The following scene is Shakespeare's representation
of More calming the London riot of 1517. It can be used with the study questions
that follow for a lesson in literature or rhetoric.
SHAKESPEARE’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE
BOOK OF SIR THOMAS MORE, Act 2, Scene 3)
Lincoln, the riot leader, has stirred up a crowd of Londoners
by telling them that prices will go up and disease will spread if
foreign merchants (“strangers”) are allowed to continue working in England.
Here, the sergeant-at-arms orders the rioters to turn themselves in and
submit to the King, but the rioters refuse.
On stage: John Lincoln (a broker), Doll, Betts, Sherwin (a goldsmith),
and prentices armed; Thomas More (sheriff of the City of London), the other
sheriff, Sir Thomas Palmer, Sir Roger Cholmeley, and a sergeant-at-arms
stand aloof.
Sergeant: [coming forward]
What say you to the mercy of the King?
Do you refuse it?
Lincoln: You would have us
upon th’hip, would you?
No, marry, do we not. We accept of the King’s mercy;
but we will show no mercy upon the strangers.
Sergeant: You are
the simplest things
That ever stood in such a question.
Lincoln: How say you now? Prentices ‘simple’? (To the prentices) Down with
him!
All: Prentices simple! Prentices simple!
Enter the Lord Mayor, the Earl of Surrey, and the Earl of Shrewsbury
Sheriff: Hold in the King’s name! Hold!
Surrey: Friends, masters, countrymen—
Mayor: Peace ho, peace! I charge you, keep the peace!
Shrewsbury: My masters, countrymen—
Sherwin: The noble Earl of Shrewsbury, let’s hear him.
Betts: We’ll hear the Earl of Surrey.
Lincoln: The Earl of Shrewsbury.
Betts: We’ll hear both.
All: Both, both, both, both!
Lincoln: Peace, I say peace! Are you men of wisdom, or what are you?
Surrey: What you will have them, but not men of wisdom.
Some: We’ll not hear my Lord of Surrey.
Others: No, no, no, no, no! Shrewsbury, Shrewsbury!
More: (to the nobles and officers) Whiles they are o’er the bank of their
obedience,
Thus will they bear down all things.
Lincoln: (to the prentices) Sheriff More speaks. Shall we hear Sheriff
More speak?
Doll: Let’s hear him. ’A keeps a plentiful
shrievaltry, and ’a
made my brother Arthur Watchins Sergeant Safe’s yeoman. Let’s hear Sheriff
More.
More convinces the crowd to give him a hearing, in part
because of his reputation as one who gives food and jobs to the poor.
All: Sheriff More, More, More, Sheriff More!
More: Even by the rule you have among yourselves,
Command still audience.
Some: Surrey, Surrey!
Others: More, More!
Lincoln and Betts: Peace, peace, silence, peace!
More:
You that have voice and credit with the number,
Command them to a stillness.
Lincoln: A plague on them! They will not hold their peace. The devil cannot
rule them.
More:
Then what a rough and riotous charge have you,
To lead those that the devil cannot rule.
(To the prentices) Good masters, hear me speak.
Doll: Ay, by th’ mass, will we. More, thou’rt a good housekeeper, and I
thank thy good worship for my brother Arthur Watchins.
More keeps the rioters’ attention by discussing the topic
they are crying out for: peace. He ends his first speech with a question,
a notable contrast to the way the previous leaders spoke to the mob.
All: Peace, peace!
More:
Look, what you do offend you cry upon,
That is the peace. Not one of you here present
Had there such fellows lived when you were babes
That could have topped the peace as now you would,
topped—toppled, removed
The peace wherein you have till now grown up
Had been ta’en from you, and the bloody times
Could not have brought you to the state of men.
Alas, poor things,
what is it you have got,
Although we grant you get the thing you seek?
Betts: Marry, the removing of the strangers, which cannot
choose but much advantage the poor handicrafts of the city.
More:
Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England.
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs, with their poor luggage
Plodding to th’ ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silenced by your brawl
And you
in ruff of your opinions clothed:
What had you got? I’ll tell you. You had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled—and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For 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.
Doll: Before God, that’s as true as the gospel.
Betts: Nay, this’ a sound fellow, I tell you. Let’s mark him.
More:
Let me set up before your thoughts, good friends,
One supposition, which if you will mark
You shall perceive how horrible a shape
Your innovation bears. First, ‘tis a sin
Which oft th’apostle did forewarn us of,
Urging obedience to authority;
And ‘twere no error if I told you all
You were in arms ‘gainst God.
