I read he was dain bramaged by being squashed under his horse and unconscious for two hours and changed from being generous and good humoured to paranoid and quick tempered... He also got poked in the head by a lance once :kitty:
This will no doubt be happening in the next episode. Damien Lewis is spot on as Henry as he was pre all this.
Still thoroughly enjoying this. The quality of the acting oozes. Anton Lester is sublime, as are the vast majority of the cast.
ITV take note. This is how to do it, and this is probably the drama Charles Dance wishes he was in, as opposed to slumming it on a multi-million set that was then burned down, while having to mix it with a cast who minced around in the flames in heavily made-up orange faces while dressed and speaking like they were in a period piece comedy sketch show .
I have been wondering how people think this compares to reality. I do get pained when historical fiction actually contradicts undisputed facts as opposed to filling in the blanks. As I said before I can cope (after a fashion) with the improbable but at least possible.
What liberties do we think HM has taken
What is impossible?
What highly improbable?
What unlikely?
What new ideas do you find intriguing whether you believe it or not
What is just how you would have imagined it?
Want will bed down in your head as the history of the time? (Whenever I think of Henry the VIII or am reading non fiction about him, I have Keith Mitchell in my head. Will Mark Rylance become your Cromwell?
I can't think off the top of my head of anything impossible.
I'm not convinced that Cromwell was loyal to Wolsey to that extent but I find the notion intriguing and similarly the relationship with Jane S and Mary B.
Pam Ferris in her wimple has become my Cromwell as I find a similarity with the painting,
Hopefully he's shut up for five mins. I hate his style of presenting. Give me Lucy any day.
'Wolf Hall' is getting better and better. Still not convinced by Claire Foy .. she was wonderful as Little Dorrit but it's hard to see why Henry would be so fascinated. She just seems petulant and cross. 'The Tudors' was a lot of old hokey but Natalie Dormer was standout as Anne. I think Jessica Raine would have been put to better use playing her in this. Also they've made Jane too pretty.
Anton Lesser and Mark Rylance gave amazing performances on Weds. Very impressed too with the way the executions etc are being handled .. very subtly done.
I agree about Jessica Raine, btw. I think she'd make a better Anne than Claire Foy.
But I'm starting to think that having a weak Anne, and a too pretty (and clever) Jane Seymour is deliberate.
If they had a Natalie Dormer Anne, she'd be vivacious and intriguing enough to explain Henry's fascination, but she'd also be too appealing to viewers. It would be harder to get them to side with Cromwell (and with Jane) against her.
So instead of the usual plain, dull Jane, when get one who's pretty and appealingly clever with her "meek face".
Of course, there's always the usual excuse that this is how Cromwell saw them (Hilary Mantel's Cromwell anyway), and Claire Foy has said:
"Hilary has written Anne as Thomas Cromwell would observe her. And that’s not particularly easy for an actor, because you can’t play what people see in their mind as opposed to what is actually going on.”
But look at some of the things Claire says about Anne in that Radio Times interview.
"For the amount that she achieved, and given the limited role of women in her time, Anne really had massive balls – bigger balls, I think, than anyone at Henry’s court. If she had been born in a man’s body, I think she would have made an extraordinary ruler." ...
"She broke with tradition in every possible way, at a time when English women had no real purpose, other than to sit around sewing and looking pretty. Anne was educated in France--she had the European sensibility--and then she came to England where women weren't supposed to talk about anything too revolutionary. If you had an active mind--as Anne had--it must have been incredibly frustrating. But she had an opinion and wasn’t afraid of voicing it." ...
“She was brave and intelligent and incredibly religious ..."
To me, that sounds a lot more like a Natalie Dormer Anne -- or the one in Howard Brenton's play Anne Boleyn -- than it does like the one in Wolf Hall.
In Wolf Hall, even Anne's sister Mary seems a lot more like that Anne.
I don't have anything too deep to say on this, other than that I am enjoying it immensely. My wife feels that it's very plodding, but I'm a bit fan of the slow weaving of the plot.
