The playhouse manuscript, Sir Thomas More, has been called “an immensely complex palimpsest of composition, scribal transcription, rewriting, censorship and further additions that features multiple hands”. One of those hands was Shakespeare–and that has contemporary relevance.
–The authoritative Arden Shakespeare text renders a passage from Shakespeare’s Scene 6 as follows (this being Thomas More speaking to a crowd of insurrectionists opposing Henry VIII):
What do you, then,
Rising ’gainst him that God Himself installs,
But rise ’gainst God? What do you to your souls
In doing this? O, 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 unreverent knees,
Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven.
Tell me but this: what rebel captain…
The last two lines, however, had been edited by another of the play’s writers (“Hand C”), deleting the bolded lines Shakespeare had originally written,
Make them your feet. To kneel to be forgiven
Is safer wars than ever you can make
Whose discipline is riot.
In, in to your obedience. While even your hurly
Cannot proceed but by obedience.
What rebel captain….
–What has been effaced away by the deletion is, first, the notion that contrition is itself a kind of war and a safer war, at that.
According to the Arden Shakespeare, “The act of contrition might be described as wars because the former rebels would enlist themselves in the struggle of good and evil, and would fight against their own sin of rebellion.” In either case—contrition or rebellion—obedience is required. Actually, nothing was less safe than rebellion whose “discipline is riot”.
–What has also been scored out, in other words, from Shakespeare’s original passage is the clear accent on contrition and peace over continued upheaval. But the absence of contrition by those involved in the formulation and implementation of war policies is precisely what we have seen and are seeing today.
For to prioritize contrition would mean refocusing obedience from battle to a very different struggle in securing peace and security, a mission in which our ministries of interior and defence are notably inferior, be they in Russia, the US, or elsewhere.
Principal sources
Sir Thomas More (2011), ed. John Jowett (Arden Shakespeare, third series. Bloomsbury, London)
Van Es, B. (2019). Troubles of a glorious breath. TLS (March 22)
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 