A Man for All Seasons is a play by Robert Bolt. An early form of the play had been written for BBC Radio in 1954, and a one-hour live television version starring Bernard Hepton was produced in 1957 by the BBC, but after Bolt's success with The Flowering Cherry, he reworked it for the stage.
It was first performed in London opening at the Globe Theatre (now Gielgud Theatre) on 1 July 1960. It later found its way to Broadway, enjoying a critically and commercially successful run of over a year. It has had several revivals, and was subsequently made into a feature film and a television movie.
The plot is based on the true story of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Chancellor of England, who refused to endorse King Henry VIII's wish to divorce his ageing wife Catherine of Aragon, who could not bear him a son, so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, the sister of his former mistress. The play portrays More as a man of principle, envied by rivals such as Thomas Cromwell and loved by the common people and by his family.
Read more about A Man For All Seasons: Title, Themes, Endings, Stage Productions, Radio Productions
Famous quotes containing the word man:
“I have very lately read the Prince of Abyssinia [Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas]MI am almost equally charmed and shocked at it—the style, the sentiments are inimitable—but the subject is dreadful—and, handled as it is by Dr. Johnson, might make any young, perhaps old, person tremble—O heavens! how dreadful, how terrible it is to be told by a man of his genius and knowledge, in so affectingly probable a manner, that true, real happiness is ever unattainable in this world!”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)