A Study Guide, with Theatrical Emphasis, for Robert Bolt's Play a Man for All Seasons For

A Study Guide, with Theatrical Emphasis, For Meg for Robert Bolt’s Play A Man for All Seasons by Arthur Kincaid V. Questions for Discussion and Essay Writing…..….…....…105 Contents VI. List of Works Consulted……………….………..………..109 I. Introduction…………………………..……….………..….5 II. General Background 1. Thomas More…………………………..….……...……..6 2. Henry VIII and Thomas More…...……….…….….…..10 3. Renaissance Humanism…...……………....…….….…..12 4. Robert Bolt…………………………………...….…..…13 5. Theatrical Influences………………………….......…....15 III. Classroom & Theatre Performance 1. What Is Theatre?……………...………….….…….....…19 2. Aspects of a Play...……………………………………..22 3. Classroom Performance………...………………..…......30 4. Full Performance………………………………………31 5. Acting Exercises……………….……..………….....…..37 IV. Notes and Questions for Study and Performance 1. Act 1, A Man for All Seasons……………...…….....…..….47 2. Act 2, A Man for All Seasons……………....……..…....….74 5 www.thomasmorestudies.org Kincaid’s Guide: A Man for All Seasons 6 II. General Background I. Introduction 1. Sir Thomas More This guide is designed to give a performance orientation to the study of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. It attempts to encourage teachers Nobody wants to be a hero. You go through life giving up and students to discover the work as a play to be performed. You can use parts of yourself – a hope, a dream, an ambition, a belief, a liking, this guide for inactive classroom study if you wish, but it would be much a piece of self-respect. But in every man there is something he more interesting and productive to use it as a stimulus to performance cannot give up and still remain himself – a core, an identity, a work of some sort, whether it be rehearsing a scene in class or a full thing that is summed up for him by the sound of his own name on his own ears. If he gives that up, he becomes a different man, production of the play. At very least, it should help produce the sort of 1 reader who accompanies his reading with consciousness of what happens not himself. on the stage when it is performed, with a sense of the visual and aural aspects of the play for which the script gives cues. More’s own life encapsulated Bolt’s main theme of tension between My experience has been as both a teacher-scholar and an actor- worldly success and comfort and service to a higher authority. He was director. I spent many years performing classical drama in schools, born in 1478, the son of a prosperous London lawyer, and, after study at universities, cultural centres and theatres, and working with teachers and Oxford, was trained in the law. He was drawn toward a career in the students throughout the world. I have taught drama in a British university church, but rejected it because he wanted to marry. Entering government and A Man for All Seasons in an Estonian university. Some of my scholarly service, he progressed from the post of Under-Sheriff of London (legal work has focused on Sir Thomas More. expert for the sheriff’s office) to national office, to the top office of Lord I first saw the play on Broadway in the early 1960s, with Emlyn Chancellor (chief legal officer of the kingdom), serving along the way as Williams as Sir Thomas More. The impact on the audience was extremely an ambassador in foreign countries. He carefully educated his family, powerful. My reaction at the end was to feel, “This play could change the daughters as well as sons, running a school in his home. The leading world.” In the 40-odd years that have followed it has not done so, but English humanist (see below) scholar and author of his age, he wrote on performances of the play still have the effect of making people feel this, matters of religion as well as statesmanship. In 1515-16 he wrote (in and perhaps of making them a little better. The impact comes from a Latin) his most famous work, Utopia, which depicts an alternative complete experience, from watching and listening to people playing the commonwealth. More had a lifelong interest in drama: it is reported that characters, moving as they speak, with the sort of accompaniment a as a child he stepped into plays performed by professional actors and staged production includes in the way of scenery, costume, lighting and improvised a part for himself (Roper, p. 198). The short comedies he music. Though effective, it does not make anything like the same impact wrote in his youth have not survived. But his surviving works show when merely read. dramatic qualities: clearly envisaged “scenes,” lively dialogue and a I wish to thank Deirdre Barber for working out with me during our recurrent image of human life as a stage play. His