Sir Thomas More (play)
Encyclopedia
Sir Thomas More is a collaborative Elizabethan play by Anthony Munday
and others depicting the life and death of Thomas More
. It survives only in a single manuscript, now owned by the British Library
. The manuscript is notable because three pages of it is thought to be in the hand of William Shakespeare
and for the light it sheds on the collaborative nature of Elizabethan drama and the theatrical censorship of the era.
The Shakespearean appearance of the additions to the play was first noted in 1871-2, by Richard Simpson
, a prominent Shakespeare scholar of that era, and by James Spedding
, editor of the works of Sir Francis Bacon
. In 1916, the paleographer
Sir Edward Maunde Thompson
published a minute analysis of the addition and judged it to be Shakespeare's. The case was strengthened with the publication of Shakespeare's Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More (1923) by five noted scholars who analysed the play from multiple perspectives, all of which led to the same affirmative conclusion. Although dissenters remain, the play was performed with Shakespeare's name included amongst the authors by the Royal Shakespeare Company
in 2005 and the authoritive editions of Shakespeare's works
, including The Oxford Shakespeare
and the Arden Shakespeare
, accept the attribution of the three pages and include the play.
, the manuscript's provenance can be traced back to 1728, when it belonged to a Londoner named John Murray. It then passed into the collection of Edward Harley, 3rd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer
, and then to the British Museum
with the rest of his manuscript collection in 1753.
In poor condition at present, the manuscript in its original form probably consisted of 16 leaves, and 31 handwritten pages of a fair copy of the play in its first incarnation, with the last page blank. Two or three of the original leaves have been torn out, and seven leaves and two smaller pieces of paper have been inserted.
The revised manuscript in its extant form consists of the following contents (ignoring folios 1 and 2, the wrapper of the manuscript proper).
1) Folios 3-5, Hand S: the first three scenes of the play, through page 5a; censored by Edmund Tylney
, the Master of the Revels
, but otherwise intact. On page 5b, all text after the first 16 lines is marked for deletion. (At least one, probably two of the leaves immediately following—the original leaves 6 and 7—are missing.)
2) Folio 6, Addition I, Hand A: a single leaf, written on only one side. The addition is misplaced, and belongs later in the play, with page 19a.
3) Folios 7-9, Addition II: three leaves replacing the excised material on 5b and the original 6 and probable 7. Each of the three leaves is in a different hand.
4) Folios 10-11, Hand S: back to the original manuscript, though with some insertions on pages 10a and 11a in Hand B.
5) Folio 11c, Addition III, Hand C: the first of the two insertions on smaller pieces of paper, formerly pasted over the bottom of page 11b, and consisting of a single 21-line soliloquy meant to begin the next scene.
6) Folios 12-13, Addition IV, Hands C and E: four pages to replace excised or cancelled material, written mainly in Hand C but with input from Hand E on page 13b.
7) Folio 14a Hand S: the original again, and the whole page cancelled for deletion. Addition IV, directly previous, replaces this material.
8) Folio 14c, Addition V, Hand C: the second of the insertions on smaller sheets of paper, formerly pasted over the bottom of page 14a.
9) Folios 14b and 15, Hand S: the original again.
10) Folio 16, Addition VI, Hand B: the last of the six Additions.
11) Folios 17-22a, Hand S: the conclusion of the play in the original version. On page 19a a long passage is cut, and this is the place where the mislocated Addition I, folio 6, actually belongs.
Hand C attempted to provide corrections to the whole, enhancing its coherence; yet some stage directions and speech prefixes are missing, and the stage directions that exist are sometimes incorrect. (In Additions III and IV, More speaks his soliloquy before he enters.)
Given this state, it is perhaps not surprising that scholars, critics, and editors have had harsh words for the text, calling it "chaotic" and "reduced to incoherence." In 1987 Scott McMillin presented a contrarian argument, maintaining that the play could be acted as is; and at least one production of the play has ensued, by the Royal Shakespeare Company
in 2005.
The manuscript was first printed and published in 1844, two and a half centuries after it was written, by the Shakespeare Society, edited by Alexander Dyce
; and again in 1911 by the Malone Society, edited by W. W. Greg
.
of the time to stage it. The job could only be managed through complex doubling and more-than-doubling of roles by the actors. Out of necessity, the play is structured to allow for this multiple doubling of roles: it is set up in three phases—More's rise; More's Chancellorship; More's fall—with very limited overlap between the thirds. Only three characters, More himself and the Earls of Shrewsbury and Surrey, appear in all three portions; six other characters—Lady More, Palmer, Roper, Sergeant Downes, the Lord Mayor, and a sheriff—appear in two of the three segments.
