Shakespeare’s Own Handwriting on Immigrants

The script for Sir Thomas More, though, was a mess.  It called for 59 speaking parts, including 22 in the first 500 lines.  This would strain the capacity of any of the acting companies of the day even if they doubled or tripled the parts.  Then the royal censor go ahold of it, crossing out passages throughout and demanding changes.  All publications and public performances had to be vetted and approved by a censor.  And this topic was especially dangerous. King Henry’s daughter Elizabeth was queen, and anything that put her father in a bad light, questioned the Church of England, or seemed to support the Catholic cause could bring quick execution to a lowly playwright.  And that was pretty much the story of Sir Thomas More.

So, as happens still today with Hollywood screenplays, other writers were called in, whether by Munday or his company, to serve as “script doctors.”  The play was probably never performed at the time, but its manuscript turned up in 1728 in a book collection that would be bequeathed to the British Museum in 1753, where it resides today.  The play was first performed in 1922.

The manuscript contains six different handwritings that have mostly been identified:

• HAND S – Anthony Munday, the original manuscript;
• HAND A – Henry Chettle;
• HAND B – Thomas Heywood;
• HAND C – A professional scribe who copied out a large section of the play;
• HAND D – William Shakespeare;
• HAND E – Thomas Dekker.

Heywood and Dekker are important playwrights, and then there is Hand D.  We have six different signatures of the Bard of Avon on various legal documents.  Paleographers have identified the three pages in Hand D  of Sir Thomas More as demonstrating the same handwriting.  To be sure, that’s not much of a sample, so that evidence cannot be conclusive.  To me, the stylistic evidence is more persuasive, particularly one detail that I will describe after quoting the passage in full.

This would have been extremely in Shakesepeare’s career.  His first play was Comedy of Errors, written between 1592 and 1594.  If this play was written in 1591, Shakespeare would have been 27 years old, just getting started. Maybe this was his first job as a beginning playwright, a gig to help whip this play into shape.

Here is the passage, known later as “The Strangers’ Case.”  It is a speech by More, who distinguished himself before King Henry for putting down an anti-immigrant riot.  Many foreigners from throughout Europe lived in London in 1517, including mostly middle class merchants and artisans from Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. A rabble-rousing preacher stirred up the populace, claiming that the foreigners were taking Englishmen’s jobs.  On April 30-May 1, what would be called the Evil May Day riots broke out.  Mobs consisting of thousands of young men, mostly apprentices, roamed the streets, attacking foreigners, looting houses and businesses, and freeing everyone locked up in Newgate Prison.

Thomas More, then the under-sheriff of London, spoke to the crowd in an attempt to get them to disperse.  This is what this scene depicts, the playwright’s imaginative construction of someone trying to stop a mob by force of words.  Despite More’s brave effort, the mob continued until the king sent 5,000 troops to restore order.  Some 300 rioters were arrested and 14 instigators were drawn and quartered (slit stomach, pull out entrails, chop the body into four pieces).  The rest of the 300 were going to get the same treatment, but Queen Catherine interceded and King Henry pardoned them. Surprisingly, though many foreigners were beaten and robbed, apparently none of them lost their lives.

But here is “The Strangers’ Case,” likely by Shakespeare (my emphasis):

“The Strangers’ Case”

From Act II, Scene 4 of Sir Thomas More:

You’ll put down strangers,
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 and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent 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 agèd man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another…

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 harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to 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.

This is good on so many levels.  Notice how Christian it is.  See how he applies the golden rule:  If the king banishes you because of your rioting, where will you go?  France, Flanders, Germany, Spain, Portugal (where these foreigners are from)?  How will you like it if they treat you like you are treating them?  You are treating these people as if God had not made them!  As if God did not own (“owed”) them!

But what clinches Shakespeare’s authorship for me in what he does with language. There is the pun with “ruff” as an article of clothing, that stiff frilly collar that the nobility wore around their necks (“you in ruff of your opinions clothed,” picking up on how they “sit like kings in their desire,” lording it over these “wretched stranger), turning into “ruffian” five lines later.

But here is the true Shakespearean line:  These other ruffians “would shark on you.”  Shark as a verb!  He takes the noun, underscoring the picture of “ravenous fishes” feeding on each other.  But he turns it into a verb.  He is making up words!  “To shark” on someone.  Meaning to act like a shark, but a verb is the most emphatic part of speech, so he is multiplying the impact of the metaphor.

Shakespeare did that sort of thing all the time.  For example, in “Anthony and Cleopatra,” after Octavius Caesar tells her a bunch of empty words in an effort to manipulate her, she tells her handmaidens:  “He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not/ Be noble to myself!” (Act V. Scene ii. lines 229-230).  Turning the noun “word” into a verb!

See whole story from the Folger Shakespeare library, plus photos of the manuscript, and a video of Ian McKellan (who played Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movie) who was in one of the first modern performance of the play in 1964.  The text of the full play, Sir Thomas More, is available on Project Gutenberg.

Tip of the hat to my fellow Patheos blogger Ben Witherington, who posted a video of Ian McKellan giving the speech in the context of the clash between illegal immigrants and I.C.E.  Despite my academic specialty of 17th century English literature, I didn’t know about this manuscript or its authorship.

There is, of course, a difference between the Evil May Day riots and what happened in Minnesota.   In 16th century London, the unruly crowds were attacking the foreigners.  In Minnesota, the unruly crowds were supporting the immigrants.  In London, the rioters were working class folks attacking middle class merchants and craftsmen.  In Minnesota, the protestors were mostly middle class folks trying to protect working class immigrants. In London the government was trying to protect the foreigners.  In Minnesota, the government was trying to expel them.

At any rate, the point holds for anyone:  Don’t treat people as if God hadn’t made them.

Photo:  Facsimile of a page of writing by “Hand D” from the Elizabethan play Sir Thomas More, believed by some scholars to be William Shakespeare‘s handwriting. Scanned from the original document., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6263547