These words do not come from Amnesty International, nor from Unhcr. Scholars believe they were written by William Shakespeare 400 years ago. They belong to a historical play, “The Book of Thomas Moore”. The fragment which has been recently digitalized by the British
Library is now considered one of the few manuscripts we have in Shakespeare’s own hand. The play was written by different authors and is based on the life of Henry VIII’s
chancellor, Sir Thomas More . It dates presumably back to around 1600 but it was censored and never staged for fear
of further disorders in London due to the theme it dealt with.
It is not only a historical literary important discovery, but
also a socially important message which comes right in a time when those words
are relevant and painful. The tragedy of the migrants and refugees is an open
wound in nowadays Europe, characterized by the fear of the foreigners and the
misery of the newcomers.
 |
| Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535) |
The
events described in the scene were called “the Evil May Day of 1517”. London was shaken by riots against the
economic migrants arrived in England especially from Italy. But even in Shakespeare’s days England was inclined
to xenophobic feelings toward the thousands of protestant Huguenots who left Catholic France and its persecutions, looking for a refuge and help in the protestant
kingdom of Elizabeth I.
So the Bard highlighted that the unnecessary
cruelty toward the refugees was due to the crisis their country was going
through and the reference to the present situation was evident. That is why the
play was never staged.
Shakespeare’s Thomas More answers the
enraged Londoners with words inviting to
reason and empathy and the images he evokes in his lines bring to our eyes the
tragic images of our own present:
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
(mmaginate allora di vedere gli
stranieri derelitti,
coi bambini in spalla, e i poveri
bagagli
arrancare verso i porti e le coste
in cerca di trasporto,
e che voi vi asseggiate come re dei
vostri desideri
– l’autorità messa a tacere dal
vostro vociare alterato –
e ve ne possiate stare tutti tronfi
nella gorgiera della vostra presunzione.
Che avrete ottenuto? Ve lo dico io:
avrete insegnato a tutti
che a
prevalere devono essere l’insolenza e la mano pesante)
Shakespeare meant to shake his contemporaries
through an event from the past: the French Heugonots in Shakespeare’s time and the
Italian merchants in More's London unleashed
the fury and the protests of the English. Shakespeare tried to instill the ethics of reciprocity in the audience and to remind them that everyone is a
stranger and a foreigner somewhere:
… 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
claimants
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.
(Vorreste abbattere gli stranieri,
ucciderli, tagliar loro la gola,
prendere le loro case
e tenere al guinzaglio la maestà
della legge
per incitarla come fosse un mastino.
Ahimè, ahimè!
Diciamo adesso che il Re,
misericordioso verso gli aggressori
pentiti,
dovesse limitarsi, riguardo alla
vostra gravissima trasgressione,
a bandirvi, dov’è che andreste? Che
sia in Francia o Fiandria,
in qualsiasi provincia germanica, in
Spagna o Portogallo,
anzi, ovunque non rassomigli
all’Inghilterra,
orbene, vi trovereste per forza ad
essere degli stranieri.
Vi piacerebbe allora trovare una
nazione d’indole così barbara
che, in un’esplosione di violenza e
di odio,
non vi conceda un posto sulla terra,
affili i suoi detestabili coltelli
contro le vostre gole,
vi scacci come cani, quasi non foste
figli e opera di Dio,
o che gli elementi non siano tutti
appropriati al vostro benessere,
ma appartenessero solo a loro? Che
ne pensereste
di essere trattati così? Questo è
quel che capita agli stranieri,
e questa è
la vostra disumanità da senzadio)
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