Part of the need for revisions of the play was clearly due to purely practical concerns of stagecraft, apart from the demands of political censorship. Two of the Additions, III and VI, occur at the beginning and end of the middle third respectively, giving more time for costume changes. Addition III provides a soliloquy by More and a 45-line dialogue between two actors; Addition VI provides a similar breathing-space for the actors to get ready for the play's final phase.
Allowing for a range of uncertainties, it is most likely true that:
1) the original text of Sir Thomas More was written ca. 1591-3, with a special focus on 1592-3 when the subject of hostility against "aliens" was topical in London;
2) Edmund Tylney censored the play when it was submitted to him for approval at that time, for this topicality as well as for more general considerations of controlling political expression on the stage;
3) the play was written to be acted by the Lord Strange's Men
, the only company of the time that could have mounted such a large and demanding production;
4) the massive lead role of More, 800-plus lines, was designed for Edward Alleyn
, the only actor up to that time who is known to have played such large-scale roles;
5) the play was intended to be acted at Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre
, which possessed the special staging requirements (large-capacity second-level platform and special enclosure) called for by the play.
After the re-organization of the playing companies in 1594, the manuscript may well have passed into the possession of the Admiral's Men
. The effort at revision is difficult to date; many scholars have favored ca. 1596, though a date as late as ca. 1604 is also possible. Much of the point of the revision was to streamline the play, to make it more actable; though even the revised version would have needed a minimum cast of 18—13 adults and five boys.
and Henry Chettle
. Then, perhaps several years later, the play was heavily revised by another team of playwrights, including Thomas Heywood
, Thomas Dekker and, perhaps, William Shakespeare
.
The most common identifications for the six hands:
Munday, Chettle, Dekker, and Heywood wrote for the Admiral's Men during the years before and after 1600, which may strengthen the idea of a connection between the play and that company. Shakespeare, in this context, seems the odd man out. In his study of the play, Scott McMillin entertains the possibility that Shakespeare's contribution might have been part of the original text from the early 1590s, when Shakespeare may have written for the Lord Strange's Men.
The passages in Hand D "are now generally accepted as the work of Shakespeare." However, there is no absolute proof that Hand D is Shakespeare, and the identification remains debatable; John Webster
has been suggested as an alternative. If the Shakespearean identification is correct, these three pages represent the only surviving examples of Shakespeare's handwriting, aside from a few signatures on documents. The manuscript, with its numerous corrections, deletions and insertions, enables us to glimpse Shakespeare in the process of composition.
The original perceptions of Simpson and Spedding in 1871-2 were based on literary style and content and political outlook, rather than palaeographic and orthographic considerations. Consider one example of what attracted attention to the style of Hand D.
First, from Sir Thomas More, Addition IIc, 84-7:
Next, from Coriolanus
, I,i,184-8:
Thirdly, Troilus and Cressida
, I,iii,121-4:
Finally, Pericles, Prince of Tyre
, II,i,26-32:
Many features like this in the Hand D addition to Sir Thomas More first attracted the attention of Shakespeare scholars and readers, and led to more intensive study from a range of specialized perspectives.
The middle scenes of the play depict More as chancellor, and they are a medley of episodes taken from William Roper's biography and Foxe's Book of Martyrs
. More is shown embarrassing a self-important judge, playing a practical joke on Erasmus, and encouraging an unkempt servant to cut his hair (Foxe
ascribes the last episode to Thomas Cromwell
.) The only unity in these scenes is that of character: each serves to illustrate More's wit and good sense.
The last group of scenes treats More's decline and death. Unsurprisingly for a play written when a Tudor still reigned, the king who has More executed is treated gingerly: the grounds of their dispute are not mentioned, and no one, including More, voices any direct criticism of the monarch. Instead, his fate is ascribed in the medieval manner to the inevitable turning of Fortune's
wheel, and More himself accepts death with stoic
resignation. In all, the authors seem to have gone to great lengths to make a play on this subject acceptable to a Tudor monarch; still, one can hardly be surprised that they failed.
staged the piece in 1964, with Ian McKellen
playing the title role. McKellen took over from John Neville on short notice, when the latter had artistic differences with director Frank Dunlop
during rehearsals. The Guardian called McKellen's portrayal "a strikingly interesting performance." The play has been infrequently revived since, Nigel Cooke playing More for the Royal Shakespeare Company
in 2005.
