Well--only once have I seen "Man For All Seasons" done on a real live stage--and then it was a snippet.
The movie I remember quite well but I suppose the film makers departed from Mr. Bolt's original play. Though maybe not--he was himself a screen writer for his own "Man For All Seasons" was he not?
One thing didn't come out in the play / movie. At least, not as I remember.
(1) More could be pretty feisty at times. Ditto his wife. "By the saints, Madam," I believe he exploded once, "if God give you not damnation, he doth you great wrong!"
Golly!
And she herself--listening to More's protestations in the Tower of London. "Tilly vally! Tilly vally!" A sixteenth century equivalent to "Balderdash!" or "Horse feathers!"
And maybe she had more to say than that. But that's what I remember.
(2) Come on, Mr. Bolt--the guy was WITTY. He had a sense of humor. He didn't just loll about the place, looking sanctimonious--even if he DID become a Catholic saint--oh when? around five hundred years later, was it?
"Help me up, good Master Executioner," he asked as he clambered up the scaffold--"and as for getting down, let me shift for myself."
He was careful to spread out his beard OVER the block rather than let it dangle down his chest--
--"because IT at any rate hath committed no high treason."
A later Protestant writer commented sourly that Master Thomas More "ended his life with a mock."
Lighten up, would you!
(But I don't think he did.)
Hilary Mantel single-handedly changed our view of Thomas More: from the saintly martyr of Roman Catholic (and Robert Bolt's) mythology to the sanctimonious Inquisitor hoisted from his own petard at the conclusion of "Wolf Hall." It's hard to understand how a production of "A Man for All Seasons" could fail to reckon with this sea change in attitude about its protagonist.
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@Civres although I liked the Mantel books, given that the play preceded the book by decades, it would be difficult for the producers to obtain the rights to rewrite it for a "sea change." Nor does a play have to reflect the views of a book, or vice versa--especially when you consider how many books revere More.
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This is a great production of a fine play. It has a fine ensemble cast. I saw it last week and reading nitpicking reviews like this one show the benefits of seeing theater, movies, opera etc. before reading what reviewers write.
Robert Bolt wrote both the play and the screenplay and the play is better.
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I did not see the original play on Broadway but did see the movie.
Actually I like the movie version of "Becket" (with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole) better than just about all of the English History plays.
Their cousin "Macbeth" is pretty good too.
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A Man For All Seasons is very well written--but very disingenuous in that it ignores More's enthusiasm for torturing and executing Protestants.
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