A Man For All Seasons

The life of Thomas More. ‘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 finest play 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.