The Elizabethan Theatre and "The Book of Sir Thomas More''

The "sweet-gorged Maw": Feeding and Physic in the Elizabethan Dramatic Life of Sir Thomas More

“…In Sir Thomas More, it seems, we can read these variations in the different characterizations by different writers. Moreover, if as Scott McMillin thinks, the play was first written in the early 1590s, then shelved as unplayable, and picked up again in the first years of the seventeenth century, 50 we have here palimpsest of differing views of More recorded over a fairly long period of time. But coming into sharp relief is Munday's More: hospitable but excessively concerned with reputation, a man critical of courtly indulgence, specifically that of the monarch, but who himself suffers from an ailment commonly attributed to gluttony.…”

A Sharers’ Repertory

“…Scott McMillin has argued as much for the years of Alleyn's temporary withdrawal from playing (1597-1600), when 'the new plays written for the Admiral's men had no role as large as 600 lines; the company's dramaturgy can be charted according to the presence or absence of Alleyn'. 24 But what was that dramaturgy? We cannot say for the years before or during Alleyn's absence, since too many plays of the period are lost (as 25 it would seem that the Admiral's Men quickly found a suitable replacement for Alleyn: the part of Eleazer is longer than any associated with him (over 7,600 words, c .…”

Early modern studies and scholarly territoriality

“…Rather that than Marlowe's Edward II for sheer iconoclastic, daring outrage, or plays more firmly in the Tudor realm, Shakespeare's Henry VIII or the controversial Sir Thomas More itself, of which Shakespeare was probably part author? 16 The historian Peter Lake is quite sure that the plays are participating in a political process he calls 'popularity': the performance is a public sphere in which every member of the populace might theoretically participate. 17 Monarchs, chief aristocratic ministers and bishops are not free to act as they wish: they are being scrutinised and judged in the allegory of contemporary politics that is the play, just as the pamphlet and other printed materials are participating in the new making of public opinion.…”