Hamilton examines Bolt's play as a tribute to the ideal of selfhood. As Bolt himself described it, Hamilton sees More's faith to his principles as a stand for individuality and preservation of the self.
In an elegant Preface to the script of A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt explains the historical background to Sir Thomas More's story of martyrdom at the hands of King Henry VHI. Bolt also explains his reasons for choosing a sixteenth-century theologian and statesman as a "hero of selfhood" in spite of having little interest himself in questions of Christian piety. For Bolt, "virtue" and "selfhood" have lost meaning in the modern era, where the self is "an equivocal commodity." What fascinated Bolt about More was that he, unlike many of his contemporaries, considered the king's oath a serious contract, one.....
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