“Sir Thomas More”: the Play

Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle et al.: Sir Thomas More. John Jowett, editor. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2025. 

The first draft of this play was written ca. 1600. It underwent subsequent revisions by Chettle, most notably by William Shakespeare, by Thomas Dekker (himself no mean playwright), by  Thomas Heywood, and by two anonymous ‘hands.’

 

Sir Thomas More seems never to have been produced, and there is little wonder in that. It presents a sympathetic portrait of More, whom King Henry VIII had beheaded for refusing to sign the Oath of Succession stipulating that the king’s heir would be the children of the newly crowned queen, the Protestant Anne Boleyn. Famously or notoriously, Henry had divorced his wife of many years, Catholic Katherine of Aragon, in favor of Protestant Anne. This was part of Henry’s construction of a modern state in England along the lines commended by Machiavelli in The Prince. Such a state would break from feudalism by centralizing monarchic authority; in England, it would break with the Catholic Church, as Henry founded a ‘state church,’ the Anglican Church, which he could control—again, very much in line with Machiavelli and his philosophic follower, Francis Bacon (himself a mentor of Thomas Hobbes). To refuse to sign the Oath was an act of treason against the new regime. And it in effect denied the legitimacy of Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, mother of the reigning monarch, James I.  A play that put More in a favorable light attracted the keen attention of the royal censor, Edmund Tilney, who demanded substantial alterations; the project likely never reached production.

Unlike Shakespeare’s plays, Sir Thomas More isn’t divided into ‘Acts,’ instead consisting of seventeen scenes. As Professor Jowett remarks, these might be grouped into three sections, three interlinked dramas: those depicting the London riots of “Ill May” 1517, when More intervened to calm the crowd; a visit to More’s home by his fellow Christian Humanist, Erasmus, followed by a play-within-the-play staged in the home after Erasmus’s departure; and finally, the events leading to More’s execution on July 6, 1535. 

The play opens as John Lincoln, a trader in foreign goods, the Betts brothers (one a Londoner, the other a “clown” or rustic who has moved to the city) watch an argument between a Lombard banker and moneylender, Francis de Barde, and Doll Williamson, “an honest, plain carpenter’s wife,” as she describes herself (I.4-5). De Barde has made himself unwelcome. He had lured a local goldsmith’s wife to his home, probably raping her, and then audaciously charged her husband for her room and board. He is now attempting to do that to Mrs. Williamson, who is having none of it. Her husband arrives, quarreling with another Lombard, Anthony Cavaler, about two doves the Williamson had purchased and Avaler stole, justifying this by saying that pigeon meat is too good for a “coarse carpenter” (I.25). As Doll indignantly protests, one foreigner wants to take her husband’s food, another his wife. Lincoln looks on, bitterly: “It is hard when Englishmen’s patience must be thus jetted on by strangers, and they dare not avenge their own wrongs” (I.26-29). 

They dare not, because the Lombards are under the protection of the Crown. More than two centuries earlier, King Edward I had expelled Jews from England, having already begun to use resident Lombard bankers, who had emigrated from northern Italy, for the country’s financial dealings. Jews had already been subordinated throughout Europe by the Catholic Church, as the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had banned them, along with Muslims, from holding public office and required them to wear identifying badges. Since Roman Catholic canon law banned Christians from lending money at interest, a necessary practice that had been taken up by Jewish people—much to the benefit of England but much to the irritation of those who preferred not to pay their debts—someone had to replace them. The Lombards proved no more popular than the Jews, partly because debtors still preferred not to reimburse creditors and partly because they abused their protected status, as the outrages of de Barde and Cavaler exemplify.

George Betts dares to intervene on the Williamsons’ behalf, to the outrage of de Barde, who threatens to call no less a personage than the Lord Ambassador to see Betts punished. That’s enough for Doll, who tells de Barde, “Hands off, proud stranger, or, by Him that bought me, if men’s milky hearts dare not strike a stranger, yet women will beat them down ere they bear these abuses” (I.63-66). And the same goes for you, caviling Cavaler. “If our husbands must be bridled by law, and forced to bear your wrongs, their wives will be a little lawless, and soundly beat thee” (I.74-76). Such threats recall the depredations of the Maenads of Greek legend, who tore to pieces the Theban king, Pentheus, and the poet, Orpheus. The Maenads were followers of the god, Dionysus, no respecter of law; they lived in the woods outside cities, far from civility. Despite this show of pagan rage, Doll is also the person who cries out to Jesus and the Virgin Mary; this will prove important, later. For now, we are left to wonder if her Christian words betoken superstition, merely.

The Lombards beat their strategic retreat in search of the Lord Ambassador, while Doll laments, loudly, “I am ashamed that free-born Englishmen, having beaten strangers within their own bounds”—the Spanish, the French—should “thus be braved and abused by them at home” (I.80-83). Her husband’s friend, Mr. Sherwin, defends Englishmen’s honor, protesting that “It is not our lack of courage in the cause, but the strict obedience that we are bound to.” As the goldsmith wronged by de Barde, I too have suffered these injustices, “but how to redress yours or mine own is a matter beyond all our abilities” (I.84-88). 

“Not so, not so, my good friends,” Lincoln says (I.89). We can bypass the secular authorities because the Catholic Church has an independent voice and authority. He intends deliver “a bill of our wrongs” to the preachers who speak at the Easter Week services outside the church of St. Mary of the Hospital. Dr. Standish won’t preach on it, but his colleague Dr. Beal will, doing “as much as a priest may do” (I.112). Lincoln already has his appeal to public opinion written. It calls upon “the worshipful lords and masters of this city” to “take compassion over the poor people your neighbors”; “aliens and strangers eat the bread from the fatherless children and take the living from all the artificers, and the intercourse from all merchants,” whereby “craftsmen be brought to beggary and merchants to neediness” (I.118-129). If commoners are “knit and united to one part,” setting “their willing power for remedy, and not suffer the said aliens in their wealth,” the “natural-born men of this region” will no longer “come to confusion” (I. 130-134). The follow-on to this organizing, George Betts adds, will be to organize the allies thus won over, then to riot on May Day, the traditional day for apprentice celebrations. The Williamsons agree to join the plot. 

That is, the law, enforced by the monarchic regime, which already intends to break with the Catholic Church, reducing its authority in favor of a state-established church, favors the financial and commercial activities of a protected class of foreigners who serve the needs of that state. Although at least one woman would counter this with Dionysiac frenzy, the leader of the men has a plan. He will attempt to trump the law by appealing to the people through the churchmen over and beneath the statesmen. At least one of the churchmen will go along, acting on the Christian principle of compassion or charity, and perhaps because he sees Henry VIII’s intention to undermine the Catholic Church in favor of an English version of Machiavelli’s lo stato. In this, Lincoln will appeal to nationhood, Englishness, against foreign interlopers who test Englishmen’s patience by tyrannizing freeborn men and women under legal protection. This is an appeal to nature over convention, law—an appeal to the rights of natural-born English of this region against men whose ancestors arrived much more recently, men who are foreigners in the eyes of the native sons.

