(h/t commentor Omnes Omnibus)
ICYMI, Hilary Mantel, in the NYTimes, on transferring ‘Wolf Hall’ to the stage:
Ten years ago, I started to build a theater inside my head. I wanted to tell — or rather, to show — a story about Henry VIII, the second Tudor king. It would be about his court, his country and three of his six wives: one sad, one serpentine, one sneaky. I would create — or unleash, for they were real people — a heaving mob of courtiers, who listened at doors, who opened each other’s letters. I would turn out their pockets and count their cash. I would look into their houses and their hearts. My focus would be the king’s fixer, the ferociously ambitious Thomas Cromwell.
I made my theater flat on paper, because I am a novelist by trade. As soon as “Wolf Hall” was published, there was an appetite to see it onstage. Flesh and blood actors would imitate the people who lived in my imagination. Would that, friends wondered, do violence to my inner world? In Stratford-on-Avon, in London, and now in New York, playgoers would ask the big question: How does it feel to see your characters come to life?
I answer with another question: When were they dead?…
There have been no days when my theater is dark. Even when I am half-asleep, Tudors charge in and out of my consciousness, banging the doors. I call them people, not characters. I make their costumes, but I call them clothes. I need to know the cost of the cloth, how to weave and dye it. Or at least, Thomas Cromwell needs to know.
On the page, I had created 159 characters. Someone counted. For the stage, we don’t need look-alikes, I said. We don’t need stars. Just a company of self-effacing shape-shifters who will play three and four parts, ripping themselves fiercely in and out of costumes and story lines, who will embody the vitality and passion of the Tudors inside my head. We need a director who is an expert in urgency, who will whip up magic and make the story fly. He was lurking in the wings for now, but Jeremy Herrin was the man…
Bobby Thomson
Beau Biden has died. He knew he had brain cancer and he still cleared the field for Governor.
Valdivia
Very curious to read through this piece and see what she has to say of Boleyn as a character. As we discussed in many threads, I found her so unlikable as to wonder why the hell Henry even saw in her.
mai naem mobile
@Bobby Thomson: not sure if.you are being critical.but who cares. This is just sad. He was only 46 with kids.
Shana
I have loved the books and am anxiously waiting for the 3rd one. Watched the Masterpiece Theatre shows but weirdly have no interest in the theatre version.
Very sad about Beau Biden.
SiubhanDuinne
How terrible. Beau Biden has died. So desperately sorry for the VP and family.
Edit:And I see everyone else got here first. Just so sad.
Major Major Major Major
New chapterish thing of The Fish is up! link
Valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne:
So very sad. Not that I knew anything about him but find myself heartbroken for our VP, what he has endured.
ETA: I manage also to be super angry at all the right wingers who reported rumours last week that he went into the hospital for drug addiction. Asssholes.
Mike in NC
Sorry to hear about Beau Biden. Sounded like a good guy.
SuperHrefna
So sad about Beau Biden.
I must read this article, Hilary Mantel is usually interesting. I’m not sure I want to see the play, even though I love the theatre. For me the big draw of Wolf Hall was Mark Rylance and somebody else’s performance is just going to be a let down so soon after. Rylance is just extraordinary. I remember standing in a rapt crowd at the Globe, all of us ignoring the rain falling on our heads as we watched Rylance act. He is a true master of the art.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t know that my link actually counts as “KULCHA!”, but perhaps it does under that spelling.
schrodinger's cat
@Valdivia: I found Claire Foy’s AB pretty unlikeable too, up until the time she was sentenced to death in a sham trial.
SiubhanDuinne
@Valdivia:
Somehow I missed those rumors. But on the other hand, I had no idea Beau was sick in the first place, so it was a bit of a shock to me. I guess less so to his family, but it is still an awful tragedy for Joe, who has already lost so many loved ones.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Kulcha is also a delicious flaky flat bread with many layers, kinda like a puff pastry. Onion kulchas are the best.
rikyrah
@Bobby Thomson:
Far too young.
RIP, Beau.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, the stuff I linked is a bit flaky.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Indeed! But not the flaky you can eat.
Omnes Omnibus
There is an RIP Beau Biden thread up for those so inclined.