Anthony Munday
Anthony Munday was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer. The chief interest in Munday for the modern reader lies in his collaboration with Shakespeare and others on the play Sir Thomas More and his writings on Robin Hood.-Biography:He was once thought to have been born in 1553, because...
and others depicting the life and death of Thomas More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
. It survives only in a single manuscript, now owned by the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
. The manuscript is notable because three pages of it is thought to be in the hand of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
and for the light it sheds on the collaborative nature of Elizabethan drama and the theatrical censorship of the era.
The Shakespearean appearance of the additions to the play was first noted in 1871-2, by Richard Simpson
Richard Simpson (writer)
Richard Simpson was a British Roman Catholic writer and literary scholar. He was born at Beddington, Surrey, into an Anglican family, and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at Oriel College, Oxford. He obtained a BA degree on 9 February 1843...
, a prominent Shakespeare scholar of that era, and by James Spedding
James Spedding
James Spedding was an English author, chiefly known as the editor of the works of Francis Bacon.-Life:He was born in Cumberland, the younger son of a country squire, and was educated at Bury St Edmunds and Trinity College, Cambridge; where he took a second class in the classical tripos, and was...
, editor of the works of Sir Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
. In 1916, the paleographer
Palaeography
Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...
Sir Edward Maunde Thompson
Edward Maunde Thompson
Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, GCB was a British palaeographer and Principal Librarian and first Director of the British Museum. He is also noted for his study of William Shakespeare's handwriting in the manuscript of the play Sir Thomas More.-Biography:Thompson's father was Edward Thompson, Custos...
published a minute analysis of the addition and judged it to be Shakespeare's. The case was strengthened with the publication of Shakespeare's Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More (1923) by five noted scholars who analysed the play from multiple perspectives, all of which led to the same affirmative conclusion. Although dissenters remain, the play was performed with Shakespeare's name included amongst the authors by the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
in 2005 and the authoritive editions of Shakespeare's works
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Complete Works of William Shakespeare is the standard name given to any volume containing all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. Some editions include several works which were not completely of Shakespeare's authorship , such as The Two Noble Kinsmen, a collaboration with John Fletcher, as...
, including The Oxford Shakespeare
The Oxford Shakespeare
The Oxford Shakespeare is a common term for the range of editions of William Shakespeare's works produced by Oxford University Press. The Oxford Shakespeare is produced under the general editorship of Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor.-The Complete Works:...
and the Arden Shakespeare
Arden Shakespeare
The Arden Shakespeare is a long-running series of scholarly editions of the works of William Shakespeare. It presents fully edited modern-spelling editions of the plays and poems, with lengthy introductions and full commentaries...
, accept the attribution of the three pages and include the play.
The manuscript
Now MS. Harley 7368 in the collection of the British MuseumBritish Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, the manuscript's provenance can be traced back to 1728, when it belonged to a Londoner named John Murray. It then passed into the collection of Edward Harley, 3rd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer
Edward Harley, 3rd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer
Edward Harley, 3rd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer was a British peer.Harley was the son of Edward Harley and his wife Sarah Foley. He succeeded his cousin Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer in the earldom in 1741...
, and then to the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
with the rest of his manuscript collection in 1753.
In poor condition at present, the manuscript in its original form probably consisted of 16 leaves, and 31 handwritten pages of a fair copy of the play in its first incarnation, with the last page blank. Two or three of the original leaves have been torn out, and seven leaves and two smaller pieces of paper have been inserted.
The revised manuscript in its extant form consists of the following contents (ignoring folios 1 and 2, the wrapper of the manuscript proper).
1) Folios 3-5, Hand S: the first three scenes of the play, through page 5a; censored by Edmund Tylney
Edmund Tylney
Sir Edmund Tilney or Tylney was a courtier best known now as Master of the Revels to Queen Elizabeth and King James. He was responsible for the censorship of drama in England. He was also instrumental in the development of English drama of the Elizabethan period...
, the Master of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, but otherwise intact. On page 5b, all text after the first 16 lines is marked for deletion. (At least one, probably two of the leaves immediately following—the original leaves 6 and 7—are missing.)
2) Folio 6, Addition I, Hand A: a single leaf, written on only one side. The addition is misplaced, and belongs later in the play, with page 19a.
3) Folios 7-9, Addition II: three leaves replacing the excised material on 5b and the original 6 and probable 7. Each of the three leaves is in a different hand.
- Folio 7a, Addition IIa, Hand B: a scene to replace a short deleted scene on 5b.
