Thomas Adamantine
Thomas Adamantine
Sir Thomas More... 'a man with a adamantine sense of his own self'...?
Which character contrasts reinforce this reading of his personality?
I believe your reference is to the representation of Sir Thomas More in Richard Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons," which was a splendid play translated brilliantly to the movie screen.
I suppose if one is looking for a "character contrast" then one should compare More with Sir Richard Rich. Rich is a vacillating opportunist, who is putty in the hands of Secretary Cromwell, who offers him the position of Collector of Revenue for York and then chides him for being gloomy over the opportunity:
CROMWELL: You look depressed.
RICH: I'm lamenting. I've lost my innocence.
CROMWELL: You lost that some time ago. If you've only just noticed, it can't have been very important to you.
Rich, then, is man with a poor knowledge of himself and not much interest in learning more.
Sir Thomas, on the other hand, knows himself thoroughly. If on the one hand, he is not the sort of person of whom martyrs are made, he has a reply when his wife councils him:
ALICE: Be ruled! If you won't rule him, be ruled!
MORE: I neither could nor would rule my King. But there's a little . . . little, area . . . where I must rule myself. It's very little--less to him than a tennis court.
Circumstances cause More to retreat and retreat. He resigns as Chancellor and retires to his home where he remains steadfastly quiet. He is deprived of his income and reduced to gathering grass to feed his fires. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, he makes no statement against the King, steadfastly acknowledging his sovereignty, but also refusing to sign the oath that makes King Henry the head of the church. In the end he retreats to that little area where he must be himself, even if it means becoming martyr.
In Bolt's play, he is convicted on perjured testimony, and this accords with the biography written by his son-in-law, who is also in the play, William Roper. We have only Roper's account of the trial. No official records survive, but a recent biography of More--sorry, I don't recall the title and author--argues that, exhausted by endless questioning and lack of sleep, he did say something like what was testified against him. We shall never know. In Bolt's play he is self-knowing, steadfast, and firm, truly a man for all seasons.
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