The Elizabethan Theatre And The Book Of Sir Thomas More

The manuscript of the Elizabethan play Sir Thomas More has intrigued scholars for over a century because three of its pages may have been written by Shakespeare. The Elizabethan Theatre and "The Book of Sir Thomas More" sets aside the timeworn question of authorship and considers the play in a new framework, one which by focusing on questions of the theatre attempts to free Elizabethan theatre history from the grip of its most famous author. Bringing to bear on the manuscript the perspective of a theatre historian and the resources of textual scholarship, Scott McMillin departs from most critical accounts, which have judged Sir Thomas More unfinished. Rather, McMillin addresses the manuscript as a coherent and finished work that achieves its intended purpose: to serve as a prompt book in the Elizabethan playhouse. His systematic analysis of the Sir Thomas More manuscript shows that the company for which it was written was unusually large, that it had a lead actor of outstanding capability, and that in its staging of the play it probably made use of visual repetition as an ironic device. He concludes that the theatre company of the period that most closely matched this description was Lord Strange's men, a company, incidentally, for which Shakespeare himself was known to have written in the early 1590s. Textual scholars, theatre historians, and students and scholars of Elizabethan drama will welcome The Elizabethan Theatre and "The Book of Sir Thomas More."

This modern-spelling critical edition of a famous and controversial theatrical document from the Elizabethan age shows that Sir Thomas More is the best extant example of the genre of biographical history. Following a radical re-examination of the manuscript, this edition relates step by step to the process by which the play acquired its final form, accounting in the collation and in the rejected or alternative passages at the end of the text for each single word or mark found in the manuscript. Particular attention is devoted to the use of sources not previously identified, most of which are reproduced in the appendices.

This edition of Sir Thomas More is the first to bring the play into the context of a major Shakespeare series, to provide a substantial critical analysis, and to offer a comprehensive modern stage history. The introduction deals with issues such as the strange involvement of the anti-Catholic spy-hunter Anthony Munday as chief dramatist, the place of Sir Thomas More as a Catholic martyr in Protestant late Elizabethan culture, and the play's representation of a multi-cultural London.The text itself, supported by a searching and detailed commentary, adopts a distinctive presentation that enables readers to keep track of the manuscript and the hands that produced it, whilst engaging with the play as a fascinating theatrical piece. Sir Thomas More deals with matters so controversial that it may never have reached performance on stage. The authors' determination to deal with rioting and religious politics led to a play that is compelling in its own right but also intriguing as a document of what could, and could not, be articulated in the early modern public theatre. Surviving only as a manuscript text on which Shakespeare was thought to have worked, it can be considered to be the most important play manuscript of the period, owing to its highly complex witness to collaboration between dramatists and to censorship.

This edition of Sir Thomas More is the first to bring the play into the context of a major Shakespeare series, to provide a substantial critical analysis, and to offer a comprehensive modern stage history. The introduction deals with issues such as the strange involvement of the anti-Catholic spy-hunter Anthony Munday as chief dramatist, the place of Sir Thomas More as a Catholic martyr in Protestant late Elizabethan culture, and the play's representation of a multi-cultural London.The text itself, supported by a searching and detailed commentary, adopts a distinctive presentation that enables readers to keep track of the manuscript and the hands that produced it, whilst engaging with the play as a fascinating theatrical piece. Sir Thomas More deals with matters so controversial that it may never have reached performance on stage. The authors' determination to deal with rioting and religious politics led to a play that is compelling in its own right but also intriguing as a document of what could, and could not, be articulated in the early modern public theatre. Surviving only as a manuscript text on which Shakespeare was thought to have worked, it can be considered to be the most important play manuscript of the period, owing to its highly complex witness to collaboration between dramatists and to censorship.

This is the latest play to be added to the Shakespearean canon. Scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote Act 2 Scene 4, and the rest of the play was written by Thomas Heywood, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, and mostly by Anthony Munday.

BARDE. What art thou that talkest of revenge? my lord ambassador shall once more make your Major have a check, if he punish thee for this saucy presumption. WILLIAMSON. Indeed, my lord Mayor, on the ambassador's complaint, sent me to Newgate one day, because (against my will) I took the wall of a stranger: you may do any thing; the goldsmith's wife and mine now must be at your commandment. GEORGE._The more patient fools are ye both, to suffer it._ BARDE. Suffer it! mend it thou or he, if ye can or dare. I tell thee, fellows, and she were the Mayor of London's wife, had I her once in my possession, I would keep her in spite of him that durst say nay. GEORGE._I tell thee, Lombard, these words should cost thy best cape, were I_not curbed by duty and obedience: the Mayor of London's wife!_Oh God, shall it be thus?_ DOLL. Why, Betts, am not I as dear t m husband as my lord Mayor's wife to him? and wilt thou so neglectly suffer thine own shame?ÑHands off, proud stranger! or, by him that bought me, if men's milky hearts dare not strike a stranger, yet women beat them down, ere they bear these abuses. BARDE._Mistress, I say you shall along with me._ DOLL. Touch not Doll Williamson, least she lay thee along on God's dear earth.ÑAnd you, sir [To Caveler], that allow such coarse cates to carpenters, whilst pigeons, which they pay for, must serve your dainty appetite, deliver them back to my husband again, or I'll call so many women to mine assistance as will not leave one inch untorn of thee: if our husbands must be bridled by law, and forced to bear your wrongs, their wives will be a little lawless, and soundly beat ye.

A play that charts the dramatic events leading to the execution of Sir Thomas More in 1535.

This play charts the dramatic events leading to the execution of Sir Thomas More in 1535 and has been a modern stage classic since its first production in 1960. The author's previous plays include 'Flowering Cherry' and 'State of Revolution'.