We know almost nothing about the writer of Everyman, who has remained anonymous from the play's first major reprinting in 1773 to the modern day. It is very likely that Everyman was not originally written in English, but in Dutch, as scholars are almost certain the English Everyman is, in fact, a translation of the Dutch play Elckerlijc, which was published in 1495. Dr. Logeman has argued that the writer of it is a certain Petrus Dorlandus, a native of Diest, and that has been accepted by some scholars - though nothing is certain about the authorship of Elckerlijc.
The English Everyman script can be dated to sometime between 1509-30. We know nothing about the identity of the person who translated the play from Dutch into the English version we have today. Laurence Andrewe of Calais, who worked as a printer/bookseller in London from around 1527 is known to have translated several books from Dutch to English – but any connection between him and Andrewe is nothing more than guesswork.
Everyman is one of the most famous and best known examples of a medieval morality play (see ‘The Morality Play’). It is, in the words of Arnold Williams, “the morality play best known and most widely performed in modern times”. Modern scholars are...
