So at last Everyman turns him to his Good Deeds--his Good Deeds, whom he had almost forgotten and who lies bound and in prison by reason of his sins. And Good Deeds consents to go with him on the dread journey. With him come others, too, among them Knowledge and Strength. But at the last these, too, turn back. Only Good Deeds is true, only Good Deeds stands by him to the end with comforting words. And so the play ends; the body of Everyman is laid in the grave, but we know that his soul goes home to God. This play is meant to picture the life of every man or woman, and to show how unhappy we may be in the end if we have not tried to be good in this world. "This moral men may have in mind, The hearers take it of worth old and young, And forsake Pride, for he deceiveth you in the end, And remember Beauty, Five Wits, Strength, and Discretion, They all at the last do Everyman forsake, Save his Good Deeds; these doth he take. And beware, - an they be small, Before God he hath no help at all. None excuse may be there for Everyman." BOOKS TO READ Everyman: A Morality (Everyman's Library). Chapter XXXV HOW A POET COMFORTED A GIRL PERHAPS the best Morality of which we know the author's name is Magnificence, by John Skelton. But, especially after Everyman, it is dull reading for little people, and it is not in order to speak of this play that I write about Skelton. John Skelton lived in the stormy times of Henry VIII, and he is called sometimes our first poet-laureate. But he was not poet- laureate as we now understand it, he was not the King's poet. The title only meant that he had taken a degree in grammar and Latin verse, and had been given a laurel wreath by the university which gave the degree. It was in this way that Skelton was made laureate, first by Oxford, then by Louvain in Belgium, and thirdly by Cambridge, so that in his day he was considered a learned man and a great poet. He was a friend of Caxton and helped him with one of his books. "I pray, maister Skelton, late created poet-laureate in the university of Oxenford," says Caxton, "to oversee and correct this said book." John Skelton, like so many other literary men of those days, was a priest. He studied, perhaps, both at Oxford and at Cambridge, and became tutor to Prince, afterwards King, Henry VIII. We do not know if he had an easy time with his royal pupil or not, but in one of his poems he tells us that "The honour of England I learned to spell" and "acquainted him with the Muses nine." The days of Henry VIII were troublous times for thinking people. The King was a tyrant, and the people of England were finding it harder than ever to bow to a tyrant while the world was awakening to new thought, and new desires for freedom, both in religion and in life.