At the Court of Sessions, the Sheriffs’ Court held in the City Guildhall, the Lord Mayor (John Rest of the Grocers’ Company), Justice Suresby and several unnamed colleagues, and two sheriffs, one of them Thomas More, are hearing the case of Smart v. Lifter (an appropriately named habitual thief). In this time and place, the convicted cutpurse faced the death penalty, although the law classified their crimes as petty. With the permission of the Court, More interrogates Lifter privately. More wants to give some much-needed moral instruction to self-assured Justice Suresby, who has argued that Smart is even more culpable than Lifter because he had tempted him by flashing a large “sum of money” (II.56). As he puts it, intending a mot, “knaves and fools meet when purses go” (II.146). More has a prank to play on Suresby and asks Lifter (whom he has often “saved…from this place” and therefore can trust him) to help with the setup, in exchange for getting him exonerated. “As I am a Christian and a man, / I will procure thy pardon for that jest” (II.59-60). A Christian and a man: as a Christian, More will not lie to him and desires to give the judge a lesson in humility; as a man, he enjoys a good joke. While initially skeptical (“You are too deep for me to deal withal,” please to not go about “to undermine my life”), Lifter agrees, once More explains his plan (II.65-67). First, “I am a true subject to my king” (II.68)—a point of some importance, as events will unfold—and “all that I am at is a merry jest. / Perform it, Lifter, and expect my best.” (II.75-76). That is, More is a man of loyalty, wit, and wisdom—a rare combination of virtues. The plan is to get Lifter alone with Suresby, giving the skilled pickpocket an opportunity to lift his purse. No fool, Lifter sees More’s intention: “to check the folly of the Justice / For blaming others in a desperate case / Wherein himself may fall as soon as any.” (II. 92-94). The crime is serious (“desperate”), the jest is witty, but the purpose of the jest is also seriously and wisely intended as a lesson in Christian humility. More wants what is good for the soul of Suresby. 

The plot goes as planned. Unknowingly shorn of his purse, Justice Suresby re-joins his colleagues and intones a rebuke to plaintiff Smart: “Wise men look to their purses well enough” (II.147). When he discovers his own purse to be missing, More closes the trap, using Suresby’s argument about incaution against him. “Being a wise man”—that is, prudent, a man of practical wisdom—and “a magistrate,” More exclaims, as if surprised, how could you “trust your purse with such a liberal sum” of money? “‘Fore God, it is a shame / With such a sum to tempt necessity.” (II.168-171). That is, the natural virtue of prudence ought to inform Suresby’s conventional, civil role as a magistrate, wherein he must make distinctions based upon chance, choice, and necessity as they bear upon those who appear before him. Echoing Suresby’s argument against Smart, and wittily bringing a larger civil-social circumstance into consideration, More presses on: “What makes so many pilferers and felons / But these fond baits that foolish people lay / To tempt the needy, miserable wretch?” (II.175-177). Suresby gets the joke and takes the lesson. In case he doesn’t, the Lord Mayor needles him further, saying “Master Suresby, it is strange, / You being a man so settled in assurance / Will fall in that which you condemned in other” (II.191-194). More duly returns the money to the hapless judge, and the case is closed, with justice wittily tempered by mercy for all concerned, including the lead judge. With this scene, the playwrights have given us much of what we need to know about Thomas More.

Meanwhile, in the King’s Court, a cast of notables has assembled: George Talbot (Earl of Shrewsbury), a firm royalist, Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey)—the humanist poet whose sonnets are still read in English literature classes to this day, typically paired with those of his contemporary and fellow humanist, Thomas Wyatt—Sir Thomas Palmer—a soldier and friend of the king—and Sir Roger Cholmley—a member of the royal Council. [1] Concerned by the “frowning vulgar brow,” the “displeased commons of the City” and their unrest, Talbot solicits advice from Palmer and Cholmley (III.4). Surrey, for his part, deplores the “high-crested insolence” of the foreigners, who are ungrateful to the king for his permission to live and profit in London (III.12). They are tempting the native commoners to unrest; that is, this case is a larger-scale parallel to Smart v. Lifter. De Barde is suing Sherwin, demanding interest on a loan, much to Surrey’s displeasure, and all the men suspect the foreigner of sexual advances toward the wives of Englishmen. “If English blood be once up,” Surrey warns, “I fear me much,” as “some of these saucy aliens for their pride / Will pay for’t soundly, wheresoe’er it lights,” and “this tide of rage, that with the eddy strives, / I fear me much will drown too many lives.” (III.57-63). More-like, Cholmley assigns some blame to Shrewsbury and Surrey themselves. “Men of your place and greatness are to blame” because you have “not informed” His Majesty “of this base abuse” (III.65-67). If Henry knew of these “daily wrongs,” “I know his gracious wisdom / Would soon address it” (III.69-70). This links Henry to More as a man of justice, wisdom, and graciousness. It also means that the regime of the modern state that Henry is building has malfunctioned. The aristocrats should act as links between the people and the monarch. They are the ones who manage estates, governing the people. With political centralization, the upper levels of the aristocracy have a weakened connection to the provinces; it is to be noted that the lower-level aristocrat, Cholmley (a mere ‘sir,’ no ‘lord’) is the one who sees this. Additionally, with statist centralization will come urbanization; commercial London becomes an ever more important source of revenue for the Crown. But native-born Englishmen, Catholics, may not perform the crucial function of lending money at interest. To meet this problem, English monarchs have given this function to foreigners who have no ties of affection to the people, unlike the landed aristocrats. To them, the English are the foreigners—in England. They are oligarchs, out to exploit the lower orders. And they operate under royal protection, at least so long as Henry doesn’t know what they’re doing. 

A messenger arrives to report, “The City is in an uproar” (III.74). Sure enough, Dr. Beal has indeed published a “bill of wrongs,” presumably the bill that Lincoln had drawn up, with exactly the effect Lincoln had desired (III.80.). Surrey suggests that his fellow humanist, Thomas More, who is in “especial favor with the people,” might “prevail more than we can with power” (III. 87, 90). Shrewsbury concurs. That is, Surrey—a poet, a man of words—wants More to use words, calming rhetoric, to counter the incendiary words of Lincoln, mouthed by the preacher. Rightly chosen words, a rhetoric of peace, may prove more effective that “we can with power” (III.90). Lord Shrewsbury concurs, urging haste in view of the impending violence. 

