Wolf Hall and History, the end

[selenak]

Now I've watched the last episode, which I thought condensed the second part of the novel it's based on, Bring Up The Bodies, well and contained good acting. Historically, err, welllll, more about that in a moment. What I was most curious about in the tv version was how they would handle something the novel did, and the theatre plays based on it didn't, not least because I couldn't see anyway to do it in a visual medium without letting Mantel's Cromwell do something utterly OOC for him and speak these thoughts out loud. The theatre version of Mantel's two Cromwell novels does what Bring Up The Bodies the novel doesn't, it ends on a note of triumph (Theatre!Cromwell gets to square off against an intimidated Stephen Gardiner). What the novel does is different. After having build a case against Anne and her supposed lovers based on nothing but gossip and innuendo, and inventing thought crime while he was at it (one exchange between Norris and Cromwell the tv version leaves out), Cromwell suddenly starts to wonder about his own late, much mourned and missed wife. How does he know she was faithful? That his daughters were his daughters? And the thought can no longer be unthought. The memories he cherishes, which gave him strength, are now tainted. It's the start of karmic retribution, but since it's all happening in Cromwell's head, and he really would not talk of this to anyone, you can't invent a dialogue to get it across. The tv series doesn't do voice overs. So, would it go like the play for triumph instead?

As it turns out, it didn't. Nor did it find a way to get Cromwell's mind applying what he did to his own memories across. But it does come up with something else, which turns out to be a absolutely brilliant ending and sublime foreshadowing, and since it's unique to the tv version, I will cut for t. The episode ends in a silent scene which still speaks volumes. Cromwell, after having attended Anne's execution, walks towards Henry, who is waiting with outstretched arms, smiling broadly, and hugging him like you wouldn't believe, while Cromwell's face, shot over Henry's shoulder, stays frozen. He and the audience have seen this before. With Wolsey. With Anne. If Henry really really loves you, guess what's waiting, sooner or later? Incidentally, one reason why this works so well is that Damian Lewis as Henry VIII is allowed to not only gain physical weight in the course of the series but get his bonhommie increasingly stripped away to reveal the monstrosity within.

Now for the comparisons of tv show versus history. As I expected, and as the novel had done, they cut Anne's speech at her trial (which you can read here), but unlike the novel, they reinstalled Anne's scaffold speech. (Hilary Mantel deprived Anne of both speeches, just as her More doesn't get to say any of the things he did at his execution, either. Though Anne's execution is still a moment of pathos in her novel - Cromwell thinking/murmuring "put down your arm" is in both.) They even found a way to include one of the key sentences of the novel - "He needed guilty men, and so he chose men who were guilty, if not necessarily as charged" by letting Cromwell say it to Henry Norris in the first person. Both novel and tv show, however, make it look at least likely some adultery happened, which is historically highly questionable (because the court case was really lousy, see last entry on this; no one but Mark Smeaton - the only commoner, and hence the only one who could be threatened with torture - ever confessed, and none of the accused was ever confronted with witnesses testifying against them). Of course, neither the book's nor the novel's Cromwell really care whether or not it happened; his choice of these particular five men to die with Anne is due to them participating in the masque mocking his patron and father figure, Cardinal Wolsey, after Wolsey's death.

This is one of Hilay Mantel's key inventions in the entire Cromwell saga. The "Cardinal Wolsey goes to hell" masque did happen; it was commissioned and paid for by Thomas Boleyn (stay classy, Thomas!), at this point Earl of Wiltshire, and his brother-in-law the Duke of Norfolk and staged at Thomas Boleyn's house at a dinner for the new French Ambassador. How do we know this? Because Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial Ambassador, mentioned it in one of his dispatches. Quoth he:


“Some time ago the Earl of Wiltshire invited to supper Monsieur de la Guiche, for whose amusement he caused a farce to be acted of the Cardinal (Wolsey) going down to Hell; for which La Guiche much blamed the Earl, and still more the Duke for his ordering the said farce to be printed. They have been ever since [Jocquin’s departure] entertaining the said gentleman most splendidly, and making the most of him on every occasion, and yet I am told that however well treated by them he still says very openly what he thinks of them, and laughs at their eccentricities in matters of government and administration.”