And why, oh why have I never head of Mark Rylance before now? What a wonderful actor...so economic...it's what he doesn't do that makes his performances stand out.
I don't have anything too deep to say on this, other than that I am enjoying it immensely. My wife feels that it's very plodding, but I'm a bit fan of the slow weaving of the plot.
And why, oh why have I never head of Mark Rylance before now? What a wonderful actor...so economic...it's what he doesn't do that makes his performances stand out.
I feel the same but his face is familiar so I must have seen him in lots of things but just never really appreciated him.
I have been wondering how people think this compares to reality. I do get pained when historical fiction actually contradicts undisputed facts as opposed to filling in the blanks. As I said before I can cope (after a fashion) with the improbable but at least possible.
What liberties do we think HM has taken
What is impossible?
What highly improbable?
What unlikely?
What new ideas do you find intriguing whether you believe it or not
What is just how you would have imagined it?
Want will bed down in your head as the history of the time? (Whenever I think of Henry the VIII or am reading non fiction about him, I have Keith Mitchell in my head. Will Mark Rylance become your Cromwell?
I can't think off the top of my head of anything impossible.
I'm not convinced that Cromwell was loyal to Wolsey to that extent but I find the notion intriguing and similarly the relationship with Jane S and Mary B.
Pam Ferris in her wimple has become my Cromwell as I find a similarity with the painting,
I think "filling in the blanks" is much too neutral and like connecting dots in likely ways than what Mantel has done, and I think many people will assume that there's historical evidence for a lot more of what she says than there is. I tried to explain some of this earlier in the thread, with some examples I thought were interesting.
So far as I know, she doesn't contradict anything that's "undisputed"; but there's very little that's undisputed, and there are some historians who maintain unlikely views that, however improbable, still serve to take the views they contradict out of the "undisputed" category. As a possible example, Eric Ives says in his biography of Anne Boleyn "even after nearly 500 years, three-quarters of these specific allegations (against Anne and the others) can be disproved’; but there is probably someone who disagrees and thinks that at least some of those disproved allegations are "possible". (That "someone" may even be G W Bernard.)
Anyway, Mantel's approach is such that if she has someone in place P at time T doing X, that can just be because it hasn't been absolutely pinned down that it didn't happen, rather than because there's evidence that it did or was likely. For instance, the "carry Wolsey to hell" masque that has so central a role in the novels, the plays, and the tv series is based on a real incident, but it's very unlikely that it happened the way Mantel describes, or had those people in it.
Another thing she does it to take something that's in the historical record and invent a story behind it that gives it a completely different meaning that it's been thought to have. (Follow the "review" link in my earlier post for an example.) Fiction does, of course, allow such things, and can be more interesting as a result. But as that review said, "The result is less a historical novel than an alternative history novel."
She can also choose which things from history to include and which to leave out. She can, for instance, omit something that would show Anne Boleyn in a better light, or Cromwell in worse one. An example here may be Anne's speech on the scaffold. In the novels, Mantel leaves out Anne's eloquent speeches, saying they "should be read with scepticism". But it seems that particular speech will be in the tv series, because Claire Foy said in the same Radio Times article I linked in my previous post, "We used her own words, verbatim, for the scaffold speech and shot the whole thing a bit like a documentary. So for the audience it feels like you’re watching the whole thing live."
It will be interesting to see what that speech turns out to be and whether it's the one people familiar with the history would expect.
I think "filling in the blanks" is much too neutral and like connecting dots in likely ways than what Mantel has done, and I think many people will assume that there's historical evidence for a lot more of what she says than there is. I tried to explain some of this earlier in the thread, with some examples I thought were interesting.
So far as I know, she doesn't contradict anything that's "undisputed"; but there's very little that's undisputed, and there are some historians who maintain unlikely views that, however improbable, still serve to take the views they contradict out of the "undisputed" category. As a possible example, Eric Ives says in his biography of Anne Boleyn "even after nearly 500 years, three-quarters of these specific allegations (against Anne and the others) can be disproved’; but there is probably someone who disagrees and thinks that at least some of those disproved allegations are "possible". (That "someone" may even be G W Bernard.)