His fears are justified. Lincoln, the Betts brothers, the Williamson (Doll arrayed in military attire), and Sherwin intend to lead an attack on the Dutch and French enclave, exacting rough justice on their abusers. Impassioned Clown Betts avers, “We are free-born / And do take scorn / To be used so” (IV.13-15). As before, it is Lincoln who proposes a strategy—he, too, has a sort of prudential wisdom, if of a low level, and the grievances he addresses are very real, as acknowledged by the aristocrats, as well. Since the authorities know about the uprising and the foreigners have already fled, he argues, we should burn their houses. The fires will keep the Mayor’s forces busy. Clown Betts likes this ‘middling’ way between swords and words, but Sherwin and Doll Williamson caution that Englishmen’s houses might burn, too. They are overridden by Lincoln and Betts. “If hanging come, ’tis welcome; that’s the worst,” Clown Betts avers (IV.81). He is willing to lose his property and even die for his rights as an Englishman, a willingness that foreshadows but will also contrast with the future self-sacrifice of Thomas More.

More himself, the Lord Mayor, and Sir John Munday, a London alderman injured in the riot, are now conferring [2]. The rebels have broken into Newgate prison, releasing the inmates, who include “felons and notorious murderers” (V.21). They threaten the lives and properties of the foreigners, undermining the rule of law. Shrewsbury, Surrey, Palmer, and Cholmley join them, having been dispatched by the king to deal with the rioters. However, “in God’s name,” “the King laments if one true subject bleed,” Shrewsbury tells them (V.34). More, a jurist as well as a sheriff, interjects, “My lords, I doubt not but we shall appease / With a calm breath this flux of discontent” (V.38-39). Against Lincoln and Clown Betts, then, he will oppose words to both swords and fire. “Let’s to these simple men, for many sweat / Under this act [i.e., the riot] that knows not the law’s debt / Which hangs upon their lives” (V.42-44)—a suggestion to forgive those who know not what they do. “For silly men / Plod on they know not how; like a fool’s pen”—an instrument of unwisdom—that, “ending, shows not any sentence writ / Linked but to common reason or slightest wit” (V.44-47). This likely allusion to the Lincoln/Beal document might also glance at the manuscript of the play itself, whose authors had better take care not to stir up more trouble than they intend with this treatment of supremely sensitive political and spiritual themes. Both the treatment of the rioters and the writing of the play will require wisdom and wit, consistently combined. Therefore, More continues, let us act and speak “I’God’s name on, to calm our private foes”—the rioters are private men, subjects of the King, not rulers like themselves—and do so “with breath of gravity, not dangerous blows” (V.51). That is, the King’s intention at this point comports entirely with that of Thomas More, and so does their motive, namely, Christian mercy for justly aggrieved English men and women. Shrewsbury says that “the King laments if one true subject bleed” (V.34). He and More are both true subjects, as are most of the foolish rioters, but Henry will come to doubt More’s fidelity, and therefore will make him bleed.

Scene Six, attributed to Shakespeare, begins with chief conspirator Lincoln calling for peace, so that he can be heard. He cites inflationary food prices caused by the foreigners as another of their grievances. Attempting a logical syllogism, he begins with the major premise: “Our country is a great eating country,” Lincoln rightly observes (VI.8). “Argo they [the foreigners] eat more in our country than they do in their own,” with the resulting scarcity driving up prices for us (VI.9). But this reasoning based on appetite quickly descends into a dubious set of contentions about how the foreigners have introduced root vegetables into the country (parsnips are especially to be dreaded), a supposed source of disease which in turn is somehow connected, or perhaps analogous, to the political disease afflicting London.

Lincoln’s effort to rule by rather loose reasoning does little to quiet the mob he has gathered. A messenger from King Henry then arrives, offering the King’s mercy. Interpreting this as an attempt to throw him and his followers off-balance (this, assuming that they are on balance), Lincoln replies with some insolence that they will accept it but still “show no mercy upon the strangers” (VI.26); he may be a determined Englishman, but his Christianity is in doubt. To this, the king’s man makes the mistake of calling the rebels simple, for which insult they begin to close in on him, necessitating his rescue by the Lord Mayor and his allies. Going from the messenger’s insult to flattery, addressing the seditionists as “masters,” Shrewsbury and Surrey call for order, but the citizens cannot agree on which one to hear. Now recognizing that his followers have careened out of control, Lincoln questions their “wisdom,” which Surrey then denies altogether (VI.41). More remarks, “Whiles they are over the bank of their obedience,” like a chaotic flood, “Thus will bear down all things” (VI.47-48). Their disorder threatens the state and regime. Knowing More’s credit with the many, Lincoln asks if they should let him speak, a thought heartily seconded by Doll Williamson. She is grateful to him for appointing her brother to a position of watchman for the City. The crowd agrees to hear from him.

More tells Lincoln to command the crowd to be silent, to which the ringleader protests that the Devil himself “cannot rule them” (VI.63). To that serious admission, More replies, with telling logic—better than any Lincoln has displayed—”Then what a rough and riotous charge have you / To lead those that the devil cannot rule” (VI.64-65). This is the beginning of the rule of reason in service of the rule of law. It is also the beginning of a Christian turn, as Doll Williamson swears “by th’ mass” that the “good housekeeper” More can be trusted (VI.67-68). When the citizens cry “Peace, peace!” More, echoing the Biblical rebuke of unpeaceable ones who raise that cry, rejoins, again with logic, “Look what you do offend you cry upon; / That is the peace” (VI.71-72). He sets out their self-contradiction. What is more, you violate “the peace wherein you have till now grown up,” a peace that, had it “been ta’en from you,” the resulting “bloody times / Could not have brought you to the state of men” (VI.75-77). Not only does their cry contradict their actions, but the consequences of their actions contradict their intention, which is to improve their condition. Prudently, rather than calling them simple he expresses compassion: “Alas, poor things! What is it you have got / Although we grant to get the thing you seek?” (VI.78-79). George Betts, Clown Betts’s more civilized older brother, knows the answer to that one: “Marry, the removing of the strangers” (VI.80). 

More then joins him in a public deliberation. If the foreigners are removed, their children suffering as they leave, and your “opinions” now wear the royal “ruff” of supreme authority, if “this your noise / Hath chid down all the majesty of England,” and “you sit as kings in your desires”—not in reason—with “Authority quite silenced by your brawl,” what then “have you got?” (VI.83-84, 88-90). You will have “quelled” order itself by “insolence and strong hand” because you will have set an example by which “Not one of you should live an aged man,” since “other ruffians, as their fancies wrought, / With selfsame hand, self reasons, and self right, / Would shark on you, and men, like ravenous fishes, / Would feed on one another” (VI.91-95). This is the same kind of argument he had used against too-sure Suresby. You must know yourselves before you judge others, perhaps the true meaning of “Judge not, that ye be judged.” Ordinarily, what is quelled is a riot, but these rioters are quelling injustice with injustice, and so quelling nothing, as they can see if they follow More’s reasoned speech. To her great credit, Doll Williamson does follow it: “Before God, that’s as true as the gospel.” The God who is Logos is a logical, a reasonable, God. George Betts too is persuaded (VI.99). The core group of conspirators has fractured; More has divided them and soon will conquer. 