In other words, Daddy Boleyn and Ghastly Uncle Norfolk wanted to impress upon the French Ambassador that now that the Cardinal was dead, they were the go-to men at the English court, and he wasn't impressed at all. Note who isn't mentioned as being present on that occasion? Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn. (And you can bet that Chapuys would have mentioned it if they had been; he would have reported it as eagerly as he reported Henry's river parties during Anne's trial and execution, or Anne wearing yellow when Katherine of Aragon died.) Guess who also wasn't there? Norris, Weston, Bereton and Smeaton. George Boleyn may have been, but it's very unlikely he'd have been one of the participants; that's what his father hired professionals for.

Now it's pretty obvious why Mantel invented this and why the tv show kept it. Least of all because it's visual (which it is), but it gives Cromwell an understandable 21st century type of motive against these five particular men, in addition to political expediency. (In fairness, Mantel and the tv show also bring up a genuine historical motive for Cromwell re: Bereton, the later's hanging of one of Cromwell's men. But that's not mentioned on the tv show before or after, so the "avenging the Cardinal" motive still prevails.) Revenge for Wolsey is this, but when Mantel plotted the novels, it must have occured to her it's tricky to justify especially for Henry Norris, because historical Henry Norris, far from having been mean to the Cardinal during the later's fall, is actually on the record for his kindness towards Wolsey. For this, the witness is none other than George Cavendish (who shows up as a character in Mantel's novels and in the tv show - he's the guy wo spots Cromwell crying in the first episode and whom Cromwell tells at the end that God won't have to avenge the Cardinal, he will), whose Life of Wolsey Mantel names as one of her key sources at the end of Wolf Hall. It’s Norris whom Cavendish shows us bringing Wolsey the King’s ring as a sign of continued favour (and to whom Wolsey gave his piece of the True Cross by way of thanks) and earlier, it was “Gentle Norris” who saw to it that the displaced and out of favour Wolsey had a place to stay. Cavendish reports that when the papal legate, Campeggio (aka the one who DIDN'T give Henry his annulment), was on his way to King Henry to take his leave, travelling together with Wolsey, per royal order Wolsey was humiliated by not being given rooms while Campeggio did. At which point:

"And by way as he was going, it was told him that he had no lodging appointed for him in the court. And therewith astonished, Sir Harry Norris, groom of the stool with the King, came unto him (but whether it was by the King’s commandment I know not) and most humbly offered him his chamber for the time, until another might somewhere be provided for him. “For, sir, I assure you,” quoth he, “here is very little room in this house, scantly sufficient for the King; therefore I beseech your grace to accept mine for the season.” Whom my lord thanked for his gentle offer, and went straight to his chamber."

Good on Henry Norris. (Who seems to have been a stand-up guy otherwise, too. The tv show hints at something which it doesn't show,and which actually happened, that Henry VIII. after having been informed by Cromwell's men of Mark Smeaton's "confession" had Henry Norris, who was a firm favourite with him, accompany him and asked him point blank for confirmation of these stories. Possibly a deal was offered; Cavendish thinks so, but Cavendish had left the court at this point and thus, as opposed to the Wolsey tales, is no longer an eye account witness. At any rate, Norris refused to confess and confirm and went to his death proclaiming Anne's innocence.) But you can see the problem for Hilary Mantel in having to present THIS man as being mean enough to the Cardinal to justify Cromwell putting him on his hit list. And thus "Gentle Norris" becomes Dragging-the-Cardinal-to-Hell Norris.


