“The Strangers’ Case”: Sir Thomas More, Social Media and the Refugee Crisis

Sir Thomas More, a play Shakespeare collaborated on, is back in the news, especially as it resonates with the crisis of human refuge and survival that mark our present times. Actor Ian McKellen, who has a long association with the play, has recited More’s “the strangers’ case” at several events. Its appropriation has also received some recent critical attention, in Sean Lawrence’s “Fear and the Other in Sir Thomas More“. More’s empathetic words are now being mobilised in the context of Trump’s notorious immigration policies. #mountainishinhumanity indeed. Here, I track the speech’s online afterlives and its association with the contemporary refugee crisis. I previously used Storify to curate the posts but Storify closed in May 2018.