More can now address the crowd as his “good friends” (VI.102). Friendship is friendship in reasoned word and in Logos, the supremely reasonable Word that is God. The crowd’s “innovation,” their violation of the English law, albeit in the name of natural rights, rights of native Englishmen, is “a sin / Which oft th’apostle did forewarn us of, / Urging obedience to authority”; “you were in arms ‘gainst God” (VI.105-109), against the stern admonition of the Apostle Paul (Romans 13:1-2). God has endowed the King with an office to which He has “lent” his own power to inspire fear, ensure justice by commanding and enforcing it (VI.111-112). God “hath bid him,” the King, “rule, and willed you to obey” the man to whom he has given “His own name,” that of “a god on earth” (VI.114-118). That is, More is fully aware of the Biblical command to subjects of kings to obey political authorities who do not wield the sword in vain. You who rise against the king God has installed rise against God Himself. This is not only an appeal to physical fear but to spiritual prudence: “What do you to your souls / In doing this?” (VI.120-121). Thankfully, like God, the king will meet repentance with mercy. “To kneel to be forgiven / Is safer wars than ever you can make / Whose discipline is riot”—a vivid illustration of their self-contradiction (VI.125-126). In fact, your very rebellion “cannot proceed but by obedience” to a demagogue, obviously a false freedom for professedly freedom-loving Englishmen (129). As for your “rebel captain,” Lincoln, “who will obey a traitor?”—a question Lincoln himself has already answered, against himself (VI.130, 132). You kill the foreigners and destroy and/or seize their houses, “lead[ing] the majesty of the law” on a leash and then letting the law “slip…like a hound” (VI.137). Behind the majesty of the King is the majesty of God and another majesty, the English law. You disobey the one and make a travesty of the other. 

Moreover, as punning Shakespeare might have it, if the King exiles you, given “the nature of your error,” what country would take you, other than some enemy of England, where you would now be the foreigners? (VI.142). Your “mountainous inhumanity” will cause foreign nations to treat you as inhuman, to “spurn you like dogs” (VI.VI.156, 151). “All citizens” acclaim this as true: “Let’s do as we may be done by,” first as Christians, then as human beings, and as finally as law-abiding Englishmen (VI.158). Prudently (having been brought to reasoning by More), they ask for pardon, and More assures them that “mercy will be found if you seek it”—again, as Christianity teaches (VI.164-165). Fittingly, it is Doll Williamson who congratulates him, acknowledging that he has “done more with thy good words than all they could do with their weapons” (VI.187-188). Just so. Cautiously, she adds that if he betrays them, of there are no pardons, “by the Lord, I call thee a plain cony-catcher,” a cheat. The soldier Palmer, a man of force, concurs: “You have redeemed us from much threatened blood” by using “eloquence” instead of “steel” (VI.202-203). Meanwhile, Lord Shrewsbury stipulates, “let them be sent to several prisons,” where they will be well treated (VI.168). 

Congratulated by More, who describes himself as motivated by love of country and care for the City of London, and considers himself only God’s “instrument,” the aristocrats concur with his advice that guards be placed at the London city gates as a precautionary measure (VI. 206). Shrewsbury reports the good news to Henry, then returns to announce the King’s “loving thanks” and More’s reward, a knighthood (VI.217). And better, he has been appointed to the King’s Privy Council. “Stale custom” would have him (Protestant-like?) refuse the office because of his “imperfections, in a show of excess humility”; the ancients would have credited their own virtue for such a well-deserved honor, in an exhibition of pagan pride; a Machiavellian would have attributed it to his virtù; but More shows how a Christian conceives of political authority—as service to higher authority. “My service is my king’s,” since “life or death hangs on our sovereign’s eye,” as indeed it will prove to do (VI.235-236). (As the Apostle Mark observes, “Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”) (Mark 10:45). While on the Council, “My studious thoughts shall tend the City’s good,” although he recognizes that “New days beget new tides” and “Life whirls ’bout fate, then to a grave it slides” (VI.254-255).

At the order of the Privy Council, Lincoln is to be hanged, forthwith. On the scaffold, he repents. “I was the foremost man in this rebellion, /And I the foremost that must die for it” (VII.47-48). While “I must confess I had no ill intent /But against such as wrong us overmuch,” he now understands “that private men” should not “carve out their redress / Which way they list,” that witnesses to his punishment should learn that “obedience is the best in each degree”—that is, each person ought to obey the authorities in accordance with his civil-social status (VII.54-58). “I patiently submit me to the law” while forgiving those who caused his transgression of it; “and, as a Christian, truly from my heart, / I likewise crave they would forgive me too”(VII. 60-63). Doll Williamson delivers a short eulogy: “Say all what they can, / Thou lived’st a good fellow, and died’st an honest man” (VII.70-71).

She then learns of More’s elevation to the Privy Council. More is “honest,” like Lincoln, but also “wise” and “well-spoken”—worthy of the position (VII.101). But how honest, and how good a fellow? “I would “praise his honesty much more / If he had kept his word and saved our lives” (VII. 102-103). She readies herself for death as a Christian, knowing “I do owe God a death” (VII.112), and for her husband’s death, hoping that their two children will be adopted by “some good honest friend / To bring them up in charitable sort” (VII.116-117). And “So long as I an Englishman can see, / Nor French or Dutch shall get a kiss of me”; say “I died in scorn to be a stranger’s prey” (VII.128-129). 

But it transpires that More is indeed an honest man. The news comes: at More’s entreaty, “humbly upon his knee,” the King has pardoned everyone (VII.144). Surrey tells them that “his highness’ clemency and mercy” have saved them from “the sharp rod of justice” (VII.158, 162). In this, the King imitates God, who checks “awe-full justice” with “mercy”—both justice and mercy evidence of His, and his, majesty. God chooses kings with the intention of seeing them display Godlike virtues. Like God, the King “looketh through a veil of sufferance / Upon the frailty of the multitude,” forgiving them for “striking with the hand of public hate” and “giv[ing] you life,” in exchange for which beneficence all of you should pray for him to live long (VII.169-170, 174). And they do, shouting, “God save the King, / My good Lord Chancellor, and the Earl of Surrey!” (VI.175-176). 

These first seven scenes of the play might be thought of as an “Act” relating a single set of events in the drama, with Lincoln and his followers rising then falling, and with More rising in his public career to the height of Lord Chancellor precisely because he governed the fall of those who had assaulted the rule of king, God, and English law with prudence and charity, bringing right order back to the regime. Because justice and the law can conflict, men and women may seek redress beyond the law. But by so doing, they commit acts of injustice, becoming inhumane. Further, by violating the law they injure themselves in the long run, even if they right the immediate wrongs, because the rule of law prevents the stronger from destroying the weaker, the bigger fish from swallowing the smaller fish. The legal rights of Englishmen thus can cut both ways, for and against justice, but the rule of law is more just ‘in the long run.’ God ordains obedience to lawful authority for that reason. 