Now book and tv show, like 90% of Tudor novels, present Anne's sister-in-law Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, as the source of the incest accusation against her husband and Anne, and as a primary source of the "Anne has lovers!" stories, full stop, and presents her as having a catastrophcally bad relationship with her sister-in-law, who bullies her, and with her husband. Hilary Mantel in the tv show are in a firm tradition here; because it was the universal depiction, I had never questioned it myself until Julia Fox in 2006 presented her Jane Boleyn biography which among many other things unearthed the interesting facts that no contempory source names Jane as the source of the incest and other adulteries charge, or depicts her relationship with Anne as bad, or with George. Says Fox: "And, significantly, two contemporaries, John Husee and Justice Spelman (who was on the bench at Anne’s trial) named two different women entirely. John Husee felt information had come from the Countess of Worcester; Spelman said it came from Lady Wingfield. One man, or both, clearly had it muddled, but neither mentioned Jane." The very popular story that at her own execution eight years later, Jane declared she'd falsely testified against her sister-in-law and husband out of jealousy, has no contemporary source, either. She definitely didn't profit form her actions; since George Boleyn was executed as a traitor, his lands and other sources of income reverted to the crown. (Jane Boleyn had to write a begging letter to Cromwell to get him to help her compell her father-in-law for some money; that letter still exists, and makes no mention of Cromwell owing her anything, which you'd think it would if she'd been his key informant.) (BTW this wasn't the first time Cromwell was begged to help getting Thomas Boleyn cough up some cash for an income-less female relation. Mary Boleyn, cut off by her father for marrying commoner William Stafford some years earlier, did the same thing, and that letter is about the only document allowing for a glimpse at Mary Boleyn's personality that we have.) Fox makes her case for Jane in condensed form in this post, if you're interested.

(Since 2006, a few non-villainous Jane Boleyns have showed up in fiction; in Howard Brenton's play Anne Boleyn, she is presented as Anne's friend instead of her enemy and is bullied by Cromwell into a panicked testimony. Even Julia Fox doesn't claim she never told Cromwell anything at all, because there is one thing we know she did say, which is brought up at George's trial, according to Chapuys: "I must not omit that among other things charged against him as a crime was, that his sister had told his wife that the king was impotent. This he was not openly charged with, but it was shown him in writing, with a warning not to repeat it. But he immediately declared the matter, in great contempt of Cromwell and some others, saying he would not in this point arouse any suspicion which might prejudice the king's issue." (Note the tv show and Mantel's book make two changes here: instead of Anne making that indiscreet remark about Henry not getting it up to her sister-in-law (which btw implies the two women must have gotten along), who tells her husband (George), George is asked whether Anne told him this directly. The other change is that the tv show, like the novel, lets him panic after having read it out loud, whereas Chapuys' first hand account lets him - after reading it out loud (I guess George at this point must have known he'd die anyway and must have thought, fuck you, Henry) - remark "in great contempt of Cromwell" (not in a panic) that he wouldn't have spread such gossip since it obviously casts doubt on the paternity of the king's (and his sister's) children.)

