Notes from a Composer

Ian McKellen appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, and the whole interview is delightful and engrossing – the full video is posted below – musing on Gandalf and Magneto, Christopher Lee and Elvish tattoos, and seeing Peter Pan as a three year old; but the definite highlight comes at the end, starting at the 20 minute mark, when McKellen talks about and then performs a speech on immigrants which William Shakespeare contributed to the play “Thomas More” 400 years ago.

“Thomas More” was not produced in Shakespeare’s time. McKellen would be the first to play the title role on stage sixty years ago. In 2015 McKellen performed this same speech on a podcast, the audio of which I shared along with a copy of the text in Shakespeare’s handwriting in this blog post. For many years this would be the most widely viewed post on “Notes from a Composer”, and today still ranks in the top three.

The speech had great real world relevance ten years ago, and, sadly, resonates even more powerfully today.

As lovely as it is to hear Sir Ian recite the words on that post, in this video from the Late Show you can also watch him perform it, absolutely beautifully. Again, the Shakespeare part starts at the 20 minute mark, but really, the whole extended interview is well worth watching:

As before, I will share the text of the monologue:

MORE: 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 tooth ports and costs 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 aged 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. …

O, desperate as you are,

Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands,

That you like rebels lift against the peace,

Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees,

Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!

Tell me but this: what rebel captain,

As mutinies are incident, by his name

Can still the rout? who will obey a traitor?

Or how can well that proclamation sound,

When there is no addition but a rebel

To qualify a rebel? You’ll put down strangers,

Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,

And lead the majesty of law in line,

To slip him like a hound. Say now the king

(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)

Should so much come to short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whether would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

Nay, any where 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 mountanish inhumanity.