Corruption in Bolt’s ‘Man for All Seasons’

Most of us, politically, mentally, morally, socially, live somewhere between the prejudicial gage of Robert Bolts terrifying cosmos where no laws, no sanctions, no mores obtain (xvi), the nadir of the hu mankind spirit and self, and the positive pole he come abouts in Thomas More, who makes, not barely in oaths merely in all his dealings, an identity between the truth and his consume virtue, and offers himself as a guarantee (xiii-xiv) a self which proves incorruptible by each promise or punishment.Near to Mores level of responsibility atomic number 18 his married woman and daughter, though he feels the need to protect them from perjuring themselves, a rotting stemming from one of the hardest temptations, protecting their family from aggrieve. Rich and Crom swell are nearer to the freeze off pole in the play, the conditioner making the complete arc from naturalness to its opposite, and the latter starting from a place of moral bankruptcy and channelize Rich in that location with him. In between is the political putrefaction of powerfulness Henry who wont let all the Popes back to St. beam get between me and my duty (54), and of Woolseys appeal to More along flag-waving(prenominal) and anti-war lines. With the exception of More, and those who anchor themselves to him like his family and Will Roper, they are all, like the skimmers wife, losing their shape, sir. Losing it fast (28). Richard Rich is the plays some create exemplar of the gradual, and gradually accelerating, course that tone downs, through corrupt action, to corruptions end-point a shell without a self.As the Common Man, in the feigning of Matthew, correctly predicts, Rich comes to nothing (17), despite his final worldly status, symbolized by his rich robes which, as that same Man assigns elsewhere of all clothing, say nothing about the man inside them, barely covering one mans nakedness (3). Oliver Cromwell, a disciple of Machiavelli, and unashamedly corrupt, is Richs tea cher and exhorter along that road. Rich is bullied into telling Cromwell information that readiness harm Thomas More, a betrayal.Cromwell uses this sin as a teaching prospect the more you give in to corruption (and therefore the less of you there is left to struggle against it), the easier it becomes CROMWELL There, that wasnt too painful, was it? RICH (laughing a detailed and a little rueful) No CROMWELL Thats all there is, and youll find it easier next time. (76) Richard Rich sums up the teachings of Machiavelli, embodied in Cromwell, as quintessentially desolate (though Rich is too fearful for his worldly status to be afraid(p) of the legitimately fearful consequence of following those teachings) properly apprehended, Macchiavelli has no doctrine. cross Cromwell has the sense of it (13). In following Cromwell into philosophical corruption, Rich result garner the recompenses of such pragmatism. More, at the apex of Richs ascent to crop and wealth (hes been named Attorney General for Wales as a reward for perjury), reminds Rich that it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world (158). That word, nothing, both represents that he doesnt gain anything expenditure having, and that he will, in consequence, add to the absence of his being what he will gain is nothingness.The reasons Rich and Cromwell are tempted are simple in that they (the reasons) are particular to self-profit (More, and perhaps Bolt through More, would find that an ironic term) personal wealth, influence and power, and escape from suffering. Cardinal Woolsey tempts More with a form of corruption less black-and-white not merely Cromwells short-sited administrative public lavatory (73), scarcely a seemingly moral and patriotic act by chance preventing a war of succession like the War of the Roses had been. Oh your conscience is your own affair, the Cardinal tells More, but youre a statesman Do you dream up the Yorkist wars? All right my solution to this problem is, in that it isnt absolutely moral, regrettable, but necessary (22). It is a dilemma whether the good of a countrified (or the prevention of an evil to a country) somehow outweighs the evil of achieving that end by corrupt means. Mores horrible moral squint (19), as Woolsey calls it, sees through the Cardinals assumption that such corruption, simply because it has a good in sight for that greater self that is ones homeland, wont open the door to further corruption, as a precedent that many (as it affects many) will follow, that will in fact lead their country by a short route to chaos (22).The form of corruption with which Thomas More will have to grapple most desperately, and from which he will protect his family most carefully, is the temptation to act against conscience, not for personal gain, or for the sake of an abstract like the common good, but for loved ones. More knows that temptation, in this case to perjure themselves for his own sake, might topple even the upright Alice and Margaret. For that eason, despite the anger and suffering his wife and daughter evidence at being kept in the dark, he never once opens his mind to them about those issues (the real reason nookie his resignation, which lands them in poverty, and imprisonment over taking an oath, which deprives them of father and husband, and puts them in danger) a relief he must have craved were they the picture of understanding. However, though they are not he tells Margaret the Kings more merciful than you he doesnt use the rack (142) he holds firm.This he also does for himself, never taking the oath and perjuring himself to God (as, he says, what is an oath then, but words we say to God (140)), though he knows his family will suffer his ultimate loss. For that reason, though, he can go to his end with a special tranquility, telling the headsman you send me to God He will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to him (160). We are left, then, with so many who died long ago, and the tale t hat history, and this play, tells of them.Richard Rich loses himself to corruption for purely personal gain, and while he lives with outward wealth, he is in spite of appearance rotten, and ends in obscurity. Cardinal Woolsey, who ruthlessly pursues personal power and uses the same maneuver in pursuit of patriotic goals, is remembered as an influencer of the policies of Europe, but, in the play, paves the way for greater evil, though he tries to stave it off by electing More overlord Chancellor.That evil is personified in Cromwell, a man with no morals, patriotic or otherwise. That short route to chaos More warns of shows up as well in the escalation of the scale of resistance Henry levels against the Church, eventually destroying most of the monasteries in England, and sparking a bloodily put down revolution. More, meanwhile, is an inspiration not only for his family, but has inspired conscience and nobility of spirit for almost atomic number 23 hundred years since his death, wh ich is its own kind of immortality.