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The prison gripe me.

Enter his Wife brought in a chair.

[FIRST] GENTLEMAN

See, here she comes of herself.

WIFE

Oh, my sweet husband, my dear distressed husband,

Now in the hands of unrelenting laws,

My greatest sorrow, my extremest bleeding,

Now my soul bleeds!

HUSBAND

How now? Kind to me? Did I not wound thee, left thee for dead?

WIFE

Tut, far greater wounds did my breast feel:

Unkindness strikes a deeper wound than steel.

You have been still unkind to me.

HUSBAND

Faith, and so I think I have.

I did my murthers roughly out of hand,

Desperate and sudden, but thou hast devis'd

A fine way now to kill me; thou hast given mine eyes

Seven wounds a piece. Now glides the devil from

Me, departs at every joint, heaves up my nails!

Oh, catch him! New torments that were [ne'er] invented!

Bind him one thousand more, you blessed angels,

In that pit bottomless! Let him not rise

To make men act unnatural tragedies,

To spread into a father, and in fury,

Make him his children's executioners,

Murder his wife, his servants, and who not!

For that man's dark where Heaven is quite forgot.

WIFE

Oh, my repentant husband!

HUSBAND

My dear soul, whom I too much have wrong'd,

For death I die, and for this have I long'd.

WIFE

Thou shouldst not--be assured--for these faults die,

If the law could forgive as soon as I.

Children laid out.

HUSBAND

What sight is yonder?

WIFE

Oh, our two bleeding boys laid forth upon the threshold!

HUSBAND

Here's weight enough to make a heartstring crack!

Oh, were it lawful that your pretty souls

Might look from Heaven into your father's eyes,

Then should you see the penitent glasses melt,

And both your murthers shoot upon my cheeks!

But you are playing in the angels' laps,

And will not look on me,

Who, void of grace, kill'd you in beggary.

Oh, that I might my wishes now attain,

I should then wish you living were again,

Though I did beg with you, which thing I fear'd!

Oh, 'twas the enemy my eyes so blear'd!

Oh, would you could pray Heaven me to forgive

That will unto my end repentant live!

WIFE

It makes me e'en forget all other sorrows

And leaven part with this. Come, will you go?

HUSBAND

I'll kiss the blood I spilt and then I go:

My soul is bloodied, well may my lips be so.

[He kisses the children.]

Farewell, dear wife, now thou and I must part;

I of thy wrongs repent me with my heart.

WIFE

Oh, stay, thou shalt not go!

HUSBAND

That's but in vain; you must see it so.

Farewell, ye bloody ashes of my boys;

My punishments are their eternal joys.

Let every father look into my deeds,

And then their heirs may prosper while mine bleeds.

WIFE

More wretched am I now in this distress

Than former sorrows made me.

Exeunt Husband [and Officers guarding him] with halberds.

MASTER

Oh kind wife, be comforted!

One joy is yet unmurdered:

You have a boy at nurse: your joy's in him.

WIFE

Dearer than all is my poor husband's life.

Heaven give my body strength, which yet is faint

With much expense of blood, and I will kneel,

Sue for his life, number up all my friends

To plead for pardon my dear husband's life.

MASTER

Was it in man to wound so kind a creature?

I'll ever praise a woman for thy sake.

I must return with grief, my answer's set.

I shall bring news weighs heavier than the debt:

Two brothers, one in bond lies overthrown,

This on a deadlier execution.

Finis.

SIR THOMAS MORE

This play depicts the life of Thomas More, Henry VIII’s ill-fated adviser. The text survives only in a single manuscript, now owned by the British Library. Its main claim to fame is that three pages of it may have been written in Shakespeare's hand, but the manuscript is also important for what it reveals about censorship of Elizabethan drama.

The Shakespearean appearance of the additions to the play was first noted in 1871-2, by Richard Simpson, a prominent Shakespeare scholar of that era, and by James Spedding, editor of the works of Sir Francis Bacon. In 1916, the paleographer Sir Edward