- Folio 7b, Addition IIb, Hand C: another complete scene, with stage directions leading to its successor.
- Folios 8-9, Addition IIc, Hand D: a three-page scene (page 9b being blank), with about a dozen corrections in Hand C.
4) Folios 10-11, Hand S: back to the original manuscript, though with some insertions on pages 10a and 11a in Hand B.
5) Folio 11c, Addition III, Hand C: the first of the two insertions on smaller pieces of paper, formerly pasted over the bottom of page 11b, and consisting of a single 21-line soliloquy meant to begin the next scene.
6) Folios 12-13, Addition IV, Hands C and E: four pages to replace excised or cancelled material, written mainly in Hand C but with input from Hand E on page 13b.
7) Folio 14a Hand S: the original again, and the whole page cancelled for deletion. Addition IV, directly previous, replaces this material.
8) Folio 14c, Addition V, Hand C: the second of the insertions on smaller sheets of paper, formerly pasted over the bottom of page 14a.
9) Folios 14b and 15, Hand S: the original again.
10) Folio 16, Addition VI, Hand B: the last of the six Additions.
11) Folios 17-22a, Hand S: the conclusion of the play in the original version. On page 19a a long passage is cut, and this is the place where the mislocated Addition I, folio 6, actually belongs.
Hand C attempted to provide corrections to the whole, enhancing its coherence; yet some stage directions and speech prefixes are missing, and the stage directions that exist are sometimes incorrect. (In Additions III and IV, More speaks his soliloquy before he enters.)
Given this state, it is perhaps not surprising that scholars, critics, and editors have had harsh words for the text, calling it "chaotic" and "reduced to incoherence." In 1987 Scott McMillin presented a contrarian argument, maintaining that the play could be acted as is; and at least one production of the play has ensued, by the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
in 2005.
The manuscript was first printed and published in 1844, two and a half centuries after it was written, by the Shakespeare Society, edited by Alexander Dyce
Alexander Dyce
Alexander Dyce was a Scottish dramatic editor and literary historian.He was born in Edinburgh and received his early education at the high school there, before becoming a student at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1819...
; and again in 1911 by the Malone Society, edited by W. W. Greg
Walter Wilson Greg
Sir Walter Wilson Greg was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century....
.
The play
Sir Thomas More would have been an extraordinary play, apart from the questions involving its revision. It has an unusually high total of 59 speaking parts, including 22 in the first 500 lines of the play; this, plus crowd scenes, would have taxed the ability of any playing companyPlaying company
In Renaissance London, playing company was the usual term for a company of actors. These companies were organized around a group of ten or so shareholders , who performed in the plays but were also responsible for management. The sharers employed "hired men" — that is, the minor actors and...
of the time to stage it. The job could only be managed through complex doubling and more-than-doubling of roles by the actors. Out of necessity, the play is structured to allow for this multiple doubling of roles: it is set up in three phases—More's rise; More's Chancellorship; More's fall—with very limited overlap between the thirds. Only three characters, More himself and the Earls of Shrewsbury and Surrey, appear in all three portions; six other characters—Lady More, Palmer, Roper, Sergeant Downes, the Lord Mayor, and a sheriff—appear in two of the three segments.
Part of the need for revisions of the play was clearly due to purely practical concerns of stagecraft, apart from the demands of political censorship. Two of the Additions, III and VI, occur at the beginning and end of the middle third respectively, giving more time for costume changes. Addition III provides a soliloquy by More and a 45-line dialogue between two actors; Addition VI provides a similar breathing-space for the actors to get ready for the play's final phase.
Allowing for a range of uncertainties, it is most likely true that:
1) the original text of Sir Thomas More was written ca. 1591-3, with a special focus on 1592-3 when the subject of hostility against "aliens" was topical in London;
2) Edmund Tylney censored the play when it was submitted to him for approval at that time, for this topicality as well as for more general considerations of controlling political expression on the stage;
3) the play was written to be acted by the Lord Strange's Men
Lord Strange's Men
Lord Strange's Men was an Elizabethan playing company, comprising retainers of the household of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange . They are best known in their final phase of activity in the late 1580s and early 1590s...
, the only company of the time that could have mounted such a large and demanding production;
4) the massive lead role of More, 800-plus lines, was designed for Edward Alleyn
Edward Alleyn
Edward Alleyn was an English actor who was a major figure of the Elizabethan theatre and founder of Dulwich College and Alleyn's School.-Early life:...
