A Man For All Seasons

“I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.” Thomas More spoke these words at the end of a long period of persecution and imprisonment during which he had used all of his extraordinary intelligence and lawyer’s wiles to avoid execution.

Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons shows us how this scholar, ambassador, Lord Chancellor and friend of the king sacrificed the good life and the family he loved for a matter of conscience. His dealings with the great figures of the time – Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, the Duke of Norfolk and Henry VIII himself – are seen through the eyes of the common man, the poor cynic for whom a conscience would be a great inconvenience. Michael Rudman directs the production, which stars Martin Shaw as Thomas More.