Francis E. ZAPATKA Morema XXVLII. 108 (Dec. 1991). 41-50
aNb its Us€ iN
n an essay called "Place in Fiction," Eudora Welty writes in part:
"the more narrowly we can examine a fictional character, the greater is likely to loom up. We must see him set to scale in his proper world ter know his size. Place, then, has the most delicate control over charac-
... by confining character, it defines it" (122). Two places, both asso- ciated with More's historical world and with Sir Thomus More's literary world, come to mind at once: Chelsea (More House) and the Tower. Since prisons generally "confine more narrowly" than family estates, the cen- tral character in STM should be "likely to loom up" more definitely
connection with the Tower than with Chelsea.
The Tower, where not only More and his friend, John Fisher, suf- fered, but where Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were married and where Anne Boleyn was confined, executed and buried, has been, as A.L.
Rowse observes in The Tower of London in the History of England, "a nursing mother of literature" (249). With respect to subject matter, STM is a substantial result of such nurture. The Tower is referred to, directly and indirectly, more than twenty times. It provides the setting for four scenes: 12 (Fisher in the Tower), 14 (More at the Tower Gate), 16 (More in a Tower Chamber), and 17 (More on Tower Hill).
*
In this essay I hope to demonstrate in some of its particulars the importance of the
Tower of London to the play.
Direct reference to the Tower is not made until quite late
the play. scene 11 of 17 scenes. Indirect reference to the Tower, however, is made quite early. Between the first and eighth scene in the original text of the play, there are five references made to Newgate prison. In the additions to the original text, there are five more such references.
Direct reference to Newgate constitutes indirect reference to the Tower.
This is true, I feel, because apart from the word Newgate having become

42 Francis E. ZAPATKA a "general name for gaols" (Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable), the two structures are connected, poetically and allusively.
"This gate," writes John Stow, "hath of long time beene a Gaile, or prison for fellons and trespassers" (36). But, as B.W. Black points out in his unpublished critical edition of
Elizabeth made use of Newgate as a place of detention for those ac- cused of religious heresy as well as for felons and debtors" (379). Among
More's contemporaries committed to Newgate for religious reasons--
"refusing the Act of Supremacyu--were London Carthusians in whose religious life More had shared when he was a young man (E.E. Reynolds,
13-14).
In STM itself, the Newgate references play a tragi-comic antici- patory role. The early references are made in the serious context of the
"Ill May Day" disturbances (11. 34, 494, 579, 597; Add. 11, 1.87). The later ones are made in the humorous context of More's encounter with the long-haired ruffian Jack Faukner (1 1. 812; Add. IV, 11. 49, 50, 85,
90).
The tragic element involves John Lincoln, "the ring leader" of the I11 May Day revolt (Black, 373). After More quells the riot, the Lord
Mayor sends Lincoln and Sherwin, another rioter, "to Newgate, the rest unto the Counters" (1 1. 494-495). After a brief confinement, Lincoln is executed just before a pardon arrives, which More had obtained from
Lhe King. A few lines before Lincoln's execution in scene 7, we hear.from one of the Sheriff's officers:
Thers such a preasse and multitude at Newgate they cannot bring the cartes unto the stayres to
... take the prisoners in (11.
597-599).
In scene 14, the Tower Gate scene, a few lines before More arrives by water to be committed, we hear from one of the warders of the Tower:
If he [More] stay long, heele not get neere the wharffe, ther's such a croude of Boates uppon the Themes (1 1. 1610-161 1).
Another link between Newgate and Tower characters is percepti- ble in Lincoln's last words before his execution, words worthy of More and Fisher in comparable situations:
The next time that we meete
I trust in heaven we shall eche other greete (41. 635-636).
Imprisoned in the Tower after distinguishing between aiming at "higher things" and the "temporary pleasing of earthly kings," Fisher says:
THE TOWER AND ITS USE IN SIR THOMAS MORE
43
God blesse his Highness, even with all my hart,
We shall meete one day, though that now we part (1 1. 1386-87).
The words of both characters recall More's words to Sir Thomas Pope in the Tower, the morning More was to die. As Roper records it, More says :
Quiet yourself
...
Master Pope
...
I trust that we shall, once in heaven, see eche other full merily
...
