Transcription
Look, I'm just going to finish with a little bit of Shakespeare, and it's, it's a gift, uh, to you. And, and it's precious to me because, uh, it's a play that the RSC has subsequently done, but it didn't receive its first performance until I, I played the leading part. Uh, and it's called Sir Thomas More. We did it in, in Nottingham. And, uh, so you're looking maybe at the last actor who will ever be able to say that he created a part by William Shakespeare. Uh, and, uh, the play was written by Shakespeare and others. It's odd to think that Shakespeare, uh, didn't necessarily write all of the plays in that conventional way of one author, but they used to write together, I suppose, rather like, uh, people write together for TV these days.
Uh, anyway, uh, the speech I'm going to do is in the British Museum, and it's in Shakespeare's handwriting, and it's the only example of a manuscript of his that makes it doubly precious. Uh, and the situation is, uh, in, uh, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, you know where that girl had her way. But it's back in the, uh, 16th century. And, uh, the crowd is complaining about the strangers, uh, in their midst. And, uh, usually complain about strangers, immigrants, odd people, queers. They, they behave differently from the rest of us, and they look different, and they eat odd food, and take our jobs. You know, send them back home wherever they came from. Uh, get rid of them. Uh, stamp on their heads, even.
And Thomas More is sent out to put down the riot, which he does with, um, um, explaining the law and, and insisting that it should be obeyed. Uh, and also being by Shakespeare, he does it, uh, with an appeal to, uh, humanity, which you might feel relevant to what we've been on about this evening. So, um, someone says that the strangers should be removed. And Thomas More says, "Well, 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, plotting to the ports and coasts for transportation. And that you sit as kings in your desires, authority quite silenced by your brawl, and you in rough 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 self-same hand, self-reason, and self-right, would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes feed on one another. Oh, 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 un-reverent knees make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven. You'll put down strangers, kill them, cut their throats, and lead the majesty of law and lion to slip him like a hand. Say now, the king, as he is Clement, if the offender mourn should so much come too short of your great trespasses, but to banish you with. Would you go? What country, by the nature of your error, should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders, to any German province, Spain or Portugal, 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? Wet their detested knives against your throats, spurn you like dogs, and like as if the god owned not, nor made not you, nor that the elements were not all appropriate to your comfort, but charted unto them. What would you think to be thus used? This is the stranger's case, and this your mish-in humanity."