Anyway, Mantel's approach is such that if she has someone in place P at time T doing X, that can just be because it hasn't been absolutely pinned down that it didn't happen, rather than because there's evidence that it did or was likely. For instance, the "carry Wolsey to hell" masque that has so central a role in the novels, the plays, and the tv series is based on a real incident, but it's very unlikely that it happened the way Mantel describes, or had those people in it.
Another thing she does it to take something that's in the historical record and invent a story behind it that gives it a completely different meaning that it's been thought to have. (Follow the "review" link in my earlier post for an example.) Fiction does, of course, allow such things, and can be more interesting as a result. But as that review said, "The result is less a historical novel than an alternative history novel."
She can also choose which things from history to include and which to leave out. She can, for instance, omit something that would show Anne Boleyn in a better light, or Cromwell in worse one. An example here may be Anne's speech on the scaffold. In the novels, Mantel leaves out Anne's eloquent speeches, saying they "should be read with scepticism". But it seems that particular speech will be in the tv series, because Claire Foy said in the same Radio Times article I linked in my previous post, "We used her own words, verbatim, for the scaffold speech and shot the whole thing a bit like a documentary. So for the audience it feels like you’re watching the whole thing live."
It will be interesting to see what that speech turns out to be and whether it's the one people familiar with the history would expect.
Thanks for that, I will follow those links.
By undisputed stuff I am still traumatised by "The Tudors" giving Henry as sister called Margaret who marries the King of Portugal.
Do you think HM means that Anne's speeches were misreported or just that they were insincere? There is so much diplomatic overblown insincerity in so much of what people actually said. At Westminster they have a document signed by Katherine of Aragon which had references to her being Dowager Princess. She scored one out so vehemently that she went through the page. One example of a real emotion.
This has to be the best thing to grace British TV screens in a long time.
The knowing looks and menacing silences from Mark Rylance are simply sublime. Moore, Henry, Anne, the list is endless, all stellar performances week after week.
By undisputed stuff I am still traumatised by "The Tudors" giving Henry as sister called Margaret who marries the King of Portugal.
Do you think HM means that Anne's speeches were misreported or just that they were insincere? There is so much diplomatic overblown insincerity in so much of what people actually said. At Westminster they have a document signed by Katherine of Aragon which had references to her being Dowager Princess. She scored one out so vehemently that she went through the page. One example of a real emotion.
I think HM was sceptical that the reported speeches are what Anne actually said.
I think what The Tudors did was to merge Henry VIII's two sisters, Mary and Margaret, into one, called Margaret; and the the story line that involved "Margaret" marrying the elderly King or Portugal and then taking up with Charles Brandon was partly based on the historical story of Mary marrying the somewhat elderly King of France and then taking up with Charles Brandon.
I have some sympathy for the people who made The Tudors, because there are so many Marys (and indeed Marys who might be called Mary Tudor) that it can be confusing. (There are also an awful lot of Thomases: Wolsey, More, Norfolk, Seymour, Wriothesley, Wyatt, ...)
There's also a "Catherine" problem, and not just "of Argon" and Howard and Parr, because there's another Catherine Howard, Countess of Nottingham, née Carey, who was with Elizabeth I for many years and mustn't be confused with her aunt, Catherine Knollys, also née Carey, and also with Elizabeth, a Lady of the Bedchamber, as well as being her 1st cousin (since she was Mary Boleyn's daughter).
The early scenes were very dark, interestingly so as we passed through unlit halls on the way to a candlelit room. But most of the episode wasn't so.
"This palace belongs to the archdiocese of York. When did Lady Anne become an archbishop?" -- said Cromwell, who later seemed to think differently re the property of the religious orders.
"He expects to find a wax figure of himself with a pin stuck through it." - Wolsey re Norfolk. (Is that something someone could have thought, back then?)
"Thunder rolls", the subtitles say; and Wyatt:
These bloody days have broken my heart.