(Roper, 101-102).
In short, Lincoln at Newgate foreshadows More and Fisher at the Tower.
The comic element in the Newgate/Tower conjunction may be seen in the case of shaggy Jack Faukner, servant to the Secretary of the Bish- op of Winchester. "Send the knave to Newgate," More orders (Add.
IVc, 1.49), after Faukner has been brought before him for street fight- ing. More makes the length of Faukner's term in Newgate dependent on whether or not he gets his three year old growth of hair cut, which, we are told, he has vowed not to do. If he has it cut, he is free in
month; if not, he is there for three years. The alacrity with which he reconsiders his "vow" and is shorn of his "shagg fleece" (Add. IV,
k7) us wonder if we're to believe that he ever made such a vow. "How quickly are three years ronn out in Newgate" (Add. IV. 97-98), More observes, when Faukner reappears with his master pleading for his release. More grants it at once, and so the foolish Faukner, lately and briefly of Ne.w- gate, emerges as a comic foil to More, soor1 to be committed to the Tower for wisely following his conscience and refusing to sign "the Articles", that is, to take an oath, which, of course, is akin to a vow.
Apropos of conscience, it should be recalled that in the original text, when sentencing Faukner, More says:
I will committ ye prisoner unto Newgate
Except meane time, your conscience give you leave, to dispense with the long vow that you have made (1 1. 812-814).
Later, at Chelsea, immediately after More is arrested, he says to the arrest- ing officer:
Gramercies, freend, and let us now on to a great prison, to dis- charge the strife, commenc'de twixte conscience and my frailer life (1 1. 1588-1590).
Others have noted connections between Faukner's hair and More's jokes about his own beard (Forker and Candido, 101-102). More says to the Hangman, for example, "take heed thou cutst not off my beard:

44 Francis E. ZAPATKA
Oh, I forgot, execution/past uppon that last night, and the bodie of it lies buried in the Tower" (1 1.1954-1955). What seems to be the strong- est link between Faukner and More is in what Faukner says when he des- cribes his state in life to More: "I serve next under God and my prince, master Morris" (Add. IV, 1. 53). Though More's last words are not in the play, it is difficult not to think of them. In conclusion, the Faukner scenes are a kind of burlesque foreshadowing of what follows and pro- duce a comic coherence in the Newgate/Tower relationship.
The first, and one of the most powerful
references to the
Tower is part of Lady Alice's strange dream of foreboding, in Scene 11, before More is sent to the Tower. She dreams that More and she are in a little boat on the Thames grappled to the Royal Barge ("that still moov- ing music house") (1. 1249). They eventually become separated from the
King, and their boat stops: iust opposite the Tower, and there it turnde, and turnde about, as when a whirle-poole sucks the circkled waters: me thought that we bothe cryed, till that we sunck, where arme in arme we dyed (1 1. 1305-1308).
Others have compared Alice's dream to that of Clarence in Sha- kespeare's
(I. iv. 1-41) part of which reads: "Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower/And was embark'd to cross to Bur- gundy" (1 1. 9-10) (Black, 507; Rousseau, 140). Appropriately, Margue- rite Yourcenar expresses the belief "that the image of dream structures precedes the 'image of real structures' " (quoted in Brombert,
2 1 1).
Lady Alice's dream can also be compared to another equally omi- nous reference t o the Tower in
Hastings, shortly before he is killed in the Tower, says:
Three times today my foot-cloth horse did stumble,
And startled, when he look'd upon the Tower,
As loath to bear me to the slaughter house (111. iv. 86-87).
More, it may be remembered, included this stumbling incident in his own life of
(CW 2, 50: 28-32).
The only other substantial direct reference to the Tower not made in the Tower scenes, is also made a t Chelsea, just before More is taken to the Tower. Characteristically, it is part of a joke. Surrey and Shrews- bury unexpectedly arrive to ask More to subscribe to "the Articles." After some brief discussion and conversation, More announces that he will
"satisfye the King's good pleasure" (1. 1575). When everyone thinks
45
THE TOWER AND ITS USE IN SIR THOMAS MORE that he will subscribe to "the Articles," he adds:
Oh pardon me,
.
