The theatrical adaptation of Merry More

Moreana ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (Number 210) (2) ◽  
pp. 168-183
Author(s):  
Maria Hart
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Thomas Dekker ◽  
Thomas Heywood ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Theatrical Adaptation ◽  
Diverse Source

The early modern play Sir Thomas More, written by Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare, takes an ecumenical viewpoint of the play's Catholic hero in order to conform to the expectations of the Master of the Revels and to appeal to a cross-confessional audience. The playwrights carefully construct the play within the confines of censorship by centering the play's action around More's dynamic personality instead of giving a full exposition of historical plot. More's personality and famous wit function together as a means for diverting attention away from the controversy surrounding More's silent opposition to Henrician policy while subtly validating his martyrdom. The argument of this article examines the adaptation of the play's ideologically diverse source material, the playwrights’ use of martyrological conventions, and the subtle traces of Erasmian allusion and recusant rhetoric in its reading of the play.

Fictional Remembrances of Sir Thomas More: Part II/II– Early Seventeenth Century

Moreana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (Number 205- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 143-178
Author(s):  
Régis Augustus Bars Closel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Thomas Dekker ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
John Fletcher ◽  
Thomas Heywood ◽  
Thomas Nashe ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Collaborative Play

This article focuses on how artistic works such as plays and literature in 16th and 17th-century England dealt with the fictional presence of Sir Thomas More. Among Tudor statesmen, Thomas More had a special appeal as a topic of thought during the Elizabethan–Jacobean period, quite apart from his opposition to the marriage which led to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The range of works considered covers the Marian, Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. These works compose a heterogeneous and intriguing group in which every piece has its own particular way of remembering Thomas More. Six works are presented here: the dialogue Il Moro (1556) by Ellis Heywood; a late morality play, The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art (1569), by William Wager; a novel, The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), by Thomas Nashe; and three plays, Cromwell (1602), by an unknown dramatist, Sir Thomas More (1600–1603/4), by five different dramatists, and Henry VIII (1613), by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Due to the scope of this research, the article is written in two parts. This part explores the last three seventeenth-century fictional works by John Fletcher and Shakespeare, an anonymous play and the collaborative play by Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, with additions by Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker and William Shakespeare.

Seeking the historical listener

Early Music ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Plank
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Focus Questions ◽  
Robert Herrick

Abstract This article considers questions relating to the performance practice of listening to music in early modern contexts. The evidence of paintings by Pieter Lastman, Gerard ter Borch and Hendrik Sorgh, poetry by Robert Herrick, William Shakespeare and Edmund Waller, and accounts of performances by Francesco da Milano, Nicola Matteis and Queen Elizabeth I all help to bring into focus questions of attentiveness, affective response and analogical understanding. The source material also interestingly raises the possibility of occasionally understanding the act of listening within a frame of erotic relationship modelled on Laura Mulvey’s well-known concept of the ‘male gaze’.

Forgetting Custom?

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-193
Author(s):  
Stephanie Elsky
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Generative Power ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sir Thomas More

The final chapter explores the most extreme political usage of custom: to resist or even overturn a monarch. I argue that just as custom was invoked to justify popular rebellion during the sixteenth century, so too is it called upon to navigate their contentious staging in The Book of Sir Thomas More, a play that William Shakespeare is generally thought to have helped revise after its censorship, and Hamlet. I explore how the former play makes use of proverbs to recuperate rebellion from the charge of innovation while the latter play uses custom within a narratio, or description of offstage events by a messenger, to open up a space for the possibility of revolution, a concept and practice associated with breaking from the past. Drawing on political theology, this chapter contends that Hamlet discloses the possibility of custom’s enduring, generative power.

Catholicism, Kinship and the Public Memory of Sir Thomas More

2002 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL QUESTIER
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Family Networks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Group A ◽  
Lord Chancellor

Historians are now particularly aware that kinship had political and social resonances in the early modern period. Historians of English Catholicism in this same period have always stressed that a web of family networks helped to sustain the English Catholic community within its harsh post-Reformation environment. But how exactly did this happen, particularly when Catholicism in England was so diverse, and when Catholics were often deeply divided over key political and religious issues? In this essay I examine how these relationships worked for one significant kinship group, a set of people descended from or related to the Henrician Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, and thus how they affected Catholicism's political and ecclesial expressions of itself. I argue that in doing this, we can begin not only to reveal how far religious continuity depended on or was influenced by kinship, but also to describe some of the ways in which post-Reformation Catholicism was defined and perceived.

scholarly journals "The Bard and ‘the Other’: A Post-colonial Re-reading of Sir Thomas More, The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest"

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damir Kahrić ◽  
Nađa Muhić
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
The Other ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Binary Division ◽  
Shed Light

