A. C. Cawley Boeken

"The Canterbury Tales" is an unfinished account of the journey of 30 pilgrims from London to the shrine of St Thomas in Canterbury, and the stories that they tell each other on the road to while away the time. Noble, tragic and bawdy tales intermingle to offer insight into pilgrim society.

Miracle plays were a popular form of entertainment throughout the Middle Ages, and part of the poetic and dramatic tradition on which Shakespeare drew. Everyman discovers what you can't take with you when you go. He beseeches in turn friends, family (one pleads 'cramp in my toe'), possessions ('I follow no man in such voyages'), and finally falls back on moral and religious values.