Other significant facts are not described: There is no mention of his literary career, his book Utopia, or the dispute between Henry VIII and the Pope in Rome.

What the play is about has been debated, but the issues revolve around obedience to the crown and rule of law, particularly when a populace becomes stirred up in an anti-alien fervor.

Third is his service as Privy Councillor and Lord Chamberlain, and the principled stand he took in opposition to the king, which leads to More's execution.

Out of necessity, the play is structured to allow for this multiple doubling of roles: it is set up in three phases—More's rise; More's Chancellorship; More's fall—with very limited overlap between the thirds.

Only three characters, More himself and the Earls of Shrewsbury and Surrey, appear in all three portions; seven other characters—Lady More, Clown Betts, Palmer, Roper, Sergeant Downes, the Lord Mayor, and a sheriff—appear in two of the three segments.

In London In Court Lord Cardinal's Players More's Party Others The play dramatises events in More's life, and it deals with issues of obedience to the crown and rule of law, particularly when a populace has become stirred up in an anti-alien fervour.

[12] It begins with the Ill May Day events of 1517: Foreign nationals, who have immigrated to England from Lombardy, which is the northern region of what is now known as Italy, are misbehaving in a variety of ways, and are treating the citizens of London with abuse and disrespect.

The noblemen decide to engage Sheriff Thomas More, who is popular and respected by the people, to try and calm the civil unrest.

More begins by saying that the riots are disgracing England, and that if disorder prevails, civil society will fall apart, and none of the rioters will live to an old age.

However, the revisions are generally considered, in recognizable theatrical terms, as a script's natural progression towards its being readied for production.

The manuscript is notable for the light it sheds on the collaborative nature of Elizabethan drama and theatrical censorship of the era.

Now Harley MS 7368 in the collection of the British Library, the manuscript's provenance can be traced back to 1728, when it belonged to a London book collector named John Murray.

5) Folio 11c, Addition III, Hand C: the first of the two insertions on smaller pieces of paper, formerly pasted over the bottom of page 11b, and consisting of a single 21-line soliloquy meant to begin the next scene.

Part of the need for revisions of the play was clearly due to purely practical concerns of stagecraft, apart from the demands of political censorship.

[20] Two of the Additions, III and VI, occur at the beginning and end of the middle third respectively, giving more time for costume changes.

[21] Allowing for a range of uncertainties, it is most likely true that the original text of Sir Thomas More was written c. 1591–93, with a special focus on 1592–93 when the subject of hostility against "aliens" was topical in London.

[22] Edmund Tylney censored the play when it was submitted to him for approval at that time, for this topicality as well as for more general considerations of controlling political expression on the stage.

The most common identifications for the six hands: Munday, Chettle, Dekker, and Heywood wrote for the Admiral's Men during the years before and after 1600, which may strengthen the idea of a connection between the play and that company.

A second significant gathering of scholars to consider Sir Thomas More grew out of a seminar that was held during the meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America at Ashland, Oregon in 1983.

[29] The evidence for identifying Shakespeare as Hand D is of various types: The original perceptions of Simpson and Spedding in 1871–72 were based on literary style and content and political outlook, rather than palaeographic and orthographic considerations.

Consider one example of what attracted attention to the style of Hand D. First, from Sir Thomas More, Addition IIc, 84–87: Next, from Coriolanus, I, i, 184–188: Thirdly, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 121–124: Finally, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, II, i, 26–32: Many features like this in the Hand D addition to Sir Thomas More first attracted the attention of Shakespeare scholars and readers, and led to more intensive study from a range of specialised perspectives.

[33] Paul Werstine similarly argues that "the only handwriting that we know for certain are his... is too small a sample size to make any sort of reliable comparison.

While Shakespeare's supposed contribution is consistent with the overall theme and develops the plot, there is an impression of a virtuoso piece inserted, but not completely integrated, into the play.

[35][36] The play was most likely written to be acted by Lord Strange's Men, the only company of the time that could have mounted such a large and demanding production, at Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre, which possessed the special staging requirements (large-capacity second-level platform and special enclosure) called for by the play.

[39] Since that time no recorded performance of Sir Thomas More took place until a three-night student production by the Birkbeck College, University of London, in December 1922.

[41] McKellen also played the role at the Nottingham Playhouse 10 June–4 July 1964, taking over from John Neville on short notice, when the latter had artistic differences with director Frank Dunlop during rehearsals.

[43] Sir Ian McKellen performed the Hand D monologue regarding immigrants on the Marc Maron podcast in response to the Trump phenomenon, as well as during his visit to the Oxford Union in 2017.