[A Man for All Seasons] is one of the finest achievements of the modern theatre, and one of the great dramas of selfhood of all time. (pp. 27-8)
Bolt sees all too clearly the effects collectivism have had upon the individual. In his preface he describes how in our time we have lost all conception of ourselves as individual men, and as a result we have increasingly come to see ourselves in the third person. As this happens we are less and less able to deal with life's psychic, social, and spiritual collisions. Thomas More does not see himself in this way; he is "a man with an adamantine sense of his own self. He knew where he began and left off," and the action of the play is best described as a series of collisions between More and a group of powerful and able men who would have him deny his selfhood to serve the wishes of his king. (p. 28)
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