Munday, Drayton, and Smith in November, 1601, in two plays for the Admiral’s men.” There can be little doubt that that is the reason why, in the Cromwell play, the public is asked to “pardon if we omit all Wolsaye’s life.” But it evidently is the reason, too, why “all Wolsaye’s life” is omitted from Sir Thomas More. Nothing surely is more remarkable than the absolute absence of everything that concerns Cardinal Wolsey from our play. Nay, more, not even is he absent, but Sir Thomas More has in some cases taken his very historical place. It was Wolsey who acted the decisive part in the liquidation of the “Ill-Mayday” revolt; it was he, not More, who scored the success to have the “good emperour,” i.e. Kaiser Maximilian, “marche in pay Under our English flagge, and weare the crosse, Like some high order, on his manly breast” (IV, ii),[1] at a time when More was still under-sheriff of London. Moreover, how is it possible that More’s dealings with Wolsey, whose direct successor as Chancellor he was, as they are offered in the sources are entirely disregarded in the play? The reason is obvious. These things must have been dealt with already in the very popular plays about Wolsey’s life. The Wolsey theme had been worked out so fully that the interest in him with the public was supposed to be exhausted. That is also why names like Cromwell or Norfolk do not, as we might expect, appear in our play. A connection of this sort between Cromwell, More, and the Wolsey plays is also made plausible by their authorship. In the two Wolsey plays the lost Life of Cardinal Wolsey and its sequel, the Rising of Cardinal Wolsey, which is lost too, Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and Smith were concerned. Now the handwriting of “our best plotter” Munday seems to be established beyond doubt as that “of the bulk of Sir Thomas More” too (Shakespeare’s Hand, etc., p. 8). This makes it more plausible still, that Cromwell, Wolsey, and More belong closely together. It may even be—though this is by no means certain—that of this close connection there is a hint in the very plays themselves. Says Gardiner in the Cromwell play (IV, v, 54):
Theres Thomas Wolsey, hees alreadie gone,
And Thomas Moore, he followed after him:
Another Thomas yet there doth remaine…
- ↑ The Emperor Maximilian and all his servants which were retained with the King of England in wages by the day, every person according to his degree, and the emperor as the King’s soldier wore a cross of Saint George with a rose. Hall, fol. 32; cf. Holinshed, ii, 1483.
