A Man For All Seasons

A Man for All Seasons is a 1960 play by English playwright Robert Bolt. Though it was published in its completed form in 1960, it was originally written for radio in 1954. It was then adapted for television in 1957 before finally being rewritten for the stage. The original runs of the show in London and later New York attained critical and commercial success. In 1966, the play was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name. In 1988, it was adapted into a TV movie. Bolt first developed an interest in Sir Thomas More, an influential but controversial Catholic lawyer during the reign of King Henry VIII, who is also known for the satirical work Utopia (1516), when he was a teenager. In the play’s Preface, he writes that he idolized More as “a man with an adamantine sense of his own self” (19). Bolt explores More’s political and religious objections to King Henry VIII’s creation of the Church of England and his divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The play follows More through the last years of his life, ending with his execution.

This guide uses the 2013 e-book edition published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.