Anyway, in the end we don't know much about Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, other than her involvement in Catherine Howard's fate a few years later, which as opposed to her role (or lack of a role) in Anne Boleyn's fate is better documented. That one makes her look none too bright at the very best (covering for a girl married to Henry VIII. when she's meeting a young man when you're an experienced courtier and have better reason than most to recall what happened the last time a Queen was accused of adultery is nothing short of suicidal, surely), but it doesn't say anything, one way or the other, about what she did and didn't do during her sister-in-law's fall. Her role in the tv version is convenient - it means Ladies Worcester and Wingfield don't have to be introduced and given motive for informing on Anne (Hilary Mantel does include Lady Worcester at least, in the novel) -, but it does a bit more than just follow the Evil Lady Rochford tradition; it also, by letting her approach Cromwell as opposed to the other way around, absolves him of coming up wiith the adultery & incest tales to begin with; they're given to him on a silver tablet. Before that, Jane also serves for yet another occasion to present Anne Boleyn as a Mean Girl (when Anne slaps her); going by the tv show and Mantel's novels, you could be forgiven if you assumed Anne Boleyn, when not "selling herself by inches" to Henry VIII., did nothing but bully her ladies-in-waiting. The justification for this on Mantel's part is that some of them informed on her for Cromwell, and therefore she must have done something to deserve their hostility. Given that most of Anne Boleyn's ladies in waiting used to be the much beloved Catherine of Aragon's ladies in waiting, and given that - as was shown by Jane's fate later with Catherine Howard - a lady-in-waiting accused of having covered up the queen's adultery risked execution herself,I don't think it needed any invented yelling and slapping on her part to explain why some of the women told Cromwell what he wanted to know. In any case, since he didn't produce any of them as witnesses at the actual trial, he either must have thought them not convincing enough, or must have struck a deal as to not embarrass them by letting them testify in public. Or maybe he remembered how the Richard Rich testimony had gone down at Thomas More's trial. As opposed to the tv show, which only shows Rich testifying and More unconvincingly denying, at the real trial after More's scathing defense speech about Rich's reliability as a witness the two other men who'd been in the room when the alleged conversation had taken place, packing up More's books, were called in, and, according to chronicler Edward Hall: therefore (Rich) caused Sir Richard Southwell, and Mr. Palmer, who were in the same Room with Sir Thomas and Mr. Rich when they conferred together, to be sworn as to the Words that passed between them. Whereupon Mr. Pal­mer deposed, what he was so busy in thrusting Sir Thomas’s Books into a Sack, that he took no notice of their Talk, And Sir R, Southwell likewise swore, that because his Business was only to take care of conveying his Books away, he gave no ear to their Discourse.

(In other words, they folded and gave the 16th century equivalent of "I did not hear nothing, guv!" Very embarrassing for Rich and Cromwell, that one had been. Imagine if a witness against Anne had similarly folded. Even with the outcome in no question, it would have displeased Henry.)


The tv show lets Anne hope until the last moment there will be a reprieve, that her husband will be merciful. The novel has Cromwell wonder whether she hopes for this but doesn't make it a certainty. The actual records, due to the Governor of the Tower, Kingston, writing down everything Anne said and reporting it to Cromwell, present her resigned to her fate at this point. (She still had hope early on but certainly not anymore after the five men were executed.) Since this was tested by the French executioner being delayed, which must have meant another day and night of nerve wrecking (she was ready to go when Kingston had to tell her, twice, that there was a delay), her self composure really must have been remarkable. In the tv show, she's barely holding it together. Which I think is meant as sympathy inducing - Anne for most of the tale is presented relentlessly as unsympathetic, so making her very vulnerable at the end is a counterpoint - but still doesn't fit with the woman "brave as a lion" (historical Cromwell on her behavior) in the face of her own death, even in extremis. So I conclude with the report Kingston made to Cromwell on that extra day Anne got due to the executioner's delay:

This morning she sent for me, that I might be with her at such time as she received the good Lord, to the intent I should hear her speak as touching her innocence always to be clear. And in the writing of this she sent for me, and at my coming she said, "Mr. Kingston, I hear I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time and past my pain ". I told her it should be no pain, it was so little. And then she said, "I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck", and then put her hands about it, laughing heartily. I have seen many men and also women executed, and that they have been in great sorrow, and to my knowledge this lady has much joy in death. Sir, her almoner is continually with her, and had been since two o'clock after midnight.

Comments

[kalypso]

Cromwell, after having attended Anne's execution, walks towards Henry, who is waiting with outstretched arms, smiling broadly, and hugging him like you wouldn't believe, while Cromwell's face, shot over Henry's shoulder, stays frozen. He and the audience have seen this before. With Wolsey. With Anne.

I thought that the parallel lives of Anne and Cromwell (flagged up a few weeks ago when someone said "In a world where Anne Boleyn may be Queen, what may Cromwell become?") began to collapse into each other in this episode. It started with the scene where she accuses him of betraying her and says he's forgotten "Those who've been made can be unmade"; he assents, but he's obviously thinking "Anne, you chump, don't you realise that Henry made both of us?"