My lust, my youth did them depart,
And blind desire of estate.
Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.
Of truth, circa Regna tonat.
Who is the man who speaks Italian with Cromwell and introduces him to Chapuys at the dinner at which there was also Thomas More? Bonvisi? (WHO?)
Rafe? Why is he in so many scenes?
What, if anything, would have been seen as the significance of holding a snake in Italy?
Who is the "George" who comes upon Cromwell reading a prayer book and is asked to get an inventory for York Place for Cromwell to take to Lady Anne? (Not his 1st appearance.)
Mary Boleyn is already slyly bitchy about Anne ("she's not getting any younger")
Are we meant to believe that the worst Norfolk could think to call Cromwell was "you nobody"?
What is the point of Rafe, 'cept as an excuse to have Gardiner explain something that Cromwell would already have understood?
Claire Foy seems a more convincing Anne in this episode than in what I remember from later ones.
"He expects to find a wax figure of himself with a pin stuck through it." - Wolsey re Norfolk. (Is that something someone could have thought, back then?)
… Who is the man who speaks Italian with Cromwell and introduces him to Chapuys at the dinner at which there was also Thomas More? Bonvisi? (WHO?)
Antonio Bonvisi. From Wikipedia: " … an Anglo-Italian merchant in London. He was also a banker, and employed by the English government, as well as being an agent for the Italians appointed as Bishop of Worcester. He was on good terms with the English humanists of the time, and a close friend of Thomas More."
Who is the "George" who comes upon Cromwell reading a prayer book and is asked to get an inventory for York Place for Cromwell to take to Lady Anne? (Not his 1st appearance.)
George Cavendish. He's Cardinal Wolsey's gentleman-usher (top personal servant); he retired from Court circles and later wrote a biography of Wolsey.
When re-watching I frequently freeze-credits/google. :kitty:
Still catching up with this thread, and loving the series so far.
I have had a great interest in Anne Boleyn for many years and have always been frustrated by the TV/films castings of her.
The only one that has come remotely close in terms of capturing her spirit and sex appeal has been Charlotte Rampling in Keith Michelles version. However, the moment I saw Jessica Raine's lady Rochford, I said to myself, " that's my Anne Boleyn!", in terms of looks especially. Anne Boleyn was famed her beautiful dark eyes, then why then cast a blue eyed actress?
Still catching up with this thread, and loving the series so far.
I have had a great interest in Anne Boleyn for many years and have always been frustrated by the TV/films castings of her.
The only one that has come remotely close in terms of capturing her spirit has been Charlotte Rampling in Keith Michelles version. However, the moment I saw Jessica Raine's lady Rochford, I said to myself, " that's my Anne Boleyn!", in terms of looks especially. Anne Boleyn was famed her beautiful dark eyes, then why then cast a blue eyed actress?
Well Anne Boleyn also had six fingers on her right hand but they weren't going to find an actress with that either ! Have to have a bit of leeway somewhere !!
Well Anne Boleyn also had six fingers on her right hand but they weren't going to find an actress with that either ! Have to have a bit of leeway somewhere !!
Comments
Mine neither, plus she was 10 years too old.
This will no doubt be happening in the next episode. Damien Lewis is spot on as Henry as he was pre all this.
ITV take note. This is how to do it, and this is probably the drama Charles Dance wishes he was in, as opposed to slumming it on a multi-million set that was then burned down, while having to mix it with a cast who minced around in the flames in heavily made-up orange faces while dressed and speaking like they were in a period piece comedy sketch show .
People watching on further pick up probably.
What liberties do we think HM has taken
What is impossible?
What highly improbable?
What unlikely?
What new ideas do you find intriguing whether you believe it or not
What is just how you would have imagined it?
Want will bed down in your head as the history of the time? (Whenever I think of Henry the VIII or am reading non fiction about him, I have Keith Mitchell in my head. Will Mark Rylance become your Cromwell?
I can't think off the top of my head of anything impossible.
