Filmed in the spring as a response to the increased hate and racism experienced by the Asian American Pacific Islander community throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, this video was originally created to honor Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. 

Regretfully, The Public delayed the original release of the video and failed to appropriately celebrate AAPI Heritage month. We're sharing it now after much reflection on Shakespeare's words, which have even greater resonance as people protest and speak out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and to denounce this country's "mountainish inhumanity."

For our ninth week we challenge you to interpret and share:

We’ve invited many actors to share their interpretations of this famous passage.

SIR THOMAS MORE
Act Two, Scene Four

WATCH: Check out the videos from our Public Theater family for inspiration on this page. 
CREATE: Get inspired. Act, sing, rewrite, translate, paint, dance – whatever moves you.
CAPTURE: Record a video or snap a photo of your work. 
SHARE: Post your interpretation and share it with us. Tag @PublicTheaterNY on Twitter and Instagram or @publictheater on Facebook, and be sure to use the hashtag #BraveNewShakespeare.

SIR THOMAS MORE
By William Shakespeare
Act Two, Scene Four

THOMAS MORE
Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England....

Read the full passage here. 

SIR THOMAS MORE
Por William Shakespeare
Acto Dos, Escena Cuatro
Traduccion por Gabriela Guraieb

THOMAS MORE
Concédanles que se retiren, y concedan que este su ruido
Ha reprendido a toda la majestuosidad de Inglaterra...

Lee el pasaje completo aquí.

From James Shapiro, Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at The Public Theater.

Sir Thomas More, a collaborative Elizabethan play from which this remarkable speech is drawn, survives in a single manuscript, now housed in the British Library. A great deal of mystery surrounds it, including when it was written and revised, and by whom. There’s a likelihood that it was first composed and perhaps staged in 1592-93, at a time of considerable hostility in London against immigrants or “strangers.” Scholars since 1871 have identified Shakespeare’s style and handwriting (from what little we know of it), in the three pages of revision that dramatize More’s efforts to stop the infamous and xenophobic May Day riots in London in 1517. It was clearly volatile material, and Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels (who was responsible for ensuring that stage plays steer clear of dangerous matter) wrote on a note on the manuscript warning the players to “Leave out the insurrection wholly….and not otherwise, at your own perils.” Shakespeare’s stirring version of More’s passionate defense of immigrants—in which he urges those in the riotous crowd that would attack these “strangers” to imagine themselves as refugees—feels no less topical and urgent today.