Welcome | Guest Scenic Artist Carlos Nichols | Politics, Reformation, and the Birth of the Anglican Communion: A Guide to the Players

Welcome Note

“More is a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning; I know not this fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness, and affability. And as time requireth a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes; and sometimes of as sad gravity: a man for all seasons.”

Robert Whittinton

Woodcut from Sir Thomas More's
Utopia (first edition 1516) depicting
the island that symbolized More's
concept of an ideal community.
Utopia was used by More to satirize
conditions in England.

Robert Bolt’s critically acclaimed play A Man for All Seasons investigates both the royal rift and the very personal conflict between King Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More over Henry's break with the Church of Rome in order to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon. First staged in 1960 at the Globe Theatre in London, it was voted New York's Best Foreign Play in 1962. In 1966 the play was adapted by Bolt for the screen and the result was an Academy Award-winning film (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor) starring Paul Scofield, who had played the role of Sir Thomas More on the London stage. A Man for All Seasons is a lean, eloquent psychodrama based on a world-changing historical event.

Thomas More became a member of King Henry’s Privy Council in 1518. Within a short span of years, he achieved the rank of Speaker of the House of Commons, and the king appointed him Lord Chancellor in 1529. More’s fate was altered inescapably when he refused to support Henry's request to the Catholic pope in Rome for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. A devout Catholic, More’s religious scruples made it impossible for him to support his king in defiance of papal authority. He resigned from the chancellorship in 1532 and sought to maintain his precarious position with Henry by withdrawing from public service. A Man for All Seasons recreates the intense intrigue and turmoil of the time, More’s refusal to take an oath of supremacy that usurped papal authority in favor of the king, his condemnation, and his eventual execution on July 7, 1535.