All: Marry, God forbid that!
In this speech, More provides three logical arguments
against the rioters’ actions and, by the time he is finished, the mob has
been persuaded to stop their rioting. Note these three arguments,
and the order in which More makes them.
More: Nay, certainly you are.
For to the King God hath his office lent
Of dread, of justice, power and command,
Hath bid him rule and willed you to obey;
And to add ampler majesty to this,
He hath not only lent the King his figure,
His throne and sword, but given him his own name,
Calls him a god on earth. What do you then,
Rising ‘gainst him that God himself installs,
But rise ‘gainst God? What do you to your souls
In doing this? O desperate as you are,
Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands
That you like rebels lift against the peace
Lift up for peace; and your unreverent knees,
Make them your feet. To kneel to be forgiven
Is safer wars than ever you can make,
Whose discipline is riot.
In, in, to your obedience! Why, even your
hurly
Cannot proceed but by obedience.
What rebel captain,
As mut’nies are incident, by his name
Can still the rout? Who will obey a traitor?
Or how can well that proclamation sound,
When there is no addition but ‘a rebel’
To qualify a rebel? You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in
lyam
To slip him like a hound—alas, alas!
Say now the King,
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England—
Why, you must needs be strangers. Would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper
That breaking out in hideous violence
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But
chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case,
And this your mountainish inhumanity.
All: Faith, ’a says true. Let’s do as we may be done by.
Lincoln: We’ll be ruled by you, Master More,
if you’ll stand our friend to procure our pardon.
More:
Submit you to these noble gentlemen,
Entreat their mediation to the King,
Give up yourself to form, obey the magistrate,
And there’s no doubt but mercy may be found,
If you so seek it.
upon th’hip — at a disadvantage
simplest -- foolish
shrievaltry — generous table
what is it you have got -- what have you gained
in ruff of — in height of pride
hurly -- commotion, uproar
lyam — a leash for hounds
to slip him — to leash him
chartered unto — reserved to
MORE’S SOLILOQUY
Soliloquy written by Shakespeare, representing More’s
thoughts right after becoming Chancellor of England
More: It is in heaven that I am [made] thus and thus,
And that which we profanely term our fortunes
Is the provision of the power above,
Fitted and shaped just to that strength of nature
Which we are born [with]. Good God, good God,
That I from such an humble bench of birth
Should step as ‘twere up to my country’s head
And give the law out there; I, in my father’s life
To take prerogative and
tithe of knees
From elder kinsmen, and him bind by my place
To give the smooth and
dexter way to me
That owe it him by nature! Sure these things,
Not
physicked by respect, might turn our blood
To much corruption. But More, the more thou hast
Either of honour, office, wealth and calling,
Which might
accite thee to embrace and hug them,
The more do thou in serpents’ natures think them:
Fear their gay skins, with thought of their sharp
state,
And let this be thy maxim: to be great
Is, when the thread of hazard is once spun,
A
bottom great wound up, greatly undone.
tithe -- tribute
. In those times, just as it was the custom
to kneel before one's father and ask for a blessing, it was also the custom
in a similar way to pay "tithe of knee" to a high official of one's fatherland.
As Lord Chancellor of England and highest officer of the country, Sir Thomas
would normally receive such a sign of reverence from his own father (a judge
of the King's Bench). Instead, as Roper tells us in his Life of Sir Thomas
More, "Whensoever [Lord Chancellor More] passed through Westminster Hall
to his place in the Chancery by the court of the King's Bench, if his father,
one of the Judges thereof, had been seated before he came, he would go into
the same court, and there reverently kneeling down in the sight of them all,
duly asked his father's blessing.
dexter - -right hand, a position of honor
physicked by respect -- tempered by reflection
accite -- excite
state — i.e. stings
bottom -- a ball of wound thread
Study Questions:
-Where does More use ethos, pathos, and logos in his rhetoric?
-Why will the rioters listen to More and not to the other officials of
London?
-How does More engage the rioters’ attention?
-What images does More use that lead Doll to say, “That’s as true as
the gospel”?
-What is it that “God forbid”?
-What is More’s argument in the next section which the crowd agrees
to follow, if More will “stand our friend” to intercede for them?
-The last speech is the soliloquy that More gives right after finding
out that he is the new Lord Chancellor of England. What is the main
idea that Shakespeare presents here?