There is still another paradox, which Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights may or may not have foreseen clearly. By invoking their Englishness against their unjust tormenters’ foreignness, they invoke a sort of nationalism or patriotism that comports not so much with Catholic Christendom but with the modern state that Henry VIII intends to found. Nationalism follows statism. It is internationalism, the universality of the Catholic Church, that follows Christianity. Machiavelli was no friend of Christianity, or of the small states and feudal orders Christendom favored. Henry is consistent, as he will install himself as the head of Christianity in England, the head of the national, Anglican, Church. Thomas More is also consistent, as he will defend the authority of the Pope, head of the international, universal, Catholic Church. The people are not consistent, and do not know they are not consistent. With logic, More teaches them the reasonable way that consists with Christendom. He will now find himself fatally in conflict with a form of Protestant Christianity, one that protests not against state authority but reinforces such authority, in the name of Christianity.

Scene 8 is the first scene set in a private home, Thomas More’s home in Chelsea. The remaining scenes in the play will alternate between the private and the public. This public man has a family life, but he is now alone, a man who loves his household who is now in high public office. In his soliloquy, he recognizes that God has ordained his elevation to great authority. “That which we profanely term our fortunes”—as Machiavelli does, preparatory to tempting princes to master them— is really “the provision of the power above, / Fitted and shaped just to that strength of nature / Which we are born with” (VIII.2-5). Divine providence accounts both for events and the nature that fits us to discharge the responsibilities those events impose upon us. Providence has elevated him from “an humble bench of birth,” from nature as conceived in the people’s minds, by nativity, to the role of a lawgiver as well as one obedient to the law (VIII.6). By that nature, he owes respect to his “elder kinsmen,” and especially his father (VIII.10). Along with this humility, he reminds himself that the more honor, the higher office, wealth, and calling he may attain, “the more do thou in serpents’ natures” notice; therefore, prudently “fear their gay skins with the thought of their sharp state” (VIII.17-18) and be guided by the maxim that “to be great” is like a tightly spun thread, “great wound up, greatly undone” (VIII.19, 21). 

But for now, More will stage another piece of Christian merriment, another joke like that enjoyed at Suresby’s expense, but now with a genuinely fine man, Erasmus—a foreigner and indeed a Dutchman, like some of the unjust sharpers, but also a great humanist. Or is he? More will test him, now that Erasmus is about to be his house guest. Can Erasmus “distinguish merit and outward ceremony,” appearance from reality? With his manservant, Randall (and as he had done previously with the thief, Lifter), he devises a play within the play, a witty test now not of foolish certainty but of humanist wisdom, discernment. 

Before that, however, he acts in accordance with another reality—namely, that appearance at times betokens reality. The local sheriff enters with a ruffian named Falconer, who, like Lincoln, is accused of inciting a riot. Falconer is a scruffy fellow, long haired—this being “an odious sight” in More’s eyes (VIII.121). “Sirrah,” he tells him, “great sins are bred / In all that body where there’s a foul head” (VIII.127-128). Proper grooming betokens a certain self-care—civility, not barbarism. In this sense, appearance can be telling. With that, he sends Falconer off to his just punishment. Unlike the rioters, Falconer’s sinfulness has little or no spice of outraged decency.

Erasmus arrives, escorted by Surrey, who introduces More to him with an encomium, “He’s great in study: that’s the statist’s grace / That gains more reverence than the outward place” (VIII.136-137). The inner is what’s worthy, more than the outer. But this is not More; it is Randall, dressed as More, an inferior inner man appearing as the greatly virtuous man. Surrey remarks that the scholarly study in which More is great is the study of “the general watch of England,” guarding “the Prince’s safety and the peace / That shines upon our commonwealth” in his “loyal industry” (VIII.147-149). Erasmus admires a man whose very gatekeeper, as he has witnessed, greets visitors “in Latin good phrase,” a reflection on the master of a civil household (VIII.155). He begins to address Pseudo-More (call him ‘Less,’ perhaps?) in elegant Latin, only to be told that the master has “foresworn speaking” in Latin, the language of civility as against the ‘bar-bar’ speech of barbarians (VIII.164). Discerning Erasmus immediately questions whether this is really Thomas More. Surrey hastens to explain this away to the surprised Erasmus: “He’s ever furnished / With these conceits,” these playful inventions (VIII.170-171). Randall himself tells Erasmus that he loves a “parlous wise fellow”—wise in speech, witty—who “smells of a politician” (VIII.175). At this, the real More enters, bidding his “fool” to retire, telling his “loving, learned friends,” his fellow humanists, that the glittering appearance of “base illiterate wealth” is esteemed “whilst men of schools,” of humanist learning, “shrouded in poverty” and “counted as fools”—very much as Christians are (VIII.184-185). Scholars and Christians do not care so much for wealth, for worldly things. Erasmus delights in the joke. Melancholy is the scholar’s danger, “chok[ing] the passages / Of blood and breath” (as that magnificent eccentric, Robert Burton, would propound at witty length, in a subsequent century). [3] While “study should be the saddest”—that is, the most serious—time of life, a heightened spirit “lengthens our days with sportful exercise” such as this (VIII.194-196). More is a merry scholar, a Christian scholar confident that life in this world can look forward to life in the City of God, when life on earth is over.

Then More turns to Surrey, addressing him as “my noble poet,” and Surrey laments that “poets were ever thought unfit for state,” unlike the sportive jurist, More. Surrey’s friend adjures him not to pour such contempt on “fair poesy, ” the “sweetest heraldry of art / That sets a difference ‘tween the tough, sharp holly / And tender bay tree”—that is, between harsh statecraft and poetic harmony and grace (VIII.202-207), but Surrey continues his lament, saying that the liberal arts practiced by humanists are being eclipsed by “mechanical sciences” (VIII.208), the philosophic promoter of which will be Shakespeare’s contemporary, Francis Bacon. True enough, More replies, but “the reason / This is no age for poets” is that it has seen no heroes, no great kings—this, a measuring glance at Henry. But no matter, in the More household tonight, Surrey will be king, “master of my house” as they listen to “the Muses’ music” to “cheer our spirits” (VIII.217, 219). The food may not be sumptuous “where scholars sit,” but the courses will be seasoned with wit (VIII.220). Henry is a Machiavellian-Baconian builder of an unpoetic modern state. He replaces Roman Catholicism with a civil religion, Anglicanism, making himself the head of the new, statist church. That state will undermine the Christian family in which More takes such delight. That is, in the Christian Aristotelianism of the English old regime, the right government of the soul, seen in More, the right government of the family, seen in More’s household, and the right government of the political community (promised by More’s elevation to the position of Lord Chancellor) are being eroded by individuals like Falconer and monarchs like Henry.