Bobby Thomson
@SiubhanDuinne: Everyone in Delaware who follows politics suspected he was sick and that that’s why he announced he was going to run for Governor instead of running for re-election as AG last year. It’s a small state and there are no secrets.
Valdivia
@schrodinger’s cat:
I thought Foy played her that way because that’s what the material she had to work with called for. But from conversations here I began to wonder if that is what Mantel wanted to convey at all (I haven’t read the books). I came away thinking that the real seduction was between Cromwell and Henry so maybe Boleyn as a character suffered in comparison? Don’t know if that makes sense.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: My impression from the books is that Cromwell was impressed by her. Both as an ally in the early days and as an adversary later on.
Dr. McCoy
@Omnes Omnibus: Condolences on a centrist blog, for a person no one personally knew. Full steam ahead.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dr. McCoy: And?
ETA: You are again welcome to email Cole about your concerns.
Valdivia
@SuperHrefna:
I saw a review in the NYRB that says pretty much this. Also, it seems, that the theater production falters in comparison to the tv adaptations. If Rylance comes back States’ side to do anything again I am not missing it this time.
PurpleGirl
RIP Beau Biden. It is indeed a sad event for the VP and family.
Brachiator
@Valdivia: I have to go back and watch Wolf Hall again. I didn’t give the first episodes my full attention, but really got swept up in the final episode and thought that Anne was a full bodied character, sometimes unpleasant but ultimately tragic.
Henry wasn’t one note, but he was a bit of a prig. Apart from the being king, thing, he didn’t seem to have much to offer.
I went back and brought the 70s Six Wives of Henry VIII and jumped right into the episode revolving around Anne. Cromwell is more moustache twirling villain, but a shrewd politician eager to sacrifice Anne to protect Henry from enemies. And Lady Rochford seems more Cromwell’s creature. But Henry is more vital, vain but with more of a self awareness of his authority and power.
Oddly enough, some of the series is very stagey, with some stark interiors, more like a play than a tv series. But then there are some impressive exterior scenes, and the costumes, especially Henry’s are more varied and elaborate.
The series was reasonably priced on Amazon Instant Video. Now I have to go back and watch it all from the beginning. I may also see if I can hunt down “Elizabeth R,” with Glenda Jackson.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: as you can see our previous discussions about Boleyn left me thinking :)
Do you think Cromwell was impressed with her because like him she had ambition and had a political instinct as keen as his own? From watching it that was the impression I had. But that would be different from her being that alluring creature that captured Henry’s heart which as you so aptly described would have to be like Angelina Jolie with a PhD. And maybe that is why it’s baffling that Henry falls for her, since all we see, at least on tv, is her calculating and manipulating her way in Court (which would be what Cromwell would appreciated/respected).
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator:
The Rick Wakeman album?
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Yes, I think he respected her as a player. It may be that she was who she was for Henry because she was the only woman who ever said no to him.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes! That’s the one. Waksman played all the wives and Thomas More. He did a great job overall, but his Ann of Cleves was a little weak.
Valdivia
@Brachiator:
I liked Damian Lewis a lot in Wolf Hall. There was something manic about Henry that Lewis captured very well. That sense that he could turn on you at any minute. And Rylance is masterly bringing Cromwell to life (I imagine a lot of the credit to humanizing him goes to Mantel).
I saw the Wives series a long long time ago. I should watch it again. My fresher memory is of The Tudors which was very soap operaish. There Boleyn (played by Queen Margery of GoT) is really the seductress, not so much the creature of the Court we see in Wolf Hall.
oh and Elizabeth R is on YouTube here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia:
Natalie Dormer has played a bit of a seductress in everything I have seen her in.
ETA: I am not complaining, mind you. She does it well.
schrodinger's cat
@Valdivia:In Wolf Hall’s depiction, Henry is a sociopath, an awful human being. I liked what Lewis did with the part, he did mumble a lot though.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: There are theories that a fall in a tournament where a horse rolled on him caused injuries that left him in constant pain for the rest of his life and that there could have been traumatic brain injuries that caused a personality change as well.
PurpleGirl
@Dr. McCoy: We feel for the Biden family — VP Biden has lost so many people in his life and losing this son just adds to that sadness for him.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think you are right about that. A little dispiriting though to think of Boleyn as a rules girl .