And then, in the execution scene: rather than intercutting with a past encounter with the victim, as in the More execution, we kept cutting to Cromwell's interview with the swordsman, who is unexpectedly touching in his attempts "to save her alarm" and his assurances that it will be over before Anne knows it "if she is steady". When he anxiously repeats "if she is steady..." Cromwell replies "Well, I can answer for her" as if he's her representative rather than the architect of her doom. But of course all this concern about reducing Anne's ordeal is pointing us to the future, and the horrible irony of how Cromwell is to die. (Does this come from Mantel, or is it Kosminsky? I was left wondering whether Cromwell was thinking "I hope someone does this for me.")

And finally, the scene you describe, where Cromwell has left the windy grey Tower for Henry's sunlit palace, but his face remains frozen even as Henry's beaming, because he's just seen how those who've been made can be unmade.

On the whole, I thought the execution scene went well, and I was very glad she got Anne's own words - you can't really go wrong with that speech, whether you think it's straight or sarcastic. The account of the execution which I checked (in Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII) did mention Anne looking round, as if hoping for a messenger, so I presume there's a contemporary source on that. The reason why I was checking was that the moment when Anne suddenly turned her head to the right to look at the executioner reminded me so strongly of Anne of the Thousand Days that I wondered whether they'd lifted it, or whether it was canonical. I couldn't see any mention of it, so suspect someone remembered the film; from memory (it's years since I saw AotTD) it was slightly different, as Bujold wasn't blindfolded and turned her head at the very last moment, causing the executioner to delay, but this version did have the blindfold, which was correct, and of course she had to be "steady" to justify Cromwell's confidence.

Anyway, I woke in the night sobbing, so it must have done the job.

[selenak]

But of course all this concern about reducing Anne's ordeal is pointing us to the future, and the horrible irony of how Cromwell is to die. (Does this come from Mantel, or is it Kosminsky?

I definitely thought the execution scene in the novel was foreshadowing (well, obviously on a Doylist level, but I meant in the sense that Cromwell gets a this-could-be-me-soon shiver) and that he identifies with Anne to a degree. But while Mantel earlier, in the first book, does non-linear telling (the way you see in the first episode), in the book the executioner and Cromwell happens before the execution scene. (So the intercutting here is strictly Kosminsky.) Here's the later (sometimes "he" is Cromwell, sometimes the executioner, it's a HM thing, go with it):

The executioner steps out and he can see - he is very close - Anne's eyes focus on him. The Frenchman bobs to his kneeds to ask pardon. It is a formality and his knees barely graze the straw. He has motioned Anne to kneel, and as she does so he steps away, as if he does not want contact even with her clothes. At arm's lengths, he holds out a folded cloth to one of the women, and raises a hand to his eyes to show her waht he means. He hopes it is Lady Kingston who takes the blindfold; whoever it is, she is adept, but a small sound cromes from Anne as her world darkens. Her lips move in prayer. The Frenchman waves the women back. They retreat; they kneel, one of them alomst sinks to the ground and is propped up by the others; despite the veils one can see their hands, their helpless bare hands, as they draw their own skirts about them, as if they were making themselves small, making themselves safe. The queen is alone now, as alone as she has ever been in her life. She says, Christ have mercy, Jesus have mercy, Christ receive my soul. SHe raises one arm, again her fingers go to the coif, and he thinks, put your arm down, for God's sake put your arm down, and he could not will it more if - the executioner calls out sharply, 'Get me the sword.' The blinded head whips around. The man is behind Anne, she is misdirected, she does not sense him. There is a groan, one single sound from the whole crowd. Then a silence, and into that silence, a s harp sigh or a sound like a whistle through a keyhole: the body exsanguinates, and its flat little presence becomes a puddle of gore.

The executioner misdirecting Anne and her head turning: I've seen it everywhere, so I assume it really happened, maybe wrongly. (Even The Tudors include that detail, though they have no blindfold for Anne.)