Before dinner, Falconer is brought back. He’s undergone a haircut and requests a second hearing. As a result of this gentle form of beheading, I am “a new man, my lord,” he announces—cleaned up, if not baptized. That’s good enough for gracious More: “Thy head is for thy shoulders now more fit: / Thou has less hair upon it, but more wit” (VIII.247-248). As a low-life version of witty More, Falconer finds pardon in the court of the Christian humanist, who plays the role of his own future judge, Henry, but with considerably more justice, wisdom, and mercy. Falconer thus escapes the beheading More will suffer.

The ninth, central scene of the play, features another play within the play. By now, Erasmus has departed, returning to the continent. New guests are expected: the Lord Mayor (still grateful to More for his role in ending the disorders of “Ill May”) and his wife—a happy event since, as More says of himself, “More’s heart lives by good company” (IX.17). He will arrange the seating of the male guests, as “Men can best order men” (IX.32). Fortuitously, a troupe of itinerant actors arrives, offering to entertain the guests. From their repertoire, More selects a play titled The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom. “The theme is good, / And may maintain a liberal argument”: “To marry wit to wisdom asks some cunning. / Many have wit that may come short of wisdom.” (IX.65-70). The marriage of wit and wisdom is central to the central scene of the play, Sir Thomas More. Will the author of this play consummate the advertised marriage, or will he prove impotent when it comes to prudence? 

A contretemps ensues, the play delayed because the boy who will play the character, Wit, lacks part of his costume, a beard that betokens the age that may come with wisdom. More pounces, addressing the player who will portray Inclination: “Wit’s Inclination may gallop so fast that he will outstrip wisdom and fall to folly” (IX.157-158). Just so, the player admits, but in the play he will succumb to Lady Vanity, since “we have no Folly in our play” (IX.159-160). If so, More tells him, “There’s no wit in it,” as “Folly waits on wit as the shadow on the body, and where wit is ripest, there folly still is readiest” (IX.161-163). Better have a player without a beard play Wit than a Wit who is all beard and no brain—perhaps a bit like Falconer, deserving of pardon but not of admiration. And so the play begins.

The player taking the role of Prologue deplores the fact that today, “throughout the whole world in every land,” not only England, “Vice doth increase and virtue decays” (IX.173-174). How has this happened? Because, as Wit recalls, I have “dreamed fast of mirth and play,” since “In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure” (IX.186-187). More whispers to the Lord Mayor, “What will [Wit] be by that time he / comes to the commodity of a beard?” (IX.197-198). Before that can happen, Inclination passes off Lady Vanity as Wisdom, gulling young Wit. Since the player who was sent to retrieve the missing beard has yet to arrive, and he was the one slotted to play Good Counsel, More takes that part. He exposes Lady Vanity as an impostor Wisdom—as so much that passes for wisdom is—and tells foolish young Wit, “Be ruled by me” (IX.270). He invokes the distinction between appearance and reality. “Wit, judge not things by the outward show. / The eye oft mistakes, right well you do know,” well, now that you have been goodly counseled (IX.279-280). At this point, the player, Luggins, arrives belatedly, lugging the beard that was to have betokened Good Counsel. Since More had already played Good Counsel, neither the boy-player nor the prop-beard are needed. Having taught the lesson of the play, More calls his guests to the banquet, which will begin after the player who played Wit alerts him to fact that they have not received full payment. That is, Wit counsels More well, appealing to his sense of justice. More praises him for that, then sets things right by adding to the payment and punishing the unjust servant: a just conclusion to this morality play that the host has cut short. The marriage of wit and wisdom has occurred, in the soul of Thomas More and in his household for the edification for the assembled public men. If the family is the microcosm of the political community, More shows that he can make a sound Lord Chancellor, replacing the corrupt Lord Wolsey. The advent of the modern state has brought the increase of vice and the decay of virtue; More might have remedied that, in England.

The morality play embedded in the center of a ‘modern’ play embodies the soul of More, a man seemingly of a season whose time has come and is now going. The morality play was the dramatic genre invented by Christians. They are now challenged by Machiavellian statists who would turn their religion into an instrument of statecraft. Can a Christian humanist survive in modernity? If so, on what terms? Can he become, somehow, a man for all seasons?

The next scene of Sir Thomas More shows how this might become so, and how it does not. The Privy Council has convened, with More arriving a bit late, ready with a complimentary speech intended to relieve the awkwardness but also to frame the purpose of the Council as it moves forward with its deliberations: “Upon this little board is daily scanned / The health and preservation of the land, / We the physicians that effect this good, / Now by choice diet, anon by letting blood”—by political economy or by war (X.14-17). It is “our toil and careful watching” that enables the King to sleep peacefully, when he sleeps (X.18). Here, in public life, wit is, or should be, subordinated to wisdom. The councilors take up the question of what to do about France, which has attacked northern Italy, perhaps intending to move against the Pope in the south. To oppose the French effectively, an ally on the continent would be very helpful. Surrey recommends against allying with the Holy Roman Emperor, as that would make the Empire too strong on the continent, but Shrewsbury argues that “The Emperor is a man of royal faith” who loves the English king (X.42). He “will not soil / His honor with the theft of English spoil” (X.55-56). More concurs, and the policy is set. The Christian humanist sides with the statesman who has based his argument on his assessment of the character of him who rules the allied regime, against the humanist poet who has made a ‘geopolitical’ argument, a surprisingly impersonal assessment for a man like Surrey. (Is he merely overcompensating for his ‘poetic’ side, or has the lack of heroic kings in modern Europe, perhaps the result of a creeping Machiavellianism, inclined him to discount persons?) More and Shrewsbury look at the regime, embodied by a Christian prince, not (or not so much) at the balance of power, as a Machiavellian would do.

The English king has state-building, Machiavellian, plans, and these interrupt the deliberations of the Council. Good soldier Palmer arrives with “articles” from Henry, the Oath of Succession which commits those who take it to his plan to make the children of Protestant Queen Anne Boleyn the heirs to the English throne. More calls for delay, time to deliberate. For his part, the Bishop of Rochester, a faithful Catholic, refuses the oath outright. Palmer sharply retorts that the Bishop must now report to the King for “this capital contempt” (X.82). At this, More resigns from the Council. Seeming-prudent Shrewsbury predicts that both Rochester and More will change their minds. Surrey justifies his decision to sign the king’s order in Christian terms, as did More. While More called for consultation with conscience and the laws of England, Surrey thinks of the Pauline injunction to obey rulers because God has ordained them as such. The question, then, is whether obedience to monarchs has no limits, whether monarchy is by divine right absolute.

