Everyman

The Messenger's purpose is to deliver the prologue, to inform the audience of the play's purpose.... that this will be a “moral play” about our “lives and ending”. Thus, the Messenger’s opening speech also begins the play’s concern with beginnings and endings: the play shows of our “ending” as well as our “lives”, and warns us “in the beginning” to “take good heed to the ending”. So at the beginning of the play, we are invited to think about the end; just as, as the Messenger continues to explain, sin seems fantastic “in the beginning”, but “in the end” causes the soul to weep.