NON-AFRICAN DRAMA; Robert Bolt: A Man For All Season Discuss the conflict between Sir Thomas More and the authorities.

Answer Details

The conflict between Sir Thomas More and the authorities is the central action of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons. It is a conflict between individual conscience and the demands of the state, and it drives More step by step from high office to the scaffold.

The origin of the conflict. The struggle arises out of King Henry VIII's desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. When the Pope refuses to grant the annulment, Henry breaks with Rome, declares himself Supreme Head of the Church in England, and demands that his subjects swear an oath acknowledging the validity of the new marriage and the King's supremacy. More, a devout Catholic and a man of principle, cannot in conscience take this oath, since it denies the authority of the Pope and the Church.

• Silent resignation. More does not openly denounce the King. Instead he resigns the office of Lord Chancellor and withdraws into private life, hoping that his silence will protect him. He is careful to break no law, trusting that the law will shield him.
• Pressure from the authorities. The King and his agents, chiefly Thomas Cromwell, cannot tolerate More's silence, because his refusal to endorse the King carries enormous moral weight. Cromwell sets out to trap him, seeking evidence of treason where none exists.
• The strategy of silence. More retreats to the ground of law, arguing that his silence must in law be taken as consent and that no man can be condemned for what he has not said. He plays a subtle legal game against the state, insisting on the letter of the law as his last defence.
• Betrayal and false witness. The authorities finally destroy him through the perjury of Richard Rich, who falsely swears that More denied the King's supremacy in private conversation. On this false testimony More is convicted of treason.

The conflict is fundamentally a clash between conscience and power. The authorities, embodied in Henry, Cromwell and the pliant Rich, represent expediency, ambition and the demand for total conformity. More represents the sanctity of the individual conscience and the belief that there are laws higher than the King's will. His resistance is not rebellion but refusal; he will not swear to what he believes to be false, even to save his life.

The outcome. After his condemnation More at last speaks openly, declaring that no temporal power can make itself head of the Church and that the King's law contradicts the law of God. He goes to his execution with courage and even wit, dying, as he says, the King's good servant but God's first.

Conclusion. The conflict between More and the authorities pits private conscience against the coercive power of the state. Through More's fall Bolt affirms the dignity and inviolability of the individual conscience, and condemns the ambition and moral cowardice of those who bend before power. More loses his life but preserves his integrity, and the play makes his martyrdom a triumph of principle.