And yes Natalie Dormer, most definitely very good at playing the seductress. I really don’t think I have seen her do anything else.
@schrodinger’s cat: nothing could ever be wrong with him, it was always the women!
Brachiator
@Valdivia: I thought that Lewis was despicable and great in “The Forsyte Saga” as Soames. I agree that his Henry is as unpredictable as a viper, but he seems to restrained. It’s almost as though the producers wanted everyone to be lowkey, to be more in tune with Mark Rylance’s quiet but powerful performance, but I wanted to see more sides of Henry.
I also thought that Anne established a more lively French style court, something that Henry initially appreciated, but you don’t see this here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia:
There are always the rumors that she “satisfied” him in the “French manner.”‘
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Given this, I think you are correct.
@Valdivia:
I wonder if she has been asked? To do something else, I mean.
Valdivia
@Brachiator:
Lewis as Soames was chillingly evil. I should rewatch that (so many good things to watch, so little time!)
You may be right that the toned down performances were a directorial choice.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Many years ago in an episode of Rebus, she played something a little different. And she was really very good in it. But I believe she’s now typecast and these are the roles she gets, so she probably doesn’t get asked.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Apparently, she has a different sort of role in the Hunger Games series.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Here’s the Rebus episode with Dormer.
And I am glad I don’t have to think of Boleyn as a rules girl. That was doing my head in ;)
Brachiator
@Valdivia: I hear that Nathalie is good as Irene Adler in the tv show Elementary. I also hear she is good in the latest Hunger Games movies. I haven’t seen these, so I cannot confirm. However, she is good and not simply a seductress in Game of Thrones.
Brachiator
@Valdivia: I hear that Nathalie is good as Irene Adler in the tv show Elementary. I also hear she is good in the latest Hunger Games movies. I haven’t seen these, so I cannot confirm. However, she is very good in Game of Thrones.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Think of it in GoT terms. She was using the resources available to her in that period to achieve power. If saying yes would have done it, she would have done so but she had the example of her sister among others. Saying no worked – as long as Henry didn’t lose interest.
Valdivia
@Brachiator: In Elementary she as very good, but the note there is very much seduction + brain. GoT is also a bit like that no?
I haven’t seen Hunger Games but I am glad to know she gets to play something that is not that at all because she is a rather good actress.@Omnes Omnibus:
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: Adler is, of course, a seductress. The Hunger Games part is apparently different ground.
ETA: What Valdivia said.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh I get it absolutely and given that women didn’t have many options at that time it speaks once again of her cunning (I mean this in a good way).
I was being a little too much tongue-in-cheek about it, only because I found that book to be absolutely horrid. Though maybe not as horrid as those self help books based on Machiavelli’s The Prince.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: I think it was an awful book as well. Among other things, it makes sex transactional (oddly, for our discussion, during the Renaissance, it rather was). Today, it does not have to be and, IMO should not be. Also, I have always found “bad” or non-Rules girls to be more fun to be around – even if I am not the person with whom they are not following the Rules.
ETA: The Prince gets a bad rap. Most people who talk about it have never read it. Much like Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s funny: I was reading The Prince in grad school when some of those self help books based on it came out and the reason I hated them was precisely because they got the book completely wrong. Also, context! Machiavelli’s book was about a very specific set of circumstances and how to rule effectively/ideally within them and those don’t really translate into the boardroom or the bedroom. I confess that from all the political philosophy books I had to read The Prince was one of my favorites.
As for the rules book: in the guise of empowerment, the books actually reduced every relationship a woman has to, as you so well put it, transactional sex. Apt for the renaissance and the middle ages, not so much for this day and age. A friend from grad school once set me up with a friend of hers, and ahead of the date she gave me a talking to about ‘the rules’. I had to contain myself not to laugh at her. After that I never quite saw her in the same way again.
ETA: you are also quite right about Smith. Not many people bother to actually read these books and go on judging them based on utter misconceptions.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia:
It is one of my favorites from my “Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Marx” course.* Nicky described how the politics of his time worked. He didn’t advocate it.
As far as the Rules go, I say wait as long as you want based on your attraction – and weighing of any risk of sleeping with slutty boys – the rest is silly. One deprives oneself of pleasure – or learning of disappointment.**
*J. S. Mill, In toto, is another.
