Shakespeare’s Indebtedness to More

Obviously, the indebtedness of William Shakespeare as dramatist to the writings of Sir Thomas More, as being “the two greatest minds of the Tudor age”, is indisputable, even if we only consider his hand in the MS Book of Sir Thomas More, his use of More’s Life of Richard III as the unique source for his play of Richard III, and his explicit mention of More in the final history play of Henry VIII. All this, however, is what we may read on the lines of the material that has come down to us concerning Shakespeare, whereas for a true understanding of the dramatist we need to read between the lines, according to the true meaning of “intelligence”. What Lucio says of the “duke of dark corners” in Measure for Measure, we have to apply to the dramatic author, “His givings out were of an infinite distance from his true-meant design.” Even in his own day More had to veil his words under a mask of Socratic irony or Chaucerian humour, and then (after his imprisonment in the Tower) of silence – as it were foreshadowing Hamlet’s lament, “But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!” How much more, then, must it have been incumbent on Shakespeare to be careful of his words, living and writing as he did in what his recusant friend Ben Jonson called “a dangerous age”, hemmed in as they both were by suborned informers like the hack playwright Anthony Munday

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · HAMLET (protein complex) · Intertextuality · Irony · Lament · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Silence · Irish and British Studies · Philosophy · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism