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Thanks to Anne Lancashire and Michael Winkelman for leads on what the 
"staige plaie" reference in More's Richard III was all about. The 
Warnicke article I found at JSTOR. I especially needed that correction 
to my misapprehension: More was not referring to some skit in which a 
sultan (character) was really a shoemaker (character)--which is good 
comedic stuff for later decades and centuries--but a civilian shoemaker 
acting in the role of the sultan in a morality play who would not want 
anyone in the audience to call him by his actual name.

I won't be doing much explaining of More's influences (not just the 
miracle plays but Latin dramatists too) as my work is about Hall's 
Chronicle. Thus I am more interested in the interplay of the two texts, 
with reference to some Latin version passages that Hall omitted (he 
seems not to have been aware of More's Latin version) and differences in 
wording. Responsibility for many variants could be placed on Hall's 
publisher, Richard Grafton, who was first to include More's history in 
his prose continuation of Hardyng's metrical chronicle (1543), and of 
course on typesetters. But a footnote explaining More's connection to 
miracle plays he may even have acted in will catch some interest.

Cheers,
Al Magary
Hall's Chronicle Project

On 4/4/2021 1:59 PM, Michael Winkelman wrote:
> It's been ages since I've read it, but Retha Warnicke's article, 
> "More's Richard III and the Mystery Plays," in Historical Journal 35 
> (1992): 761-78, may also be helpful.
> ~Michael A. Winkelman
>
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