantile Salvation‪.‬

That Everyman is atypical of medieval English drama is becoming a commonplace. While an occasional scholar will still attempt to show the play's continuity with other medieval English drama, critics point regularly to the representation of evil in Everyman as lacking the spirit of the "vice" characters more familiar from Macro manuscript plays like Mankind or Castle of Perseverance. (1) A recent practice on the part of English-speaking scholars has been to blame the Flemish (2) origins of Everyman for this lack of what Robert Potter labels typically English "tempter" figures, (3) and for other perceived shortcomings of the English version. On the other hand, W. M. H. Hummelen points out that "sinnekens,' comparable to the English "tempter" vices and perhaps more consistent, are a "key feature of the dramatic structure of Rederijker drama." (4) So if such characters actually represent a shared element between the English and Rederijker traditions, where then are "Myscheff," "Nowadays, "Nought," or "New Gyse"? (5) For that matter, given the eschatological nature of Everyman's subject matter, where are the popular devil figures, like Castle of Perseverance's famous Belial with "gunnepowdyr brennynge In pypys in hys handys and in hys erys and in hys ars whanne he go the to batayl" (6) or outside the Macro manuscript, (7) the memorable Tutiuillus from the Towneley Judgment? (8) Perhaps the lack of gunpowder, fire, and brimstone are an indicator of the play's indoor performance, (9) but more importantly one must ask--since Everyman is all about salvation, why is it not more directly about either resisting temptation or a more iconic Judgment Day, and why is the best joke the tepid tempter Cosyn's "crampe in my to"? (10) The answer to the first of these questions may be that Everyman does