VolineFeb 5

Shakespeare on ethnic cleansing.

Ian McKellen performs "The Strangers' Case" speech from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on 4 February 2026.

Show threadMichelle Hughes

@Voline

I had never heard of Shakespeare doing a play on Sir Thomas More, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It says:

> The play is considered to be written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle and revised by several writers. The manuscript is particularly notable for a three-page handwritten revision now widely attributed to William Shakespeare.

I guess that's why it doesn't show up in usual collections: it's a little weird.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Thomas_More_(play)#Authorship

Sir Thomas More (play) - Wikipedia

Feb 6 at 9:40pmWeb
Show threadVolineFeb 7

@MegaMichelle
I had never heard of it before yesterday, either! I think this play sent us both down the same rabbit hole. Sir Thomas More shows up in the most complete, and authoritative collections of Shakespeare plays: Oxford Complete Works of WS, Cambridge Complete Shakespeare, etc. The scholarly consensus seems to be it was co-written by Shakespeare. But it's not often performed, nor does it show up in print in any collections that don't aspire be "complete". Maybe, it just isn't considered one of his best.

But it's simultaneously very important because, if it is indeed Shakespeare, then it's his only play that exists in manuscript form. By what means is it attributed to Shakespeare? By handwriting analysis. But it's the only manuscript! All other, better verified, samples of Shakespeare's handwriting are from bills and receipts, some notes and letters. Small samples. Compared to those scholars think one of four hands in the multi-author manuscript, "Hand D", is Shakespeare's. It's all kind of tenuous, but there's not a lot of dissent among scholars.

Could be a case of motivated reasoning, because, if Hand D is him, we have a Shakespeare manuscript. If Hand D is not him, we don't — and that would make scholars sad.

The the annual Ashland Shakespeare festival here in Oregon includes a scholar convention and the 1983 Shakesfest included a seminar on "Sir Thomas More" that resulted in a collection of essays by participants, *Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More: Essays on the Play and Its Shakespearian Interest*, edited by TH Howard-Hill. Cambridge Univ Press, 1989. I got a copy from a "shadow library".

https://annas-archive.li/md5/cddeab11fe44ea7be30328b559ed7e3b

Shakespeare And Sir Thomas More: Essays On The Play And Its Shakespearian Interest (new Cambridge Shakespeare Studies And Supplementary Texts) - Anna’s Archive

edited by T. H. Howard-Hill 1. Voice And Credyt / G. Harold Metz -- 2. The Occasion Of The Book Of Sir Thomas More / William B. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York: Cambridge University Press