, the only actor up to that time who is known to have played such large-scale roles;
5) the play was intended to be acted at Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre
The Rose (theatre)
The Rose was an Elizabethan theatre. It was the fourth of the public theatres to be built, after The Theatre , the Curtain , and the theatre at Newington Butts The Rose was an Elizabethan theatre. It was the fourth of the public theatres to be built, after The Theatre (1576), the Curtain (1577),...
, which possessed the special staging requirements (large-capacity second-level platform and special enclosure) called for by the play.
After the re-organization of the playing companies in 1594, the manuscript may well have passed into the possession of the Admiral's Men
Admiral's Men
The Admiral's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras...
. The effort at revision is difficult to date; many scholars have favored ca. 1596, though a date as late as ca. 1604 is also possible. Much of the point of the revision was to streamline the play, to make it more actable; though even the revised version would have needed a minimum cast of 18—13 adults and five boys.
Authorship
The manuscript is a complicated text containing many layers of collaborative writing, revision, and censorship. It is believed that it was originally written by playwrights Anthony MundayAnthony Munday
Anthony Munday was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer. The chief interest in Munday for the modern reader lies in his collaboration with Shakespeare and others on the play Sir Thomas More and his writings on Robin Hood.-Biography:He was once thought to have been born in 1553, because...
and Henry Chettle
Henry Chettle
Henry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era.The son of Robert Chettle, a London dyer, he was apprenticed in 1577 and became a member of the Stationer's Company in 1584, traveling to Cambridge on their behalf in 1588. His career as a printer and author is...
. Then, perhaps several years later, the play was heavily revised by another team of playwrights, including Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood was a prominent English playwright, actor, and author whose peak period of activity falls between late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre.-Early years:...
, Thomas Dekker and, perhaps, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
.
The most common identifications for the six hands:
- HAND S – Anthony MundayAnthony MundayAnthony Munday was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer. The chief interest in Munday for the modern reader lies in his collaboration with Shakespeare and others on the play Sir Thomas More and his writings on Robin Hood.-Biography:He was once thought to have been born in 1553, because...
, the original manuscript; - HAND A – Henry ChettleHenry ChettleHenry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era.The son of Robert Chettle, a London dyer, he was apprenticed in 1577 and became a member of the Stationer's Company in 1584, traveling to Cambridge on their behalf in 1588. His career as a printer and author is...
; - HAND B – Thomas HeywoodThomas HeywoodThomas Heywood was a prominent English playwright, actor, and author whose peak period of activity falls between late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre.-Early years:...
; - HAND C – A professional scribe who copied out a large section of the play;
- HAND D – William ShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
; - HAND E – Thomas Dekker.
Munday, Chettle, Dekker, and Heywood wrote for the Admiral's Men during the years before and after 1600, which may strengthen the idea of a connection between the play and that company. Shakespeare, in this context, seems the odd man out. In his study of the play, Scott McMillin entertains the possibility that Shakespeare's contribution might have been part of the original text from the early 1590s, when Shakespeare may have written for the Lord Strange's Men.
The passages in Hand D "are now generally accepted as the work of Shakespeare." However, there is no absolute proof that Hand D is Shakespeare, and the identification remains debatable; John Webster
John Webster
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...
has been suggested as an alternative. If the Shakespearean identification is correct, these three pages represent the only surviving examples of Shakespeare's handwriting, aside from a few signatures on documents. The manuscript, with its numerous corrections, deletions and insertions, enables us to glimpse Shakespeare in the process of composition.
Evidence for Shakespeare's contribution
The evidence for identifying Shakespeare as Hand D is of various types:- Handwriting similar to the six existing signatures of Shakespeare;
- Spellings characteristic of Shakespeare;
- Stylistic elements similar to Shakespeare's acknowledged works.
The original perceptions of Simpson and Spedding in 1871-2 were based on literary style and content and political outlook, rather than palaeographic and orthographic considerations. Consider one example of what attracted attention to the style of Hand D.
First, from Sir Thomas More, Addition IIc, 84-7:
-
-
- For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
- With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
- Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
- Would feed on one another.
-
Next, from Coriolanus
Coriolanus (play)
Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.-Characters:*Caius Martius, later surnamed Coriolanus...
, I,i,184-8:
-
-
-
-
- What's the matter,
-
- That in these several places of the city
- You cry against the noble Senate, who
- (Under the gods) keep you in awe, which else
- Would feed on one another?
-
-
Thirdly, Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...
, I,iii,121-4:
-
-
- And appetite, an universal wolf
- (So doubly seconded with will and pwer)
- Must make perforce an universal prey,
- And last eat up himself.