**See, I read my Machiavelli and am a realist.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Many fond memories of reading On Liberty and also his Three Essays on Religion. Probably the one I hated to read the most was Hobbes’ Leviathan. I found even Hegel to be more engaging than that.
Silly is the perfect word for the Rules. These things have the touch of the ineffable, can’t be codified so trying it is a fool’s errand. As a romantic I tend to think the bigger disappointment would be to wholly give in to the deprivation.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: I don’t agree with Hobbes, but he wasn’t a hard read for me. I am not a romantic, but I may be a rank sentimentalist.
As an aging roué, the rest seems so silly. If one wants it to be transactional, just let one know and one will either pay or not. If one doesn’t want that, then there are mysteries and confusions and stuff.*
* I once played hard to get so much with a woman who looked like Kelly LeBrock the she stopped talking to me. I have friends who remind me of that quite often.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes for me it was both that I disagreed with Hobbes and that I found reading him a hard slog.
I find it particularly difficult to play those games (hard to get, etc) and wish people would be more up front about what they want, even if where they are at is ambivalence or transactionality. On occasion one gets lucky and finds the mysteries, hopefully not too many of the (inevitable)confusions and some times even some feels.
Roué is such a good word, sounds so much nicer than responsible libertine :)
So sad there isn’t a feminine equivalent of it.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus:
My (parochial, in every sense) high school teachers’ theory: Side effects of syphillis, which gradually damaged not only his bones, his temper & his brain, but crippled his offspring in utero.
@Valdivia:
Well, that’s a common enough human failing. But I think it’s also hard for us modern “rationalists” to appreciate how scary it must have been for everyone in Henry’s court to think about the possibility that their King, representative of the entire people, could be “impotent” at producing heirs (& increasingly unhinged in his pursuit of one). Look at all the pundits who still fret publicly about the President’s or Putin’s respective “manliness”, and try to put yourself in the mindset of someone for whom the Head Man in Charge was literally the embodiment of the state, on this plane of existence & all others as well. If Henry failed, the country would be torn apart in a very literal way, and it’s not as though anybody had the option of electing a different king or moving to a more socially progressive community…
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Roué comes with under eye pouches. And graying hair. As far as the rest goes, I am on your side. We all look for the intellectual companion who is sexually amazing. Finding it is hard.
Valdivia
@Anne Laurie:
It is hard to put oneself in that mindset but yes. And also: the fact that at the time it was believed that women determined the gender of the child since they knew close to nothing about the actual workings of reproduction. Quite extraordinary that only one generation later they accepted Elizabeth as the embodiment of the state at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Elizabeth was accepted because offering Catholic heir would not have worked.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Valdivia:
“Adventuress” has a nice ring to it.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
The spanish slang equivalent is viejo verde so in spite of its origins I still think roué sounds much better! :)
@Steeplejack (phone):
yes I quite like that, could work as the feminine version of rake too. I wish there were one with a little more elan. A girl can dream
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Let’s stay with roué then.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Moi, it’s me for bed now.
Talk to you later.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: convenu.
Re: Elizabeth. Meaning that she was accepted because any alternative would have turned the country back to Catholicism?
I too am off to los brazos de morfeo.
g’night.
hitchhiker
I love the books. Mostly I love that somebody finally said freaking Thomas More was not a saint but a psychopath.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Valdivia:
The luck of the draw was such that ALL of the potential heirs who survived to adulthood were women: Mary Tudor, Elizabeth Tudor, and their first cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. Any male Plantagenets who survived both the War of the Roses and the reigns of Henrys VII and VIII were pretty distant from the throne.
Heck, even when they plotted to bypass Mary Tudor and install a legitimately-born Protestant Tudor on the throne, there was no male available so Jane Grey was shoved onto the throne against her will.
Valdivia
@Mnemosyne (tablet): yes I remember the Jane Grey episode. Maybe a little karma that all the eligible heirs for Henry VIII were women after all he made them suffer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
And they had been raised in prison like Edward Courtenay or been out of England for far too long like Reginald Pole.
Paul in KY
@Valdivia: Nice birthing hips.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Vast majority of Plantagenets by then were dead, or exiled.