I will subscribe to goe unto the Tower
... and therto add my bones to strengthen the foundation of Julius Caesar's pallace
...
Ile satisfye the King, even with my blood (1579-1584).
In this example of what could be called the play's Tower humor, the playwright draws on the tradition, Black notes, that "the Tower o f Lon- don had strong foundations because blood had been mixed with t h e mor- tar in building it
...
'the blood of beasts'
(518).
Another tradition alluded to, Black continues, is that Julius Cae- sar was supposed to have been the original builder of the Tower (513).
"Did Julius Caesar build that place?" the young Prince Edward asks i11
(111. i. 68). Certainly not, we might answer, but Rowse informs us that some parts of the complex rest on Roman foundation
(10); and the 1926
says that the present Salt Tower was "formerly called Julius Caesar's Tower" (31).
Unlike the Queen in
II, who speaks of "Julius Caesar's ill-erected tower" (V. i. 2), that is, "erected for evil," as it has been glossed, More speaks highly of the Tower. We have seen already that for him it is a "great prison" (1. 1589). In the Tower scenes proper, he continues his positive reference to what could be described, at least at times, as "a tyrannical construct" (Brombert,
3).
At the Tower Gate, thanking those who accompanied him "thus farre" (1. 1636), More uses a domestic conceit with positive connota- tions rather than a negative image to portray the Tower: he calls it "My strong house" (1. 1637).
Prison seen as a "strong house," can translate into what Victor
Brombert calls "The Happy Prison" in his essay "The Happy Prison: a Recurring Romantic metaphor". "The dialectical link
... between a visible loss and an invisible, secret victory," Brombert writes, is the "para- dox that underlies the theme of the happy prison" (71). More's histori- cal: "I thank our Lord, the field is won" comes to mind at once a s does
Paul Claudel's line: "Et le bonheur est une forte prison" (quoted in Brom- bert, "Happy Prison," 62).
Even closer to the "happy prison" idea, is More's apostrophe to the Tower which begins his last speech in the Tower Gate scene:

46 Francis E. ZAPATKA ffayre prison, welcome, yet me thinks, for thy fayre building, tis too foule a name (1 1. 1662-63).
A little later he reflects that he had often entered the Tower, "yet I thank
God nere with a clearer conscience / then at this houre" (1 1. 1667-68).
In the Tower, answering, in part, remarks about his "fayre patience in imprisonment" (1. 1736), More says: "I thanke my God, / I have peace of conscience" (1 1. 1740-41). A good conscience and the freedom from worldly cares which More refers to earlier, (1 1. 1669 f.) emerge as the reasons for his happiness in prison. Talking about King Lear's "elation
... at the thought of going to prison" in Act
Brombert observes that for Lear and Cordelia, prison meant freedom "from life's snares and servitudes," and endowment with a superior vision; in short, it is a locus of spiritual freedom and revelation ("Happy Prison," 62). Fisher enhan- ces this image in his Tower scene, where he personifies the Tower and tells us:
The Tower and I will privately conferre,
Of things, wherin at freedom I may erre (11. 1397-98).
Fisher's last lines are as eager as Lear's "come, lets' away to prison."
As he is being conducted, presumably, to his chamber in the Tower, he tells the Lieutenant:
On, a Gods name goe,
And with as glad a minde goe I with you
As ever trewant bad the schoole adiewe (1 1. 1408-1410).
Fisher's "On, a Gods name goe" recalls Buckingham's "Lead on, i' God's name" in Henry VIII, (11. i. 78), as he is about to be led to his death.
The line also recalls for us the end of the Tower Gate scene in
where
More, about to be committed to the Tower, tells the Lieutenant:
On then a Gods name to our cloase aboade:
God is as strong heere as he is abroade (11. 1673-74).
Marie-Claude Rousseau compares this last line to More's rhetorical ques- tion posed to Lady Alice when she visits him one day (137):
Is not this house
... as nighe heauen as my owne? (Roper, 83).
It should also be remembered that in Roper, a little before More's ques- tion, Lady Alice had described the Tower as "this close, filthy prison"
(italics added).
THE TOWER AND ITS USE IN SIR THOMAS MORE 47
More, and Fisher indirectly, bestow generous praise on the Tower.