At More’s home, Lady More recounts “the strangest dream / That e’er my sleep was troubled with” to her two daughters and her son-in-law (XI.8-9). Images of severance from “the golden fleet” of King Henry’s barges, of the Tower where traitors are imprisoned, and of death for her husband and herself: she will not be far wrong; elder daughter Margaret and her husband, William Roper, share her forebodings, even as he asks her to pay “no respect” to “fond dreams” (XI.19, 27). But More enters “merrily” with the news that he has been stripped of his titles. “Weep not at my fall” but “here joy like to private friends,” since public “triumph” and “public scorn” balance one another, with “days of pleasure” having “repentant ends” (XI.84-86). Good cheer in the face of worldly failure marries wit and wisdom. To his wife’s terror, he replies, “breed not female children in your eyes” (XI.75); that is, against Machiavelli’s suggestions that Christians are ‘effeminate,’ More suggests that manliness and Christianity go together.

At the same time, the Bishop of Rochester, already imprisoned in the Tower, explains the benefit of his ruin to his friends Surrey and Shrewsbury: “In my restraint / From worldly causes I shall better see / Into myself than at proud liberty” (XII.13-15). His imprisonment will give him time for introspection, for self-knowledge. “The Tower and I will privately confer / Of things wherein at freedom I may err” (XII.16-17). In the privacy of his home, with his family, More looks to good cheer in good company, with sober repentance in the background. In the privacy of the Tower, Bishop Rochester, who has no family to consider, no family to encourage, to teach by his example, will exhibit no merriment, put repentance in the foreground of his soul. He assures his friends of his continued love for the King, and they in turn promise to work for his release. The Catholic priest thus foreshadows More’s conduct, when the Catholic layman will be imprisoned.

Back at Chelsea, More reminds his family that virtue is what truly “breeds gentry,” not bloodlines (XIII.9), that “great men” must be “musicians” who “learn low strain after the notes that rise,” (XIII.39-40). Eschewing his merriment, bidding “farewell of mirth’s hurtless laws,” he soberly remarks that both Court and King, his judges, are mortal, that God may “pardon me in my saddest hour,” and therefore they have no reason to lament “my exile from the Court” or even his bodily torture, “wer’t imposed” (XIII.56,69-73). God’s Court is the site of true judgment. And “Perchance the King, / Seeing the Court is full of vanity”—the vanity that he had exposed as false wisdom not long before this—exhibits “pity lest our souls should be misled, / And sends us to a life contemplative,” away from the strife of political action (XIII.78-81). “O, happy banishment from worldly pride / When souls by private life are sanctified!” (82-83). And if, as his wife now fears, he will be wrested from private life and executed, in that case the King only “intends to send me” to a greater King, “the King of Heaven” for a richer present than any Henry can bestow. “The worst chance is death, / And that brings endless joy for fickle breath” (XIII.90-91). But what of the children, Lady More asks. If stripped of their inheritance, her husband replies, “they have minds instructed how to gather more,” as “there’s no man that’s ingenious can be poor” (XIII.95-96). Natural ingenuity in gathering more is practical wisdom, and if Thomas More is practically wise, then the children More has taught will continue to gather more. “And therefore do not weep, my little ones. / Though you lose all the earth, keep your souls even, / And you shall find inheritance in heaven.” (XIII.97-99). He is more concerned with his household servants, whom he has not educated but to whom he proceeds to offer a lesson. Releasing them from service, he tells them to “Think, when an oak falls, underwood shrinks down / And yet may live, though bruised. I pray ye strive / To shun my ruin; for the axe is set / Even at my root, to fell me to the ground.” (XIII.116-119). In view of his prudentially envisioned liberation from the world, he liberates his servants, “for heaven can tell / That More loves all his followers more than well” (XIII.121-122). In a few minutes’ time, More has told of his love of family, of king, of servants, and, animating all those loves, his love of God.

The love of king will not be reciprocated. Shrewsbury and Surrey return from their mission of entreaty to inform him that if he continues to refuse to subscribe to the Oath of Succession, he will be removed from house arrest and sent to the Tower on the charge of high treason. This is too much for his wife and daughters, who cry out to God in their sorrow. Unperturbed, More looks at the sergeant-at-arms who accompanies his friends, recalling that he was the man he’d saved from “cruel riotous assault” during Ill May (XIII.158). Far from condemning him for ingratitude, More savors the real import of the coincidence: “Thou art reserved / To be my summoner to yond spiritual court” (XIII.159-160). Against his wife’s entreaties, he will go to the Tower “with all submissive willingness, and thereto add / My bones to strengthen the foundation / Of Julius Caesar’s palace” (XIII.176-178). English tradition taught that Julius Caesar had built the Tower of London, a place to enforce the Roman law he brought to English barbarians. Now, Henry is Caesar, a modern state builder, and Thomas More will render him his due. “Friend,” as he calls the sergeant-at-arms, “do thine office,” the office that enforces the new law of the new Rome, as More himself had done so recently (XIII.180). “To a great prison, to discharge the strife / Commenc’d ‘twixt conscience and my frailer life, / More now must march” (XIII.184-186); he had already “discharged” the strife of Ill May, which now can be seen as a prefiguration of this. Conscience bids him both to remain faithful to Rome, not to Henry’s calculated severance of his state and regime from it, while at the same time remaining faithful to the King, God’s appointed ruler of England. His life will be the price of these duties, which conflict only in appearance, not in the reality he has consistently preferred to appearance. If, in another play, Cardinal Wolsey bids farewell to all his greatness, here More bids farewell to Chelsea (“I shall ne’er see thee more”) and to his family—family being the bond that Christ splices asunder with His Word-sword. He reserves a taste of punning wit for his departing word to them: “Grave More thus lightly walks to a quick grave” (XIII.194).

Outside the Tower, a crowd has assembled, blocking the bridge. The people remain steadfastly with More, as they would do decades later, Jowett recalls, when Sir Walter Raleigh was conveyed to the prison in July 1603. Even the warders agree: “A wiser or more virtuous gentleman / Was never bred in England,” says one, his partner adding, “I think the poor will bury him in tears”—testimony to his care for the poor in purse and in spirit (XIV.10-12). As Shrewsbury, Surrey, bring More past them, delivering him to the Lieutenant of the Tower, a woman cries out, “Ah, gentle heart, my soul for thee is said. / Farewell, the best friend the poor e’er had.” (XIV.43-44). After he and his friends bid him farewell, More welcomes the Tower itself, where “many a guilty soul, and many an innocent, / Have breathed their farewell to thy hollow rooms” (XIV.60-61). He enters with clear conscience, “my comfort,” since “God is as strong here as he is abroad” (XIV.70). No respecter of persons, of rank, God is equally no respecter of places; He rules them all. 

At More’s house, his servants have lingered. More is at trial, not yet convicted. If, as one says, there is neither a wiser, a merrier, or a more honest man in “the universal world” that God rules, it may be that, being “too good a lord for us,” as another remarks, “God himself will take him” (XV.14, 20-21). They agree that their master has been a just ruler of the household—the household, the building block of political life. When word arrives of their master’s conviction, they show themselves true servants of him. Like the crowds during Ill May, they are now “masterless,” but unlike them they defer to the authority of the king and the law, even as king and law intend to make him “a dead man to the world,” “his sweet soul to live among the saints” (XV.37, 39-40). They learn that in addition to their liberty, he has granted each of them a substantial payment, “a kind remembrance / Of a far kinder lord,” in an act of providence for the innocent victims of his conscientious choice, imitatio Christi (XV.53-54). 

