Sir Thomas More and the Tragedy of Citizenship

Abstract:This essay explores the historical and generic basis for a tragic reading of The Book of Sir Thomas More. The early modern period’s dominant forms of tragedy (such as revenge tragedy and historical tragedy) typically focus on the dynastic-imperial struggles of aristocratic powers against the backdrop of centralization and state-building. Sir Thomas More inverts this representational hierarchy by leaving the monarch un-represented, relegating to the background the well-known factional conflicts that undergirded the Henrician Reformation. Instead, the play dramatizes the history of Tudor consolidation from the perspective of London’s citizenry, who are made to grapple with the meaning of their own freedom in an age of mass migration. The result, I suggest, is a charter myth not of the nation-state but of London and its civic institutions: a tragic meditation on the place of the city and its citizens in the world.