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The Hollow Crown: Henry VI Part I
Or rather, part 1 and 2 mixed up, emphasis on part 2, since the producers made the York tetralogy into a trilogy. I haven't read the Henry VI plays more than once, and that was many years ago, but even my vague memories tell me the most obvious cut - the entire Jack Cade rebellion. Which means no scenes not involving the nobility, which fits with the entire production trying to lure the Game of Thrones audience in.
Also, while there is still a Suffolk around, Somerset has essentially gotten his part in the narrative (re: Margaret) in addition to his own lines, elevating him to primary villain of this installment. The other immediately noticable cut is much of the Joan of Arc bashing, though she's still a villain. But young Will Shakespeare pulled all the stops to vilify her in that play (since how else would English armies get defeated but via a witch?), including having her conjur up devils, have sexual relationships with the Dauphin/French King (since of course she's not a virgin but an evil slut) and die a cowardly death trying to plead pregnancy. Whereas due to the cuts of the Hollow Crown version (no indication she is the King's mistress anymore, no trying to plead pregnancy; instead, she dies defiantly), the addition of brief vision material (Joan does indeed hear/see saints, not devils), and most of all the gruesome execution scene (Joan, shorn of her hair, is dragged to the stake, York pulls away the cross she's wearing around her neck, the French population of Rouen is indignant and can barely be hold back by English soldiers, Joan dies cursing the soon to be opponents from the Wars of the Roses who in this version are all her judges (nothing to do with reality, of course, but Will didn't care, so you can forgive the BBC for not caring, either?), and the camera shows us the painful horrible process of a living human being consumed by fire longer than GoT did last season with you-know-who. Now earlier the production had Joan stab Talbot in the back while he's cradling his dead son, thus establishing her as a villain, but still, depicting her death this way and removing all the slut shaming by playwright makes her a more dimensional one.
Mind you: watching this production on screen rubs it in that women are of the evil in this part of the Henries. In addition to Joan, there's Eleanor Cobham, the Duchess of Gloucester, actually guilty of witchcraft and in her pride contributing to her husband's doom, and of course young Margaret of Anjou, starting her Shakespearean supervillain career, manipulating her hapless husband Henry VI. and at last consuming her relationship with Somerset intercut with Gloucester getting assassinated. She does get to be brave in her introduction scene (the tv version has her at Rouen getting captured by Somerset, and interested in power from the get go (i.e. she's not made powerhungry by Somerset, but is using him as much as he's using her), but definitely: villain.
Not that most of the male characters are depicted in a complimentary fashion. One reason, I suspect, why the Henry VI plays aren't staged often is that there are hardly any sympathetic characters to root for (and even less if you cut the Jack Cade rebellion), but the Game of Thrones audience the production angles for should not have that big a problem with it. Other than Talbot (played by Philip Glenister, true to form) and son - who manage to embody the tragedy of war in their brief scene, the job of "truly noble character but also blinkered character brought down by the fact no one else is" goes to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who basically gets to be season 1 Ned Stark in this reframing. (Fair enough: the Wars of the Roses were an obvious GRRR Martin inspiration.) He's played by Hugh Bonneville who has the problem of having been Robert Crawley for years and thus his face at first evokes urges to slap in me. But he's struly moving in his scenes with his wife, and thus you feel for him in the last twenty minutes as his life falls apart and he ends as the first murder victim in the impending death game at the end.
The other "good" male character is of course the hapless Henry VI, basically crying in despair "can't we all get along?" through the play. While Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, is depicted as an ambitious would be king from the start (only marginally more sympathetic than Somerset because as opposed to the later, he's not depicted willingly risking an English defeat for his own purposes, and because he has no hand in Gloucester's demise), you can't help but be relieved when he finally does make his move and declares his own claim on the throne, after Henry goes from banishing Somerset and Exeter for Gloucester's death to allowing them to stay in a matter of minutes because Margaret manipulates him. As I said in my Richard II review years ago, one problem whenever the question of deposing an annointed King comes up for a contemporary audience is that this isn't felt to be a sacrilege (no matter how incompetent the King) anymore, so the reaction is more "by all means, go for it, it can't get worse".
Which is probably one reason why The Hollow Crown concludes its first Henry VI mix with the non-Shakespearean scene of York coming home to his family and introducing them by name to the audience - Cecily (his wife, and I note the credits list the actress as "young Cecily", indicating that the older Duchess will be played by someone else, which doesn't surprise me, because she's one of the big time angry matriarchs in Shakespeare), and his sons: Edward and George (played by boys close in age and fencing with each other, which, err, so not history, but again, Will didn't care, either), Edmund (played by the smallest kid of the lot when in reality he came in age directly after Edward and long before George and Richard - Shakespeare made Edmund a child so milk the pathos of his impending death to the max, but he was 17 in rl when he died) and Richard (in reality the youngest), whom we only see in black hunchbacked shape darkening the doorstep, but at least as tall as the kid playing Edward. Introducing Richard by his shadow shape is a good nod towards his most famous monologue and as good an ominous cliffhanger as any: we've just seen the Lancasters tear each other apart (though I guess that point is lost on anyone unaware that Somerset is actually cousin to both Henry VI. and Gloucester, because the Beauforts being John of Gaunt's illegitimate and then legitimized offspring wasn't mentioned), next it will be the Yorks' turn. After getting the crown, of course.
