The Stranger's Case (nonfiction)

"The Stranger's Case"

Text

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silenced by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you:

You had taught how insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
You'll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in line
To slip him like a hound.

Oh, desperate as you are, wash your foul minds with tears;
and those same hands that you, like rebels,
lift against the peace, lift up for peace,
and your unreverent knees, make them your feet to kneel,
to be forgiven.

Say now the king
(As he is clement, if the offender mourn)
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,—
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.

Background

Sir Thomas More is an Elizabethan play and a dramatic biography based on events in the life of the Catholic martyr Thomas More, who rose to become the Lord Chancellor of England during the reign of Henry VIII. The play is considered to be written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle and revised by several writers. The manuscript is particularly notable for a three-page handwritten revision now widely attributed to William Shakespeare.

This play is not a biography; it is a drama that deals with certain events in More's life.

External links

• Sir Thomas More (play) @ Wikipedia
• Evil May Evil @ Wikipedia
• The Strangers' Case @ Folger Shakespeare Library
• Leave it to Shakespeare and Ian McKellen to so eloquently speak of man's mountainish inhumanity. #Colbert #IanMcKellen #Shakespeare @ Facebook

Social media

• Post @ Bluesky (30 April 2026) - "Sir Thomas More / Elizabethan play & dramatic biography based on events in the life of Thomas More"