The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
nprSooetds43lb33l3ic34l2aa hectFci503a2taa8r1m3i991rt93ug57y ·
Leave it to Shakespeare and Ian McKellen to so eloquently speak of man’s mountainish inhumanity.
#Colbert#IanMcKellen#Shakespeare#ThomasMore
Angry London Mob: “Deport the strangers! Ban the strangers!!”
Sir Thomas Moore pleads the strangers' case:
"Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to th' ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an agèd man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self-same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
What do you think,
You that do sit at helm, and call your beats,
When you have thrown down with your own strong hands
The pillars of your safety, that no odds
Times bar but reason? Submit you to great states
And get State of your own blood, in whose repose
Consists your safety: 'tis the king's crown, whose duty
Is to protect all subjects; but if you,
O desperate men, can not conclude your wrongs,
With any civil bounds, what state of peace
Can be so secure, but you, whose raging manners
Are guilded like the cap of liberty,
Will pluck forth justice from her seated throne,
To do your wills? O, desperate as you are,
Wash your foul hands in gore, and bring your swords
To lead yourselves in execution!
What would you have? Your will? Alas, your aims
Are all as infinite as your desires,
And your desires as limitlesse as your power.
Alas, poor things, what is it you demand,
Carrying your cities' threat'ning on your brows,
And pawing on the bleeding church of peace?
Say now the king,
As he is clement if th' offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers' case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity."
