A Man for All Seasons (1966)

Colin Blakely: Matthew

Photos 

Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Sir Thomas More : [talking to the witnesses for his execution]  I am commanded by the King to be brief, and since I am the King's obedient subject, brief I will be. I die his Majesty's good servant but God's first.

  [to the executioner] 

  Sir Thomas More : I forgive you right readily.

  [he gives him a coin] 

  Sir Thomas More : Be not afraid of your office; you send me to God.

  Archbishop Cranmer : You're very sure of that, Sir Thomas?

  Sir Thomas More : He will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to him.

  [he kneels and puts his head on the chopping block] 

  Narrator : Thomas More's head was stuck on Traitors' Gate for a month, then his daughter, Margaret, removed it and kept it till her death. Cromwell was beheaded for high treason five years after More. The archbishop was burned at the stake. The Duke of Norfolk should have been executed for high treason, but the king died of syphilis the night before. Richard Rich became chancellor of England and died in his bed.

• [first lines] 

  [first spoken lines are over 6 minutes into the film] 

  1st Scholar : Archbishop Fisher says that in this country every second bastard born is fathered by a priest.

  Matthew : [clears throat to get More's attention] 

  1st Scholar : But in Utopia that couldn't be.

  Courtier : For why?

  1st Scholar : For there the priests are very holy.

  Courtier : And therefore very few.

  Sir Thomas More : Is it anything interesting, Matthew?

  Matthew : Bless you, sir, I don't know.

  Sir Thomas More : Bless you too, Matthew.

• Matthew : I wish we could have good luck all the time. I wish rainwater was beer! I wish we had wings! But we don't.