The Polish-Lithuanian legacy of Sir Thomas More in the rediscovered plays and playbills of the eighteenth century

Abstract

The life and execution of Sir Thomas More, humanist writer and Chancellor of England under King Henry VIII Tudor, has captured the imagination of both Elizabethan and Continental playwrights. The article discusses the cultural context as well as the form and structure of a 1736 playbill, Messis immortalium trophaeorum ex triumphalibus palmis, Thomae Mori cancellarii Angliae (Wrocław Ossolineum Library, XVIII – 15241. IV), originally from Zamoyski Academy; and a newly discovered 1765 manuscript play, Morus Angliae Cancellarius tragedia (Vilnius University Library, MS F3-1118), from the Jesuit College in Lwów, both from the early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The article argues that specific representations of More’s life and martyrdom in the Jesuit theatre of Poland-Lithuania can be explained and analyzed in the light of the political traditions and multi-denominational religious life of the Commonwealth up to its partitions in the second half of the eighteenth century. They raise interesting questions regarding the balance of spiritual and secular concerns, and creatively link Thomas More’s story with the Commonwealth’s political culture to offer moral and ethical exemplars for the young.