I'm not convinced that Cromwell was loyal to Wolsey to that extent but I find the notion intriguing and similarly the relationship with Jane S and Mary B.
Pam Ferris in her wimple has become my Cromwell as I find a similarity with the painting,
I agree about Jessica Raine, btw. I think she'd make a better Anne than Claire Foy.
But I'm starting to think that having a weak Anne, and a too pretty (and clever) Jane Seymour is deliberate.
If they had a Natalie Dormer Anne, she'd be vivacious and intriguing enough to explain Henry's fascination, but she'd also be too appealing to viewers. It would be harder to get them to side with Cromwell (and with Jane) against her.
So instead of the usual plain, dull Jane, when get one who's pretty and appealingly clever with her "meek face".
Of course, there's always the usual excuse that this is how Cromwell saw them (Hilary Mantel's Cromwell anyway), and Claire Foy has said:
"Hilary has written Anne as Thomas Cromwell would observe her. And that’s not particularly easy for an actor, because you can’t play what people see in their mind as opposed to what is actually going on.”
But look at some of the things Claire says about Anne in that Radio Times interview.
To me, that sounds a lot more like a Natalie Dormer Anne -- or the one in Howard Brenton's play Anne Boleyn -- than it does like the one in Wolf Hall.
In Wolf Hall, even Anne's sister Mary seems a lot more like that Anne.
And why, oh why have I never head of Mark Rylance before now? What a wonderful actor...so economic...it's what he doesn't do that makes his performances stand out.
I think "filling in the blanks" is much too neutral and like connecting dots in likely ways than what Mantel has done, and I think many people will assume that there's historical evidence for a lot more of what she says than there is. I tried to explain some of this earlier in the thread, with some examples I thought were interesting.
So far as I know, she doesn't contradict anything that's "undisputed"; but there's very little that's undisputed, and there are some historians who maintain unlikely views that, however improbable, still serve to take the views they contradict out of the "undisputed" category. As a possible example, Eric Ives says in his biography of Anne Boleyn "even after nearly 500 years, three-quarters of these specific allegations (against Anne and the others) can be disproved’; but there is probably someone who disagrees and thinks that at least some of those disproved allegations are "possible". (That "someone" may even be G W Bernard.)
Anyway, Mantel's approach is such that if she has someone in place P at time T doing X, that can just be because it hasn't been absolutely pinned down that it didn't happen, rather than because there's evidence that it did or was likely. For instance, the "carry Wolsey to hell" masque that has so central a role in the novels, the plays, and the tv series is based on a real incident, but it's very unlikely that it happened the way Mantel describes, or had those people in it.
Another thing she does it to take something that's in the historical record and invent a story behind it that gives it a completely different meaning that it's been thought to have. (Follow the "review" link in my earlier post for an example.) Fiction does, of course, allow such things, and can be more interesting as a result. But as that review said, "The result is less a historical novel than an alternative history novel."
She can also choose which things from history to include and which to leave out. She can, for instance, omit something that would show Anne Boleyn in a better light, or Cromwell in worse one. An example here may be Anne's speech on the scaffold. In the novels, Mantel leaves out Anne's eloquent speeches, saying they "should be read with scepticism". But it seems that particular speech will be in the tv series, because Claire Foy said in the same Radio Times article I linked in my previous post, "We used her own words, verbatim, for the scaffold speech and shot the whole thing a bit like a documentary. So for the audience it feels like you’re watching the whole thing live."
It will be interesting to see what that speech turns out to be and whether it's the one people familiar with the history would expect.
Thanks for that, I will follow those links.
By undisputed stuff I am still traumatised by "The Tudors" giving Henry as sister called Margaret who marries the King of Portugal.
Do you think HM means that Anne's speeches were misreported or just that they were insincere? There is so much diplomatic overblown insincerity in so much of what people actually said. At Westminster they have a document signed by Katherine of Aragon which had references to her being Dowager Princess. She scored one out so vehemently that she went through the page. One example of a real emotion.
