Synopsis:

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS dramatizes the conflict between Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More and is a confrontation between church and state, theology and politics, absolute power and individual freedom. The play opened in 1960 and went on to win New York’s Best Foreign Play award in 1962. It was later made into a motion picture which won 7 Academy Awards.

When Henry VIII became heir to the British throne upon his brother’s death, the Pope made special dispensation for him to marry his brother’s widow, the politically desirable Spanish princess, Catherine. When Catherine failed to produce a male heir, Henry sough out the Pope to nullify the marriage since it violated Christian law for a man to marry his brother’s widow. This caused More to resign his post in 1532 as Lord Chancellor because he opposed the plan. Henry then took England out of the Catholic Church and established the Church of England with himself as head. In 1533 Henry crowned his new wife, Anne Boleyn, queen. Two years later the Act of Succession required all to take an oath acknowledging the issue of Henry and Anne as legitimate heirs to the throne with a clause repudiating “any foregn authority, prince or potentate.” More refused to take the oath and was sent to the Tower. He was indicted for treason.

At More’s trial, the solicitor-general, Richard Rich, testified that More had denied Parliament’s power to invest Henry with ecclesiastical powers. Despite More’s denial of the statement and his avowal that Rich was a perjurer, More was convicted and beheaded on July 6, 1535. More was willing to be executed rather than renounce his oath to the Pope and the Catholic Church, thus becoming a martyr who was sainted in 1935.

The play presents the dilemma of a man of conscience who followed those dictates which have become a vital example to all mankind. Today, More is regarded as a herol of civil disobedience, a man who refused to obey the law with which he was in profound moral disagreement. For More, law was morality and morality was superior to law and the standard by which law must be judged.