In so doing, as was noted, they personify and apostrophize it. Figurati- vely, the Tower can be said to approach the status of a character. In the
Tower scenes as such, it, of course, has the status of setting. Of these four scenes, two are exterior: 14 (Tower Gate) and 17 (Tower Hill); and one is definitely interior: 16 (More's Tower chamber). The fourth, very short scene 12, is devoted to Fisher. In the stage directions of several edi- tions of the play, it is entitled "The Tower" or "A room in the Tower"
(Black, 308; Shirley, xvi; Brooke, 410). Nothing in its thirty line text
pells belief that it is either interior or exterior. Its last lines, quoted ear- lier (p. 46), indicate movement from one place to another. Such move- ment could be froin outside the Tower to within the Tower, or from one part of the Tower to another.
Given the historical events reflected in the play, this scene deser- ves its independent status. Given the fictional events dramatized in,the play, however, and the scene's brevity, its existence is clearly subordi- nate to the other Tower scenes. When the connection, described earlier
(pp. 42-43) between the I11 May Day leader, John Lincoln, and John Fis- her is remembered, the three steps in the Lincoln-Fisher-More sequence, culminating in three executions in the play, are clearly perceptible.
A final comment on the scene: a historical irony necessarily results from Fisher's imprisonment in the Tower of London, since the original architect of the Tower (specifically of the White Tower), Gundulph, him- self became Bishop of Rochester
A similar historical but more poignant, personal irony is found at the beginning of the Tower Gate scene. When More is committed, it is, as one of the warders says, "From Durham House, I heare" (1. 1608); that is to say, More is committed from the London residence of one of his very close friends, Cuthbert Tunstal, Bishop of Durham (Black, 522;
Shirley, 78). The setting for this scene, like those of the other Tower sce- nes, has almost no realistic, detailed prison description. It is separated from Fisher's scene by a scene at Chelsea and from More's Tower Cham- ber by another scene at Chelsea. The playwright thus slows his dramatic pace, whereas he accelerates it more relentlessly with the Tower Cham- ber and Tower Hill scenes, since the latter follows the former immediately.
The part of the Tower in which More's Chamber is found is not named in the play. "It is not known for certain where More was con- fined," Reynolds and Marc'hadour write. "The Beauchamp Tower and the Bell Tower are most likely," they continue, "and he may have been moved from one to the other" (6). If that were certain, the play would

48 Francis E. ZAPATKA have harbored another irony since, as princess, Elizabeth had been con- fined in the Bell Tower (Authorized Guide, 6).
The only Tower scene in which any chronological setting is esta- blished is the Tower Hill scene. It opens with one of the Sheriff's offi- cers telling us it is "almost eight a clock" (1. 1864). The "goodly scaf- fold" (1. 191 1) is not reached until we a r e almost fifteen lines into the scene when More asks rhetorically "Oh, is this the place?" (1. 1910) Scott
McMillin in his "Theatrical View" of the play suggests interestingly that the raised area, from which More would have made his speech quelling the May Day riot, "served as the scaffold in the final scene" a n d would be a "visual recollection" of the earlier stage property a n d of the speech
More delivered on it. His last words would thus be linked to those that began his "rise to power" (in the play) (22, 23).
T h e final historical irony o f the play is present in the final lines of the play. They a r e spoken by the slightly anachronistic character Sur- rey just after More is executed:
Lets sadly hence to perfect unknown fates, whilste he [More] tends prograce t o the state of states
(1 I. 1985-86)
In this last line, Surrey assures us o f the spiritually happy ending o f the play. In the penultimate line, he provides the irony, for his fate was, of course, t o return to the Tower to be, in turn, executed in 1547
H e was even poetically "nursed" by the Tower (as Rowse might put it) contributing his short poem "Reflections from the Tower" to the
pus of prison literature. I n it we read "thraldom at large hath made this prison free" (Padelford, 92). The line is reminiscent of a line from one of More's latin poems: "We are all shut u p in the prison of the earth," in terrae claudimur omnes/Carcere (Nichols 464-65; CW3,II, p. 166:2-3).
But we a r e comforted by Antony in More's Dialogue
Comfort when he tells Vincent that "god the chiefe gaylour
...
this brode prison the world / ys neyther cruel1 nor covetouse" ( C W 12, p. 272: 17-18).