The knowing looks and menacing silences from Mark Rylance are simply sublime. Moore, Henry, Anne, the list is endless, all stellar performances week after week.
I think HM was sceptical that the reported speeches are what Anne actually said.
I think what The Tudors did was to merge Henry VIII's two sisters, Mary and Margaret, into one, called Margaret; and the the story line that involved "Margaret" marrying the elderly King or Portugal and then taking up with Charles Brandon was partly based on the historical story of Mary marrying the somewhat elderly King of France and then taking up with Charles Brandon.
I have some sympathy for the people who made The Tudors, because there are so many Marys (and indeed Marys who might be called Mary Tudor) that it can be confusing. (There are also an awful lot of Thomases: Wolsey, More, Norfolk, Seymour, Wriothesley, Wyatt, ...)
There's also a "Catherine" problem, and not just "of Argon" and Howard and Parr, because there's another Catherine Howard, Countess of Nottingham, née Carey, who was with Elizabeth I for many years and mustn't be confused with her aunt, Catherine Knollys, also née Carey, and also with Elizabeth, a Lady of the Bedchamber, as well as being her 1st cousin (since she was Mary Boleyn's daughter).
The early scenes were very dark, interestingly so as we passed through unlit halls on the way to a candlelit room. But most of the episode wasn't so.
"This palace belongs to the archdiocese of York. When did Lady Anne become an archbishop?" -- said Cromwell, who later seemed to think differently re the property of the religious orders.
"He expects to find a wax figure of himself with a pin stuck through it." - Wolsey re Norfolk. (Is that something someone could have thought, back then?)
"Thunder rolls", the subtitles say; and Wyatt:
These bloody days have broken my heart.
My lust, my youth did them depart,
And blind desire of estate.
Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.
Of truth, circa Regna tonat.
Who is the man who speaks Italian with Cromwell and introduces him to Chapuys at the dinner at which there was also Thomas More? Bonvisi? (WHO?)
Rafe? Why is he in so many scenes?
What, if anything, would have been seen as the significance of holding a snake in Italy?
What was the sweating sickness? (No one knows. It vanished as mysteriously as it came.)
Who is the "George" who comes upon Cromwell reading a prayer book and is asked to get an inventory for York Place for Cromwell to take to Lady Anne? (Not his 1st appearance.)
Mary Boleyn is already slyly bitchy about Anne ("she's not getting any younger")
Are we meant to believe that the worst Norfolk could think to call Cromwell was "you nobody"?
What is the point of Rafe, 'cept as an excuse to have Gardiner explain something that Cromwell would already have understood?
Claire Foy seems a more convincing Anne in this episode than in what I remember from later ones.
It does what it is intended to do brilliantly and has received critical acclaim in most of the Broadsheets.
You need to enjoy not over analyse.
Why not? It was a practice in witchcraft.
Antonio Bonvisi. From Wikipedia: " … an Anglo-Italian merchant in London. He was also a banker, and employed by the English government, as well as being an agent for the Italians appointed as Bishop of Worcester. He was on good terms with the English humanists of the time, and a close friend of Thomas More."
George Cavendish. He's Cardinal Wolsey's gentleman-usher (top personal servant); he retired from Court circles and later wrote a biography of Wolsey.
When re-watching I frequently freeze-credits/google. :kitty:
To dispense with thought bubbles?
To provide the National Trust with a property in Hackney?
A bit difficult to avoid when the TV show is based on the books and people naturally want to know how close to the books the TV show is.
I have had a great interest in Anne Boleyn for many years and have always been frustrated by the TV/films castings of her.
The only one that has come remotely close in terms of capturing her spirit and sex appeal has been Charlotte Rampling in Keith Michelles version. However, the moment I saw Jessica Raine's lady Rochford, I said to myself, " that's my Anne Boleyn!", in terms of looks especially. Anne Boleyn was famed her beautiful dark eyes, then why then cast a blue eyed actress?
Well Anne Boleyn also had six fingers on her right hand but they weren't going to find an actress with that either ! Have to have a bit of leeway somewhere !!
*Not really*
lol