own ultimate role in life many years of touring as actors and running workshops together some of was not one he sought or wished for: hero, martyr and ultimately saint. the ideas on practical theatre incorporated here. Others I owe to many, More had resisted Henry VIII’s wish to divorce his queen, Catherine many drama teachers, too numerous to name. Thanks to Gerard of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn, and the expedient it entailed of Wegemer and Guy Lawrence for answering questions. Henry’s breaking with the Pope and taking on himself the headship of the All references below to the play are to the Vintage International church in England. Henry appointed him Chancellor in 1529, probably Edition of 1990. hoping this would lead More to side with him. More resigned the -Arthur Kincaid, D. Phil. (Oxon.), Chancellorship in 1532. After being imprisoned in the Tower in April Associate of the British Drama Board 1534, he was executed on 6 July 1535 for High Treason, having 1 Arthur Miller, interview in New York Herald Tribune, 25 June 1953, quoted in Nelson, p. 169. 7 www.thomasmorestudies.org Kincaid’s Guide: A Man for All Seasons 8 throw on him....We have only one glimpse of Henry himself, as he “maliciously,” it was claimed, refused to acknowledge the king’s titles: he walks after dinner in the garden at Chelsea, holding his arm about refused to swear to the Act of Supremacy designating Henry VIII head of More’s neck (Chambers, pp. 24-25). the church. Because Chambers relies very heavily on Roper’s account, Bolt seems Robert Bolt had to select aspects of the real More and leave others to be following Roper quite closely, but everything he quotes from Roper out in order to create a character with whom a twentieth century audience and almost everything from More’s own works appears in Chambers in would be sympathetic. He omits, for example, the occasional scurrility in some form. Examples of what Bolt derives from his sources will some of More’s writings (a style common in his own day, but less so in sometimes be pinpointed in the guide. Because Chambers was normally ours), and the extreme reaches of his asceticism (he wore a hair shirt), and Bolt’s intermediary, I have generally given the quotation from Chambers of his wit (his practical joking would in some instances appear overdone). rather than from the original, except in the case of Roper’s work, which I The real More’s character appeared to include a mass of contradictions: have invariably quoted from its most recent edition, also stating where the while he wore a hair shirt against his skin, he enjoyed worldly success and passage comes in Chambers. comfort. He was very harsh in his writings against heretics, but kind and In his play, Bolt telescopes time: Act I begins in May 1530; Act II gentle at home, rarely showing any sign of anger. As a humanist and as a begins in May 1532 and concludes in July 1535. government official, he focused on the world, but he was drawn to the monastic life. He was saddened by the corruption in the church but died More and Conscience rather than participate in dividing it. Bolt diminishes the apparent contradictions, and some critics have felt that he watered More down in Critics have made a lot of the difference between how most people the process. think of “conscience” now (as the individual’s inner sense of what is right) More’s own attitude may be reflected in Utopia, written when he was and what the concept meant to More. The most significant difference trying to decide whether or not to enter the king’s service. One of his seems to be, as it is described by Aldo Bergamaschi, that a Christian speakers gives this advice: doesn’t say, “I obey my conscience,” but “My conscience tells me to obey If you cannot root out wrong opinions or cure received abuses as God in preference to men” (Rousseau, pp. 77-8; my translation). you believe from your soul you should, still don't desert the Conscience thus is regarded not simply as an individual’s private commonwealth. In a storm you don’t abandon ship because you conviction of right, but as God’s will, which it would be blasphemy to can’t control the winds. And there is no point in trying to refuse. More believed that if he wanted to continue being a Christian and inculcate strange and unfamiliar ideas when you know they will to save his soul he had to follow the dictates of his conscience. carry no weight with those of opposite persuasion, except by More felt that it was every man’s responsibility to investigate “by indirection and by making your best effort to handle the matter learning and by good counsaile, and be sure that his conscience be such as tactfully.

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