-
Finally, Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio...
, II,i,26-32:
-
-
- 3rd Fisherman:...Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
- 1st Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up
- the little ones. I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly
- as to a whale: 'a plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him,
- and at last devour them all at a mouthful.
-
Many features like this in the Hand D addition to Sir Thomas More first attracted the attention of Shakespeare scholars and readers, and led to more intensive study from a range of specialized perspectives.
Audience perception
Subjectively, audiences experience More's speech in the passage attributed to Shakespeare as more vividly written and dramatically effective than the rest of the work. While Shakespeare's supposed contribution is consistent with the overall theme and develops the plot, there is an impression of a virtuoso piece inserted, but not completely integrated, into the play.Plot
The play dramatizes events in More's life, both real and legendary, in an episodic manner unified only by the rise and fall of More's fortunes. It begins with the Ill May Day events of 1517, in which More, as undersheriff of London, quells riots directed at immigrants living in London. (On Tylney's orders, the "foreigners" of the original draft were changed to "Lombards"—presumably because there were few Lombards in London to take offence at the reference.) In these scenes, More is made to express a doctrine of passive submission to civil authority which, while hardly appropriate to his fame, is pure late-Tudor orthodoxy.The middle scenes of the play depict More as chancellor, and they are a medley of episodes taken from William Roper's biography and Foxe's Book of Martyrs
Foxe's Book of Martyrs
The Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, more accurately Acts and Monuments, is an account from a Protestant point of view of Christian church history and martyrology...
. More is shown embarrassing a self-important judge, playing a practical joke on Erasmus, and encouraging an unkempt servant to cut his hair (Foxe
John Foxe
John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, , an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the...
ascribes the last episode to Thomas Cromwell
Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex
Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, , was an English statesman who served as chief minister of King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540....
.) The only unity in these scenes is that of character: each serves to illustrate More's wit and good sense.
The last group of scenes treats More's decline and death. Unsurprisingly for a play written when a Tudor still reigned, the king who has More executed is treated gingerly: the grounds of their dispute are not mentioned, and no one, including More, voices any direct criticism of the monarch. Instead, his fate is ascribed in the medieval manner to the inevitable turning of Fortune's
Fortuna (mythology)
Fortuna was the goddess of fortune and personification of luck in Roman religion. She might bring good luck or bad: she could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Justice, and came to represent life's capriciousness...
wheel, and More himself accepts death with stoic
STOIC
STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...
resignation. In all, the authors seem to have gone to great lengths to make a play on this subject acceptable to a Tudor monarch; still, one can hardly be surprised that they failed.
Performance history
No recorded performance of Sir Thomas More took place until the Nottingham PlayhouseNottingham Playhouse
The Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in the 1950s when it operated from a former cinema. Directors during this period included Val May and Frank Dunlop.-The building:...
staged the piece in 1964, with Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...
playing the title role. McKellen took over from John Neville on short notice, when the latter had artistic differences with director Frank Dunlop
Frank Dunlop
Frank Dunlop is an Irish lobbyist and former broadcast journalist with Raidió Teilifís Éireann . Originally from County Kilkenny, he is a key witness to the Mahon Tribunal which is investigating improper payments by property developers to Irish politicians and will be a key witness in pending...
during rehearsals. The Guardian called McKellen's portrayal "a strikingly interesting performance." The play has been infrequently revived since, Nigel Cooke playing More for the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
in 2005.
External links
- Greg, W. W. ed. The Book of Sir Thomas More. Malone Society Reprint. Oxford UP, 1911.
- Sir Thomas More eText at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
- Pollard, Alfred W.Alfred W. PollardAlfred William Pollard was an English bibliographer, widely credited for bringing a higher level of scholarly rigor to the study of Shakespearean texts....
, W. W. GregWalter Wilson GregSir Walter Wilson Greg was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century....
, Edward Maunde ThompsonEdward Maunde ThompsonSir Edward Maunde Thompson, GCB was a British palaeographer and Principal Librarian and first Director of the British Museum. He is also noted for his study of William Shakespeare's handwriting in the manuscript of the play Sir Thomas More.-Biography:Thompson's father was Edward Thompson, Custos...
, John Dover Wilson, and R. W. ChambersRaymond Wilson ChambersRaymond Wilson Chambers was a British literary scholar, author, and academic; throughout his career he was associated with University College London .-Life:...
. Shakespeare's hand in the play of Sir Thomas More. Cambridge UP, 1923.