On "Momtanish Inhumanyty" in Sir Thomas More

In the manuscript play of Sir Thomas More, the three-page insert now widely believed to be in Shakespeare's hand contains a phrase of disputed meaning: the rebels in the London insurrection of 1517 are accused of "momtanish inhumanyty." The play was first published in 1844 as edited by Alexander Dyce, who emended the otherwise undocumented word to mountanish.¹ When C. F. Tucker Brooke included More in the Apocrypha in 1908, he retained the original reading, offered the gloss Mohammetanish and observed that Dyce's change was unjustifiable.² The first authoritative text (1911) was edited by W. W. Greg; he commented that "the interpretation 'mawmtanish, Mahometanish' is unsatisfactory" but was noncommittal regarding Dyce's emendation to mountanish.³ In 1923, a volume of papers on More included a modern text of several riot scenes, again edited by Greg. He kept "momtanish" and noted that "none of the proposed emendations … is at all satisfactory." Appended to his text was a diplomatic transcript of the three pages with another comment on the crux: "the writer's intention is quite obscure."⁴

In the 1958 reprint of his edition of Shakespeare's Works, G. B. Harrison published the three pages in an appendix, opting for "momtanish" and observing that "from the context it must have some such meaning as 'monstrous,' 'barbarous' or 'enormous."'⁵ A journal note on the crux in 1972 argued that editors should keep the original reading as a readily conceivable contraction of mahometanish and thus a word that is obscure yet anything but incomprehensible.⁶ G. Blakemore Evans's Riverside Shakespeare (1974) included the three-page episode from More as part of the canon, but this edition, too, was noncommittal as to the nonceword: "Meaning not known; possibly a carelessly written 'mountanish' (Dyce) with the meaning 'mountainous' (i.e., barbarous); or, less probably, a form of 'Mohammetanish,' implying un-Christian and hence merciless."⁷ The Oxford Complete Works (1986) simply printed "mountainish" with the gloss "barbarous"; but Oxford's 1987 textual commentary on this edition, including an old-spelling transcription of the not scene, offered "montanish" and noted simply that "'n' has three minims."⁸ The Norton Shakespeare (1997) simply read "mountainish" and introduced the gloss "coarse, gross."⁹

If, as Greg judiciously put it, "none of the proposed emendations … is at all satisfactory," the suggestion that Shakespeare fully intended to write the elsewhere unrecorded term momtanish merits reconsideration. In spite of its unpopularity, the manuscript reading reflects the grim reputation of the Mohammedan Turks as mirrored widely in Elizabethan writings. Europe had been threatened for centuries by attacks from external enemies: the Northeast was invaded by pagan Slavs; in the Southwest the Moors made great inroads into Spain; and in the Southeast the Islamic Ottoman power threatened the very survival of Christianity. The challenge is already manifested in the works of Chaucer.¹⁰ The Turks suffered a great defeat by the Scythian conqueror Tamerlane near Ankara in 1402, an event dramatized by Marlowe in the 1580s, but the setback proved temporary; Constantinople (now Istanbul) was captured in 1453 and became the capital of the Turkish Empire. There is a striking reference to the event in Edward Hall's chronicle of the Wars of the Roses, used by Shakespeare in writing the Henry VI plays. After describing England's defeat at the end of the Hundred Years War in 1453, Hall added, "Yet a greater detryment hapned in the same season to the whole flocke of Christen people. For Machumet, called the Great Turk, beseaged the citie of Constantynople in Grece, wyth an innumerable number of Turkes, and fiftye dayes togither gaue to it a continuall assaut, and on the.iiii.day of June toke it perforce, sleyng man, woman and children …. If I should write the detestable murder of men, the abhominable and cruel slaughter of children, the shameful rauishment of women and virgyns which were perpetrate and done by the vnmercifull pagans and cruel Turkes, I assure you that … your eyes would not abyde the readynge."¹¹

By Shakespeare's time, the lands east of the Baltic had...