Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Humane Statute and the Gentle Weal: Historical Reading and Historical Allegory
- Macbeth’s Knowledge
- ‘The Grace of Grace’ and Double-Talk in Macbeth
- Remind Me: How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?
- Taking Macbeth out of Himself: Davenant, Garrick, Schiller and Verdi
- ‘Two truths are told’: Afterlives and Histories of Macbeths
- Doing All That Becomes a Man: The Reception and Afterlife of the Macbeth Actor, 1744–1889
- Macbeth and Kierkegaard
- Monsieur Macbeth: from Jarry to Ionesco
- The Politics of Sleepwalking: American Lady Macbeths
- Macbird! and Macbeth: Topicality and Imitation in Barbara Garson’s Satirical Pastiche
- Mick Jagger Macbeth
- ‘The Zulu Macbeth’: The Value of an ‘African Shakespeare’
- ‘A Drum, a Drum – Macbeth doth come’: When Birnam Wood moved to China
- The Banquet of Scotland (PA)
- Scoff power in Love’s Labour’s Lost and the Inns of Court: Language in Context
- Mercury, Boy Yet and the ‘Harsh’ Words of Love’s Labour’s Lost
- Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More and Asylum Seekers
- Hal as Self-Styled Redeemer: The Harrowing of Hell and Henry IV Part 1
- Mr Hamlet of Broadway
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 2003
- Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles January–December 2002
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare in Performance
- 3 Editions and Textual Studies
- Books Received
- Index
Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More and Asylum Seekers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
- Frontmatter
- Humane Statute and the Gentle Weal: Historical Reading and Historical Allegory
- Macbeth’s Knowledge
- ‘The Grace of Grace’ and Double-Talk in Macbeth
- Remind Me: How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?
- Taking Macbeth out of Himself: Davenant, Garrick, Schiller and Verdi
- ‘Two truths are told’: Afterlives and Histories of Macbeths
- Doing All That Becomes a Man: The Reception and Afterlife of the Macbeth Actor, 1744–1889
- Macbeth and Kierkegaard
- Monsieur Macbeth: from Jarry to Ionesco
- The Politics of Sleepwalking: American Lady Macbeths
- Macbird! and Macbeth: Topicality and Imitation in Barbara Garson’s Satirical Pastiche
- Mick Jagger Macbeth
- ‘The Zulu Macbeth’: The Value of an ‘African Shakespeare’
- ‘A Drum, a Drum – Macbeth doth come’: When Birnam Wood moved to China
- The Banquet of Scotland (PA)
- Scoff power in Love’s Labour’s Lost and the Inns of Court: Language in Context
- Mercury, Boy Yet and the ‘Harsh’ Words of Love’s Labour’s Lost
- Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More and Asylum Seekers
- Hal as Self-Styled Redeemer: The Harrowing of Hell and Henry IV Part 1
- Mr Hamlet of Broadway
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 2003
- Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles January–December 2002
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare in Performance
- 3 Editions and Textual Studies
- Books Received
- Index
Summary
All over the world the problems created by asylum seekers, and the hostility aroused by legal and illegal immigrants, grow more acute. Shakespeare dramatized these problems – the anti-alien feeling that flared up at various times in London, and a wonderfully compassionate statement on behalf of refugees, in a scene of three pages that he added to the play of Sir Thomas More. As a former asylum seeker, some of whose relatives perished in concentration camps, I would like to comment on the originality of a scene that is sometimes described as hastily written, ‘with the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed’, to explain why Shakespeare wrote it and why no one else could have written it.
Let us consider first how Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas rebukes the anti-alien rioters in London, remembering that his speech ‘was intended to reflect the crisis over aliens that was troubling the City’ at the very time (1593) when the play is thought to have been composed.
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.
(2.3.80–93)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shakespeare SurveyAn Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production, pp. 225 - 235Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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