Shakespeare's Refugees

Organized labor didn't have a fan in Shakespeare. Most of his depictions of the urban working class involve riots. Londoners in Henry 6.2 ("Kill all the lawyers!") and Romans in Coriolanus go nuts in the streets till disorder is quelled. And in J. Caesar, Antony's funeral speech incites a mob to kill a poet just for sharing names with a conspirator.

Anyway, last weekend my mind wasn't on labor either (hence a Friday post). I spent more thought on the refugee crisis in Europe, another subject you wouldn't look to Shakespeare for. Surprise! He did write a scene that addresses the crisis beautifully.

Some background: popular scholarship says our guy wrote a few scenes for The Book of Sir Thomas More, a play (despite the title) about the great English humanist. And that 'wrote' is literal. Five 'hands' composed the manuscript, and scholars are pretty sure that 'Hand D' is Shak's.

As an in-house writer, one of Shakespeare's jobs was to write (or rewrite) pivotal scenes for plays that his company owned the rights to. In Thomas More, he gets the scene where Sir Thomas defuses a 1517 riot against foreigners in London (AKA Evil May Day). Here's the big Act Two speech:

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 silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got?

Aren't lines 3-5 vivid? Anyway, here the mob wants to deport the immigrants. By rioting, they usurp the king's authority. So their demands would set a dangerous precedent:

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.

Shak argues in a few plays that mob rule leads to lawlessness. In a similar defusing-the-mob scene in Coriolanus, he even reuses the line "would feed on one another". Okay, so let's skip the next bit, which has More cite the divine right of monarchy (the king is "a god on earth") and reiterate that riot --> Hobbesian anarchy. In a fit of chutzpah, More even recommends the mob beg for forgiveness! Then:

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.

That last 'him' refers to 'the majesty of law', which is led by a leash. More predicts the outcome, once order has been restored:

                              Say now the king

(As he is clement, if th' 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.

That hypothetical contains a threat: riot, as treason, is a capital offense. In a best-case scenario, the king will just banish you. More is setting up an obvious irony but he elaborates the point:

                              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 you think

To be thus used? This is the strangers' case;

And this your mountainish inhumanity.

More urges the crowd—the rioters but also the theater audience—to an act of sympathy, to see themselves in their victims. By denying the humanity of others, these rioters would become inhuman themselves.

Okay, so it's not a great speech, even after I've cut a dozen dull lines. It's got some good lines—the opening images are very good ("the wretched strangers" etc) and so is the "shark" verb followed by "men like ravenous fishes"—but it's strictly work-for-hire. Yet the sentiment of this speech, quite possibly from Shakespeare's own hand, is as vital as it is simple. Today we see human beings fleeing a catastrophe, and one of human making. It must not be answered with "mountainish inhumanity."

Incidentally, Sir Thomas More was revived in Nottingham, 1963, starring a young Ian McKellen. Nowadays Sir Ian trots out this speech for gay events. Here's a clip with intro; skip to 2:45 for the speech itself. I cut a few more lines than he did, so I'll include his edit beneath the link and you can follow along.

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 costs for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent 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.

                              O, 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!

                              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. 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 mountanish inhumanity.