An ordinary and humble character,[3][4] the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them.
[4] The play's protagonist is an allegorical character representing an ordinary human who knows he is soon to die; according to literature scholar Harry Keyishian he is portrayed as "prosperous, gregarious, [and] attractive".
[6] The use of the term everyman to refer generically to a portrayal of an ordinary or typical person dates to the early 20th century.
[7] The term everywoman[8] originates in the same period, having been used by George Bernard Shaw to describe the character Ann Whitefield of his play Man and Superman.
[citation needed] Especially in literature, there is often a narrator, as the written medium enables extensive explication of, for example, previous events, internal details, and mental content.