More converses with the Lieutenant of the Tower, whose experience of his prisoner has convinced him of his wisdom, patience, “constancy of mind” and “Christian resolution in all troubles”—all signs that he is “not unprepared” for death, thanks to his “peace of conscience” (XVI.7-10,12). With “peace of conscience, ” “I have not lived so ill I fear to die,” More rejoins, and although afflicted with severe pain during “a sore fit of the stone” that night, this only induces him to thank King Henry for choosing to end his suffering anon (XVI.13, 17, 19). “In life and death, still merry Sir Thomas More,” the Lieutenant exclaims; wisdom has not eclipsed wit. Rightly so, in Christian terms. Christianity leaves room for wit and wisdom, permitting their marriage, because in it ‘comedy’ overcomes ‘tragedy,’ Resurrection overcomes Crucifixion. God guarantees the comic or happy ending, even while not excusing His followers from the tragic ending of physical pain from disease and strife, emotional pain from farewells to families and friends, and death. If Christ weeps several times in this world, but never laughs, He provides for human beings the chance neither to weep nor to laugh, when they come into His presence in the Kingdom of God. More often laughs and smiles but never weeps. As it happens, that will not make him an anti-Christ.

Hearing that Bishop Rochester has died at the executioner’s hand, More calls him “a rich man, believe me,” one now resident in the City of God (XVI.36). As for himself, he is likely “the poorest chancellor / That ever was in England,” a testament to his honesty in office (XVI.46-47). He has spent much of his money on charitable gifts to “halting soldiers and poor needy scholars,” while the remainder of his estate will revert to the Crown (XVI.55-56). Surrey was not entirely mistaken in saying that poets are poor, always out of pocket. More explains that he has had a poetic side, playing the role of a poet in the sense that “poets were never thrifty,” and “never shall” be (XVI.65). 

Enter his wife, daughters, and son-in-law, weeping. But More tells them that he is better-off now, since “when I was Chancellor” I had no peace from business; “here there’s none of this” (XVI.70, 73). His impending death only means that “tomorrow I shall be at liberty” not only from political business but from all the world (XVI.81). Reminded by his wife that his “poor wife and children” still need care, he leaves them to the protection of God, who “hath the power to keep / You safer than I can” (XVI.87-88). “Live all, and love together, and thereby / You give your father a rich obsequy” (XVI.122-123). “God send us all his everlasting light” (XVI.128). In this stern farewell, More exemplifies Christian love, which is never sentimental, never ‘compassionate’ in the modern, Rousseauian sense. He wants his family to imitate him, even as he imitates Christ, sternly directed to the Cross by His Father. “God bless you” (XVI.125).

Allusions to his Christlikeness abound when he arrives at the scaffold for his beheading, the following morning. “I am come about a headless errand, / For which I have not much to say, now I am here,” the end of witty speech being, in his case, wise silence (XVII.51-52). He says nothing that would inflame the passions of his friends, the many who are poor, against the regime of the one. He calls the executioner his “honest friend,” remarking that his ‘dropping’ will result in his ascending “i’God’s name” (XVII.53). It is the hangman, not the former lawyer, former sheriff, former Lord Chancellor Thomas More who now has the law in his hands, and More obeys the law as Paul the Apostle commands Christians to do.

Shrewsbury and Surrey are the witnesses, and he rallies them a bit: “Ye see, though it pleaseth / the King to raise me thus high, yet I am not proud; / for the higher I mount the better I can see my friends / about me,” although “I perceive by / your looks you like my bargain so ill that there’s not/ one of ye all dare venture with me” (XVII.59-65). Shrewsbury wants him to confess to committing “great offense unto his majesty,” and More obliges in his own way: “I confess his /majesty hath been ever good to me, and my offense / to his highness makes me, of a state pleader, a stage player” in what he ironically calls “this last scene of my tragedy” (XVI.73-78). He will send His Majesty his bald head—hatless, since “it is not / requisite any head should stand covered” to a king (XVII.78-80). His beheading is “good for / the headache” (XVII.87-88). That is, dying is as medicinal for the Christian More as it was for the philosopher, Socrates. When the executioner begs his forgiveness for what he is about to do, he wittily wishes that were in the executioner’s power to forgive him, to exonerate him from legal judgment, but “the law, my honest friend, lies in thy hands now” (XVII.94). And he gives the man his purse as “thy fee,” as if the executioner were his attorney before the law, a cock to Asclepias being an unnecessary sacrifice for a Christian to make, the supreme sacrifice having already been made for him. He remarks that he shaved off his beard last night, perhaps in honor of the example of his forerunner, Falconer, whom he had pardoned in what turned out to be a very un-Henrylike act.

Before heading to the block, he “forsakes all mirth,” but also all tears, since “The fool of flesh must, with her frail life, die.” Morus means ‘fool’ in Latin, and Christians are fools in the world’s eyes, as his friend, Erasmus teaches in a witty book, In Praise of Folly). “Our birth to heaven should be thus: void of fear” (XVII.121-124). If Nietzsche intended to go beyond good and evil, the Christian More finally intends to go beyond laughter and tears, beyond comedy and tragedy.

The final words of a play of this time were typically spoken by the survivor of the highest rank. Would that not be Shrewsbury? Not here. Here they are spoken by the humanist poet, who speaks of “a very learned worthy gentleman” who “seals error with his blood” (XVII.125-126)—evidently More, at least in appearance, but possibly King Henry? Professor Jowett notes the ambiguity, which at very least ‘saves’ the play from the royal censors. And it is true that More saved the king’s rule, threatened by rebels, by appealing to Christian principles, as Henry himself has conspicuously failed to obey, thereby undermining his own legitimacy. Whatever Surrey may mean, More knows they must now act instead of speaking: “Come, we’ll to Court / Let’s sadly hence to perfect unknown fates, / Whilst he tends progress to the state of states” (XVII.126-127). Does he thereby save Henry’s rule a second time? In this world, Christians go towards fates that are perfectly unknown with the intention of perfecting them insofar as they are able. After death, they undertake the truly royal progress to the Kingdom of God, where they will receive their crowns, honors greater even than a chancellorship.

 

Notes

1. For the purposes of the play, the authors have conflated the poet with his father, who was the one who was active at this time. The senior Howard supported the advancement of More to the position of Royal Chancellor and was later beheaded at the command of Henry VIII.
2. The editor remarks that this Munday is unrelated to Anthony Munday, the playwright.
3. See Robert Burton: The Anatomy of Melancholy. Six volumes. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blaoir, eds. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1989). The great Oxford don combatted melancholy with the ‘physic’ of wit and merriment, More-like.