Googling gives me this eye witness account from John Stowe: All these being on a scaffold made there for the execution, the said Queen Anne said as followeth: Masters, I here humbly submit me to the law, as the law hath judged me, and as for mine offences, God knoweth them, I remit them to God, beseeching him to have mercy on my soul; and I beseech Jesu save my Sovereign and master the King, the most goodliest, and gentlest Prince that is, and long to reign over you, which words she spake with a smiling countenance: which done, she kneeled down on both her knees, and said, To Jesu Christ I commend my soul and with that word suddenly the hangman of Calais smote off her head at one stroke with a sword: her body with the head was buried in the choir of the Chapel in the Tower.

It's Edward Hall who gives the longer version of the speech: 'Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.' After being blindfolded and kneeling at the block, she repeated several times: 'To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul.

[kalypso]

Weir lists 14 separate sources for the account of Anne's death, so maybe the head-turn does crop up somewhere. Or maybe everyone remembers that bit of Anne of the Thousand Days as vividly as I do!

Of course the bit about the executioner dressing so that she won't know which of them he is doesn't really make sense, because he did kneel to ask forgiveness in accordance with protocol, but they cut that. I liked him taking off his shoes so that he could move unheard, though.

[selenak]

Mantel's book (see the quote above) does include him asking for pardon according to protocol; the dressing is Kominsky only again. But the removal of shoes was a great touch.

Something else I to forgot to mention: the tv version cut an entire subplot about Thomas Wyatt. In the books, he was in love with Anne but also was the only one during the Wolsey masque to cry out against it. This and the friendship Cromwell has with his father saves his life.

[kalypso]

Wyatt wrote poems about both of them (Anne and Cromwell), didn't he?

I don't have my Thomas Wyatt icon any more...

[selenak]

He did. (These bloody days have broken my heart, etc.) (Though the most famous Anne poem certainly is the one long before her execution, the Noli me tangere for Caesar's I am/And wild to hold though I seem tame one.) And about the the five dead men.

Wyatt was also present at both their executions (Anne's and Cromwell's, that is) - rather he was still in the Tower for Anne's and probably saw it from the window, and at Cromwell's took Cromwell's hand for a moment. (I hope that was comforting, because of what followed for Cromwell.)

Forgot to say...

[selenak]

...Cromwell's opening dream of Anne - in her coronation gown - getting served as a meal with all the table applauding and he, Cromwell, having to kill her/cut her up is not in the novel, and I thought it was a good way for the episode to make clear that even before he hears any of the gossip, he knows it will have to be death for Anne, not a convent or exile, and that he'll be doing it. The coroniation gown was a good touch because that was the high point of their relationship, plus the way the show staged Anne's coronation had pointed similarities to an execution.

And the colour scheme in the final scene - Cromwell is usually in dark robes, but in the final scene with Henry and the palace it's especially clashing because we go there from the Tower grey and dark, with Cromwell being visually connected to it, not Henry and the palace.

you can't really go wrong with that speech, whether you think it's straight or sarcastic.

Quite. It's following execution etiquette in its pattern, but you can still make a case for either. In the episode, it comes across as straight, and probably a result of Cromwell telling Anne earlier that penitence on her part will work in Elizabeth's favour. In history, in addition to Elizabeth there were also Anne's mother and sister still around - whatever Anne thought about the way her father washed his hands of her and George, she certainly was worried about her mother (Kingston reports one "oh my mother, this will break your heart" exclamation early on). On the other hand, you can also point the the "little neck" remark as proof of Anne's capacity to be sarcastic this close to her death. So I can buy renditions of the speech where she's ironic as well.

Re: Cromwell's own death - he had no reason to believe it would be as bungled and gruesome as it was, but maybe his letter from the Tower to Henry with that "most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy" postscript wasn't a request for his life but for some skilled executioner with a sword as well for all we know. Because that was certainly a more realistic expectation from Henry than to believe in a chance for Henry saving his life.

(I'm trying to think of someone whose life Henry actually did spare when people thought he/she was done for. Not Ghastly Uncle Norfolk, because he was scheduled for execution when Henry died and only survived because Henry died first. Mayyyyybe Charles Brandon after the marriage with sister Mary Rose? But Charles hadn't be declared a traitor or put on trial or anything like that, so the danger of death wasn't that great.)