Department
Literature
The American University
Washington, D. C. 20016
E.
*
Unless otherwise indicated, the W . W . Greg edition of the play, Oxford, 1911 is used throughout this paper.
THE TOWER AND ITS USE IN SIR THOMAS MORE
49
WORKS CITED
Authorized Guide to the Tower of London. London: Barclay, 1926.
Black, Ben W. "The Book of Sir Thomas Moore: A Critical Edition. " of Michigan, 1953.
Brewer, E.C. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Ed. Rev. I .H. Evans.
New York: Harper, 1970.
Brombert, Victor. The Romantic Prison: The French Tradition. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1970.
Brombert, Victor. "The Happy Prison: A Recurring Romantic Metaphor."
Romanticism: Vistas, Instances, Continuities. Ed. D . Thorburn and G. Hart- man. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1973: 62-79.
Brooke, C.F. Tucker, ed. Sir Thomas More in The Shakespeare Apocrypha.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1908.
Forker, Charles and J. Candido. "Wit, Wisdom and Theatricality in The Book of Sir Thomas More." Shakespeare Studies 13 (1980): 85-104.
McMillin, Scott. "The Book of Sir Thomas More: A Theatrical View." Modern
Philology 68 (1970): 10-24.
More, Thomas. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. 15 vols. New Haven:
'Yale UP, 1963-: The History of King Richard III. Ed. Richard S. Sylvester. 1%3,
C W 2; Latin Poems. Ed. Clarence Miller et 01. 1984, CW 3, 11; Utopia. Ed.
Edward Surtz and J.H. Hexter. 1965, C W 4 ; A Dialogue of Comfort Agaimt
Tribulation. Ed. Louis L. Martz and Frank Manley. 1976, CW 12.
Nichols, F.J., ed. and transl. An Anthology of Neo-Latin Poetry. New Haven:
Yale, 1979.
Padelford, F.M. The Poems of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, 1928. New York:
Haskell. 1%6.
Reynolds, E.E., and Gerrnain Marc'hadour. "Thomas More's London." Angers:
Moreanurn, 1972.
Roper, William. The Lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, knighte. Ed. Elsie Vaughan
Hitchcock. Published for the Early English Text Society. London: Oxford UP,
1935.
Rousseau, Marie-Claude. "Sir Thomas More: du texte a la scPne". Moreana XXI,
83-84, (1984): 127-142.
Rowse, A.L. The Tower of London in the History of England. New York: Put- nam, 1972.

50 Francis E. ZAPATKA
Shirley, John. Sir Thomm More: An Anonymous P l v of the 16th Century. Can- terbury: Goulden. 1938.
Stow, John. Stow's Survey of London. Ed. Charles L. Kingsford. 2 vols. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1908.
Welty. Eudora. The Eye of The Storm, 1956. New York: Random. 1978.
Reference to prisons (Newgate and the Tower) is made some thirty times in Sm the Tower serves as spatial setting for four of the play's 17 scenes. The
Tower itself is treated at times as a kind of character; it also enables the play- comments on his place of confinement. The treatment of prisons in the play. moreover, provides some quite appropriate historical ironies in connection with
More and Fisher. Finally. a number of parallels between S7Mand Shakespeare's
King Lear, Richard 111 and Henry VIII are perceptible within the context of the play's prison references.
On compte une trentaine de rCf&mces B la prison (Newgate; la Tour de
Londres) dans Sir Thornus More. La Tour elle-mSme sert de cadre h 4 des 17 d n e s de la pike. Elle y est parfois personnifik. Elle p e q e t aussi B I'auteur
(aux auteurs) de cerner de maniere parlante la personnalitt dc More par le biais d a commmtaires, paradoxalement positifs, que celui-ci fait sur son lieu de d&en- tion. De plus, la maniere dont les prisons sont trait& dans la pike fournit quel- ques exemples frappants de I'ironie de I'histoire concernant More et Fisher, Enfin, la thbmatique de la prison met en Cvidence un certain nombre de paralleles entre
Sir Thomas More et des pikes de Shakespeare (King Lear, Richard III, Henry
WIr).
Marie-Claude ROUSSEAU