"Strange Discourse": The Controversial Subject of "Sir Thomas More"

The political value of church attendance did not cancel out its religious meaning. [...]church papistry, the Jesuit Robert Persons argued, fostered a destructive hypocrisy whereby the subject "must needes bee brought ether to flat athisme, that is, to leave of all conscience, and to care for no...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Renaissance drama 2011-01, Vol.39, p.3-35
Main Author: WOODS, GILLIAN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
17th century
Audiences
Catholicism
Censorship
Collectivity
Dictionaries
Dramatists
Martyrdom
Martyrs
More, Thomas (1478-1535)
Political discourse
Politics
Popes
Priests
Protestantism
Religion
Reputations
Riots
Spirituality
Theater
Theology
Treason
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Summary:The political value of church attendance did not cancel out its religious meaning. [...]church papistry, the Jesuit Robert Persons argued, fostered a destructive hypocrisy whereby the subject "must needes bee brought ether to flat athisme, that is, to leave of all conscience, and to care for no relygion at all. [...]in addition to investigating how disobethence to the monarch structures the individual subject, I will also look at the importance of communal bonds and how other characters and the audience relate to the estranged subject. More's Catholic resistance was (in)famous. Because audiences could hardly forget the controversial nature of the story that the play obscures, we might question whether More's motivations are mystified rather than unproblematically avoided. (4.4.48-52) In the present and in the future, in success and failure, the family represents More-the-individual as a unit in a collectivity. [...]More's execution is prophetically realized first in the dreams of his son-in-law, wife, and daughter.
ISSN:0486-3739
2164-3415
DOI:10.1086/rd.39.41917481