Re: Forgot to say...

[kalypso]

Oh, I missed the coronation robe, which was stupid of me, because that was the principal occasion when we saw her with her hair down!

Talking of hair, Weir has an interesting detail (from John Stow's Annals) that after Anne's arrest Henry cut his hair short and grew a beard (in other words, the look we now associate with him) because Anne had preferred him clean-shaven.

I can believe that Anne is mixing the serious and the sarcastic in her speech (though as you say she may feel she needs to say whatever she can to protect Elizabeth and her family). The line that always gets to me is "If any person will meddle with my cause, I require them to judge the best", because at that moment she seems to be speaking directly to all of us.

Re: Forgot to say...

[selenak]

One thing Wolf Hall the tv version was rightly applauded for was that they get all the hats (for both men and women) right - most movies and tv shows go for the more modern look of letting the women all wear their hair open and down.

Fascinating about Henry cutting his hair and growing a beard in direct reaction to Anne's arrest - I've never heard this before! Do we have a Henry portrait pre Hohlbein and post his childhood that shows him beardless?

Very true about that line. I love that Anne of the Thousand Days gives her the foreknowledge about Elizabeth becoming queen, but in rl she couldn't have known this would happen. Otoh it does sound as if she hoped/expected people would continue to care about her whys and wherefores. Which they do.

Re: Forgot to say...

[kalypso]

I particularly liked Chapuys's magnificently silly hat with all the bits hanging off it. Presumably it was the height of Spanish fashion.

There have been various moments during the series when I've been very conscious that the scholar's gown and the soft cap I wore at university derive from the sort of clothes Cromwell usually wears. Though we tended not to have the furs...

I've been looking through the earlier portraits of Henry, but the only beardless one I can find dates from his accession, so he's about eighteen - he looks very Plantagenet!


He's got short hair and a beard in this one, apparently from the 1530s, so presumably when Anne had some influence. So maybe the story is apocryphal (or it was earlier, and it was actually Catherine who disliked the beard!) But I do like the idea that it's one of his many grievances against Anne by the end - "And she wouldn't even let me grow my beard!"

Re: Forgot to say...

[selenak]

It certainly fits with "she and her brother made fun of my music!" (Somehow, btw, I can't recall a single dramatization of Anne's trial that has Cromwell ask her dramatically "and did you make fun of the King's music?" despite the fact Chapuys says this was actually brought up as one of her crimes.)

Thank you for the portraits. Wow, yes, young Henry looks very Plantagenet. Though his father has the same hair stylein the portrait I know, but it's also the face. Then again, I always thought Henry physically must have taken after grandfather Edward IV., with both starting out praised for their good looks and both going to seed into obesity later. (Though Edward didn't have Henry's excuse of the ulcers in the leg post tournament making his previous sports regime impossible.)

I bet someone in the tv crew had great fun researching period clothing for the respective characters.

Re: Forgot to say...

[selenak]

..and now I've found a blog which claims Katherine was indeed the beard objector, on the field of the cloth of gold, nonetheless. And that Henry grew his because Francis had one. Of course he did. Did Henry have the most blatant case of penis envy about Francis II. or what?

Re: Forgot to say...

[kalypso]

Oh, good one. BTW, do you mean "nonetheless" or "no less"?

Re: Forgot to say...

[selenak]

That was a typo, I meant, no less.

[muccamukk]

These posts are so interesting. Thank you for putting the time into them.

[selenak]

You're very welcome!

[wee_warrior]

I second muccamukk; really don't know much about the Tudor period (other than clothes, incidentally), so reading these posts has been fascinating.

