Every once in a while, I come across a story that I think is interesting or funny or just worth telling but that doesn’t fit into my main post. I’ll tell these stories in episodes of From the Cutting Room Floor, available to paid subscribers only. Thank you for supporting the Manly Saints Project.
Thomas More died as a martyr in 1535. Almost thirty years later, William Shakespeare was born. By the time Shakespeare was an adult and writing plays, everything that Thomas More had hoped to prevent was happening. England was engaged in a bloody purge of Catholics, under Elizabeth I. Thomas More was now an anti-establishment figure, remembered as a man who had tried to stand in the way of history.
More had not been forgotten. We know that Shakespeare read Thomas More’s work on Richard III, using it as a source for his play. And that fact leads us to a bit of a puzzle.
Since Shakespeare clearly knew of More, knew that he was a writer and a poet, you would expect Shakespeare to make More a major character in one of his last plays (a collaboration with John Fletcher), Henry VIII. But when Shakespeare tells the story of Henry VIII, More is all but erased. He doesn’t even appear in the list of characters, he just swaps into the character ‘Lord Chancellor’ partway through. Why would Shakespeare deliberately downplay such an interesting person?
The answer may be in another collaboratively written play, this one by multiple London playwrights: Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, William Shakespeare, and at least two others. The play is about Thomas More. And it presents him in such a favourable light that the play was suppressed under Queen Elizabeth I.