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  "path": "/26/02/the-strangers-case",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-05T14:55:53.000Z",
  "site": "https://kottke.org",
  "tags": [
    "this speech",
    "Evil May Day",
    "available at Project Gutenberg",
    "some translation help",
    "watch it",
    "Ian McKellen",
    "immigration",
    "politics",
    "Sir Thomas More",
    "TV",
    "video",
    "William Shakespeare",
    "Join the discussion on kottke.org"
  ],
  "textContent": "I don’t normally say this, but if you watch one thing on kottke.org today, this week, this month, make it this speech written by Shakespeare and performed by Sir Ian McKellen on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The segment starts at ~20:00; McKellen sets it up:\n\n> It’s all happening 400 years ago. In London, there’s a riot happening. There’s a mob out in the streets and they’re complaining about the the presence of strangers in London, by which they mean the recent immigrants who’ve arrived there. And they’re shouting the odds and complaining and saying that the immigrants should be sent back home wherever they came from. And the authorities send out this young lawyer, Thomas Moore, to put down the riot, which he does in two ways. One by saying that you can’t riot like this. It’s against the law. So, shut up, be quiet. And also, being by Shakespeare, with an appeal to their humanity.\n\nThe riot took place on May 1, 1517 and is referred to as Evil May Day:\n\n> According to the chronicler Edward Hall (c. 1498–1547), a fortnight before the riot an inflammatory xenophobic speech was made on Easter Tuesday by a preacher known as “Dr Bell” at St. Paul’s Cross at the instigation of John Lincoln, a broker. Bell accused immigrants of stealing jobs from English workers and of “eat[ing] the bread from poor fatherless children”.\n\nThe same as it ever was. The text of the play, Sir Thomas More, is available at Project Gutenberg; here are the bits that McKellan performed, after the crowd calls for the removal of the strangers (some translation help, if you need it):\n\nGrant them removed, and grant that this your noise\nHath chid down all the majesty of England;\nImagine that you see the wretched strangers,\nTheir babies at their backs and their poor luggage,\nPlodding to th’ ports and costs for transportation,\nAnd that you sit as kings in your desires,\nAuthority quite silent by your brawl,\nAnd you in ruff of your opinions clothed;\nWhat had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught\nHow insolence and strong hand should prevail,\nHow order should be quelled; and by this pattern\nNot one of you should live an aged man,\nFor other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,\nWith self same hand, self reasons, and self right,\nWould shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes\nWould feed on one another.\n\nYou’ll put down strangers,\nKill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,\nAnd lead the majesty of law in line,\nTo slip him like a hound. Say now the king\n(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)\nShould so much come to short of your great trespass\nAs but to banish you, whether would you go?\nWhat country, by the nature of your error,\nShould give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,\nTo any German province, to Spain or Portugal,\nNay, any where that not adheres to England,—\nWhy, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased\nTo find a nation of such barbarous temper,\nThat, breaking out in hideous violence,\nWould not afford you an abode on earth,\nWhet their detested knives against your throats,\nSpurn you like dogs, and like as if that God\nOwed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants\nWere not all appropriate to your comforts,\nBut chartered unto them, what would you think\nTo be thus used? this is the strangers case;\nAnd this your mountainish inhumanity.\n\nAnd of course, McKellen performs this wonderfully — he originated the role and has been performing it since the 1960s. Again…I urge you to watch it.\n\n**Tags:** Ian McKellen · immigration · politics · Sir Thomas More · TV · video · William Shakespeare\n\n💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →",
  "title": "The Strangers’ Case",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-05T14:55:53.000Z"
}