[selenak]

The Tudor era provides us not just with spectacularly dramatic soap operas in each generation but in Henry VIII. & wives case with what Abigail Nussbaum called the perfect historical metaphor for the patriarchy: no matter how you play the game as a woman, you can't win. Quoth she: You can play by Catherine's rules, tolerating disrespect and infidelity so long as you get to keep the titles of wife and queen, only to be told that you have to relinquish them, discovering that the protection you thought they offered you has disappeared. You can play by Anne's rules (or rather The Rules), playing the harlot but refusing to give up the goods except for a ring and a crown, but these won't make you any safer than your predecessor, and the power you amassed when your demands for respect were enticing and sexy will melt away as soon as these become grating. If you're unfaithful, you die; if you're faithful, you still die. If you can't bear a male heir, you die; if you do bear a male heir, you still die. And best of all, at no point during this decades-long process will anyone around you stop to consider that maybe the problem here isn't with the women, but with the man who, directly or indirectly, caused the deaths of four out of his six wives. (Actually, the real best part is the surprise twist ending, the fact that all that desperate, bloody scrambling after a male heir results only in the brief, inconsequential reign of Edward VI, while the seemingly unimportant daughter of the ignominiously dispatched Anne Boleyn becomes one of England's most famous monarchs, but most of the characters in Mantel's books will never have the historical perspective necessary to get that joke.

[wee_warrior]

There's not much to add to that, really.

I always considered it fittingly ironic, that the wife who arguably got the most out of her almost-marriage to Henry was Anna von Kleve, the one he rejected. Not that that makes for good soap drama.

[selenak]

Too true. Lucky, lucky Anna von Kleve. Not so lucky Thomas Cromwell, of course, but then I always thought if Henry was ready to throw Cromwell to the dogs because he didn't like his mail order bride, he would have done it for another reason as well even if, say, Jane Seymour had never died and there hadn't been a need for a fourth wife.

The soap opera tendencies of the age include people not named Tudor, too. I already mentioned Charles Brandon's marital history. Anne's Ghastly Uncle Norfolk and his second wife were so notoriously mismatched that she took to writing Cromwell with the ghastly details. (Hilary Mantel, to her credit, didn't invent the tendency of ladies to tell Cromwell of their problems. And other people's.) According to her, not only did he hit her and kick her down the stairs at some point but his live-in mistress, whom he refused to give up, once sat on her and pinched and pressed her breasts to hurt her. (Cromwell's correspondence: never a dull moment. Many an appalled one.) Norfolk, that charmer, was also stunned to discover his oldest daughter wasn't stupid, since he only talked with her for the first time when he got around to marrying her off.

Now if you're looking for good marriages, some happened in a badmouthed family. John Dudley met his wife Jane when he was seven, and she was four, and his father had just been executed by the new king (Henry VIII), with John's wardship being given to J. Guildford. They grew up together, married when Jane was 16, and during the time John moved upward on the Tudor career ladder, he never seems to have had an affair, while she had 13 children (seven surviving early childhood. When serving abroad, he made sure to shop for her as she wanted. But the real reason why we know this was a happy marriage was because of how Jane behaved when he (by that time Duke of Northumberland, and if there was ever an unlucky title...) was about to be executed by Mary I. for his part in trying to make Jane Grey queen. She desperately tried to save him, begging and campaigning endlessly and in vain, and there's a surviving letter of hers to one of Mary's ladies-in-waiting where she describes John Dudley, notorious about to be executed traitor, as "the most best gentleman that ever living woman was matched withal”. (She couldn't save him, of course, but not for lack of trying.) And yes, these two were Robert Dudley, the later Earl of Leicester's parents; he along with his brothers was also in the Tower at that point, for the same reason. (Jane the nine day queen.) The surviving Dudley siblings were all close for the rest of their lives and, rare in a Tudor court, never fell out with each other, which also augurs for a happy childhood and youth. They still qualify for soap opera due to ambition, of course, and Tower stints in three generations.

[kalypso]

I was intrigued to read a rave review of the Wolf Hall box set in today's Guardian; particularly because the reviewer was so delighted by Claire Foy's performance, evidently finding in it what I think we did not, the woman capable of bewitching a king and his courtiers. (Though she's right to single out that scene at the window where Anne dares Cromwell to parade with her in front of More, as that was the only one where she did convince me Anne was something special.)

[selenak]

Chacun à son gout, I suppose? Though yes, that was a good scene.