All in all: grimdark early Shakespeare, can be followed if you haven't read the plays; the actors are good, though I count only three outstanding scenes - the two Talbots, Joan of Arc's execution sequence, and Gloucester seeing Eleanor dragged off. On to Margaret's full ascension to supervillaindom and young Richard becoming the competition in same!
Also, while there is still a Suffolk around, Somerset has essentially gotten his part in the narrative (re: Margaret) in addition to his own lines, elevating him to primary villain of this installment. The other immediately noticable cut is much of the Joan of Arc bashing, though she's still a villain. But young Will Shakespeare pulled all the stops to vilify her in that play (since how else would English armies get defeated but via a witch?), including having her conjur up devils, have sexual relationships with the Dauphin/French King (since of course she's not a virgin but an evil slut) and die a cowardly death trying to plead pregnancy. Whereas due to the cuts of the Hollow Crown version (no indication she is the King's mistress anymore, no trying to plead pregnancy; instead, she dies defiantly), the addition of brief vision material (Joan does indeed hear/see saints, not devils), and most of all the gruesome execution scene (Joan, shorn of her hair, is dragged to the stake, York pulls away the cross she's wearing around her neck, the French population of Rouen is indignant and can barely be hold back by English soldiers, Joan dies cursing the soon to be opponents from the Wars of the Roses who in this version are all her judges (nothing to do with reality, of course, but Will didn't care, so you can forgive the BBC for not caring, either?), and the camera shows us the painful horrible process of a living human being consumed by fire longer than GoT did last season with you-know-who. Now earlier the production had Joan stab Talbot in the back while he's cradling his dead son, thus establishing her as a villain, but still, depicting her death this way and removing all the slut shaming by playwright makes her a more dimensional one.
Mind you: watching this production on screen rubs it in that women are of the evil in this part of the Henries. In addition to Joan, there's Eleanor Cobham, the Duchess of Gloucester, actually guilty of witchcraft and in her pride contributing to her husband's doom, and of course young Margaret of Anjou, starting her Shakespearean supervillain career, manipulating her hapless husband Henry VI. and at last consuming her relationship with Somerset intercut with Gloucester getting assassinated. She does get to be brave in her introduction scene (the tv version has her at Rouen getting captured by Somerset, and interested in power from the get go (i.e. she's not made powerhungry by Somerset, but is using him as much as he's using her), but definitely: villain.
Not that most of the male characters are depicted in a complimentary fashion. One reason, I suspect, why the Henry VI plays aren't staged often is that there are hardly any sympathetic characters to root for (and even less if you cut the Jack Cade rebellion), but the Game of Thrones audience the production angles for should not have that big a problem with it. Other than Talbot (played by Philip Glenister, true to form) and son - who manage to embody the tragedy of war in their brief scene, the job of "truly noble character but also blinkered character brought down by the fact no one else is" goes to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who basically gets to be season 1 Ned Stark in this reframing. (Fair enough: the Wars of the Roses were an obvious GRRR Martin inspiration.) He's played by Hugh Bonneville who has the problem of having been Robert Crawley for years and thus his face at first evokes urges to slap in me. But he's struly moving in his scenes with his wife, and thus you feel for him in the last twenty minutes as his life falls apart and he ends as the first murder victim in the impending death game at the end.
The other "good" male character is of course the hapless Henry VI, basically crying in despair "can't we all get along?" through the play. While Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, is depicted as an ambitious would be king from the start (only marginally more sympathetic than Somerset because as opposed to the later, he's not depicted willingly risking an English defeat for his own purposes, and because he has no hand in Gloucester's demise), you can't help but be relieved when he finally does make his move and declares his own claim on the throne, after Henry goes from banishing Somerset and Exeter for Gloucester's death to allowing them to stay in a matter of minutes because Margaret manipulates him. As I said in my Richard II review years ago, one problem whenever the question of deposing an annointed King comes up for a contemporary audience is that this isn't felt to be a sacrilege (no matter how incompetent the King) anymore, so the reaction is more "by all means, go for it, it can't get worse".
Which is probably one reason why The Hollow Crown concludes its first Henry VI mix with the non-Shakespearean scene of York coming home to his family and introducing them by name to the audience - Cecily (his wife, and I note the credits list the actress as "young Cecily", indicating that the older Duchess will be played by someone else, which doesn't surprise me, because she's one of the big time angry matriarchs in Shakespeare), and his sons: Edward and George (played by boys close in age and fencing with each other, which, err, so not history, but again, Will didn't care, either), Edmund (played by the smallest kid of the lot when in reality he came in age directly after Edward and long before George and Richard - Shakespeare made Edmund a child so milk the pathos of his impending death to the max, but he was 17 in rl when he died) and Richard (in reality the youngest), whom we only see in black hunchbacked shape darkening the doorstep, but at least as tall as the kid playing Edward. Introducing Richard by his shadow shape is a good nod towards his most famous monologue and as good an ominous cliffhanger as any: we've just seen the Lancasters tear each other apart (though I guess that point is lost on anyone unaware that Somerset is actually cousin to both Henry VI. and Gloucester, because the Beauforts being John of Gaunt's illegitimate and then legitimized offspring wasn't mentioned), next it will be the Yorks' turn. After getting the crown, of course.
All in all: grimdark early Shakespeare, can be followed if you haven't read the plays; the actors are good, though I count only three outstanding scenes - the two Talbots, Joan of Arc's execution sequence, and Gloucester seeing Eleanor dragged off. On to Margaret's full ascension to supervillaindom and young Richard becoming the competition in same!
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Good point about the histories and History, I will try to remember it.