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the representation of ‘the Other’ in three Shakespearean dramas: Sir Thomas More, The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest. The article describes several Shakespearean characters through the prism of post-colonialism and, therefore, the paper is structured as the postcolonial re-reading of the aforementioned dramatic texts. William Shakespeare portrayed the sad fate of immigrants in Sir Thomas More, but the Bard also tackled the refugee issue which remains relevant for the contemporary period. Additionally, Shakespeare dramatized the position of the Jewish community in Venice through the portrayal of Shylock. The re-reading of The Tempest focuses on the process of colonisation and the Manichaean division within the conquered world. In conclusion, the article portrays experiences of those dramatic individuals stigmatised and subjugated by the colonial forces, thus allowing the readers to better understand the binary division within colonial systems.

Fictional Remembrances of Sir Thomas More: Part I - The Sixteenth Century

Moreana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (Number 203- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-204
Author(s):  
Régis Augustus Bar Closel
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
John Fletcher ◽  
Thomas Nashe ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Morality Play ◽  
Sir Thomas More

This article focuses on how literary works such as plays in 16th–17th century England dealt with the fictional presence of Sir Thomas More. Among Tudor statesmen, Thomas More had a special appeal as a topic of thought during the Elizabethan–Jacobean period, quite apart from his opposition to the marriage which led to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Marian, Elizabethan and Jacobean periods cover the range of the selected works. They compose a heterogeneous and intriguing group in which every piece has its own particular way of remembering Thomas More. Six works are presented here: the dialogue Il Moro (1556), by Ellis Heywood; a late morality play, The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art (1569), by William Wager; a novel, The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), by Thomas Nashe; and three plays, Cromwell (1602), by an unknown dramatist, Sir Thomas More (1600–1603/4), by five different dramatists, and Henry VIII (1613), by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Due to the scope of this research, the article is written in two parts. This part explores the first three sixteenth century fictional works by Wager, Heywood and Nashe.

‘The Eye of the Typhoon’: Shakespeare and the Religious Controversies of his Time

2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-458
Author(s):  
Peter Milward
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wide Gap

In between those two great humanist lawyers and lord chancellors, Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon, it may be maintained without undue exaggeration that there is a wide gap, even a yawning chasm, in the understanding of all too many scholars concerning the intellectual history of what has come to be known as ‘Early Modern England’. When we ask whose were the main intellectual and spiritual influences on the minds of Englishmen during the period, the names commonly offered for consideration are mostly those of foreigners such as Machiavelli and Montaigne, Erasmus and Rabelais, Luther and Calvin—if in English translation. Closer to home may be added the names of More himself, his adversary William Tyndale, John Foxe with his Book of Martyrs, and Richard Hooker with his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

Shakespeare and The Book of Sir Thomas More

Moreana ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 48 (Number 183- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 9-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Miola
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
British Library ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Sir Thomas More

British Library MS Harley 7368 or The Book of Sir Thomas More presents a play by five hands in various states of revision. Scholars have identified Anthony Munday as the principal playwright and William Shakespeare as the author of three pages that portray Thomas More quelling a Mayday London riot against foreigners. Its manifold uncertainties notwithstanding, the playscript teaches us some things about Shakespeare and about Thomas More. It enables us to see the Bard in the act of creating and revising, participating fully in the processes of collaboration typical in his time. Moreover, it presents More as a heroic wise man whom Protestants and Catholics can admire for his resolution, mirth and compassion, qualities that transcend confessional dispute.

Shakespeare’s Indebtedness to More

Moreana ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 48 (Number 185- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Peter Milward
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Measure For Measure ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Explicit Mention ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
History Play

Obviously, the indebtedness of William Shakespeare as dramatist to the writings of Sir Thomas More, as being “the two greatest minds of the Tudor age”, is indisputable, even if we only consider his hand in the MS Book of Sir Thomas More, his use of More’s Life of Richard III as the unique source for his play of Richard III, and his explicit mention of More in the final history play of Henry VIII. All this, however, is what we may read on the lines of the material that has come down to us concerning Shakespeare, whereas for a true understanding of the dramatist we need to read between the lines, according to the true meaning of “intelligence”. What Lucio says of the “duke of dark corners” in Measure for Measure, we have to apply to the dramatic author, “His givings out were of an infinite distance from his true-meant design.” Even in his own day More had to veil his words under a mask of Socratic irony or Chaucerian humour, and then (after his imprisonment in the Tower) of silence – as it were foreshadowing Hamlet’s lament, “But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!” How much more, then, must it have been incumbent on Shakespeare to be careful of his words, living and writing as he did in what his recusant friend Ben Jonson called “a dangerous age”, hemmed in as they both were by suborned informers like the hack playwright Anthony Munday.

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