– Masterpiece Studio –
WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Episode Five of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.
Screenwriter, and newly minted Oscar winner, Peter Straughan is fascinated by stories of loyalty and betrayal. In Episode Five of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, Cromwell’s loyalty is under question. Today, Peter joins the podcast to discuss adapting and writing this captivating drama series.
TRANSCRIPT
Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.
In the previous episode of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, Queen Jane tragically dies from complications after giving birth to her son, Edward. While Henry’s heart still is, and may forever be with his late wife, he feels it is his duty as king to remarry. By Episode Five, Henry is engaged to the German Princess Anne of Cleves, a marriage rooted more in political alliances than love. He feels that this duty to the nation shouldn’t end with him.
CLIP
Henry: Her cousin.
Cromwell: The Duke of Bavaria?
Henry: It appears to me that our friendship with the German states might be further strengthened if we made a match between him and Mary.
A few days later, while Henry’s fiancée, Anne, is en route to England to meet him for the first time, Henry hatches a plot to surprise his new bride before she arrives, a scheme that has everyone worried.
CLIP
Henry: My lord, I have decided to make speed to Rochester and greet the bride in my own person!
Cromwell: Why sir? It’ll only be a day or two before she arrives.
Henry: I want to nourish love.
Episode Five is a roller coaster for Henry’s fixer, Thomas Cromwell. He fields his master’s requests, demands, and vexations to varying degrees of success. By the end of this episode, Cromwell is elevated to the position of Earl of Essex but is stripped of this title by the end of the day. His future is bleak.
CLIP
Stephen Gardiner: Adieu, Cromwell.
Cromwell: You give me my title, Stephen.
Stephen Gardiner: You have no title. It’s gone. You are no more than God made you. May he take you to his mercy.
Today, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light screenwriter, and newly minted Oscar winner, Peter Straughan joins us to discuss his adaptation process and writing this captivating drama series.
Jace Lacob: And this week we are joined by Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light screenwriter Peter Straughan. Welcome.
Peter Straughan: Thank you.
Jace Lacob: We are speaking about two weeks after the Oscars, so I want to start by offering my congratulations on your Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Conclave. It’s richly deserved. Conclave is such a brilliant thriller about certainty, complicity, and fidelity. What went through your head when Amy Poehler announced your name?
Peter Straughan: Sort of the sound of radio static is what was in my head. I had a mounting panic as we got closer and closer to the award because they helpfully announced about two awards before mine that there were a billion people watching. And that just put me into a bit of a tailspin. But yeah, no, it was wonderful.
Jace Lacob: Conclave is about the selection of a new Pope, “Mean Girls in the Vatican” as one critic put it. But it’s a timely meditation on the perils of power and the dangers of certainty, the great enemy of unity. But Conclave is as much about faith as it is about politics. Do you see conclave as being a cousin to Wolf Hall in that regard, the pomp and circumstance masking the political at its center?
Peter Straughan: Yes. There are certain overlaps I think definitely, and certain concerns that they have in common. There’s even a commonality in the trajectory to some extent of the main character. I mean, they’re very, very different people, Cromwell and Lawrence, but they both have that outsider status. Neither is expected to go as far as they do. Obviously, no one’s expecting Cromwell to rise as high as he does.
And Lawrence isn’t expected to push as hard as he does, or end up being as radical a force as he ends up being. I think he surprises himself which is not true of Cromwell who I think always has a kind of iron core of self-belief. But yeah, that sort of underdog outsider working their way up through a quite rigid power system, I think that’s what drew me to both of the stories to some extent.
Jace Lacob: Of adapting plays, you once said, and I love this quote, “They come as friends, but they’re secretly assassins.” Novels, on the other hand, make no such pretense. Whether it’s Conclave or Wolf Hall, how would you describe your approach to the work of adaptation? If you are adapting a novel as in both of these cases, where do you begin as a screenwriter?
Peter Straughan: I begin to be honest with my emotional response to the text. That’s what will decide whether or not I do it. Because I think without that, without having some sort of genuine, deep connection to the story, there won’t be the rudder that you need to guide you through all of the thousands of choices that essentially an adaptation is, you know, this piece and not this piece, this piece here, that piece there. All of those choices have to be made on the basis of a kind of instinct, really. So, you need to feel like you are deeply simpatico with the core of the book that you’re adapting.
So, I start with that. It’s just, do I connect with it? And then again, a very sort of instinctive process is going through the book again and just underlining lines, passages, sometimes whole sequences on really no more kind of complicated basis than these feel like they will probably end up on screen. So, you do an initial sift really of what’s the material that I’m going to be working with? What’s the clay that I’m going to be working with? That sounds insulting to reduce it to clay. I suppose it’s going to go through a reshaping process one way or the other. Perhaps it’s more like dismantling something and putting it together in a slightly different form.
With something like Wolf Hall, it’s both an incredible gift and an incredible challenge because it’s so rich and it’s a huge canvas for a start. It’s so rich. The characters are so memorable. She’s a wonderful dialogue writer, Hilary. And often there are whole scenes that you just think, there it is, there it is already, nothing to be done. But also, it flows like a river, that narrative style that she has, it flows like a river.
It is like mosaic work is the other slightly labored metaphor that I keep relying on. You take all the pieces that you love and you think, what are the ways I can put them together? And sometimes they will fall into exactly the same shape as the book, and sometimes you’re having to take a line from one part of the story and put it somewhere completely different or take a memory and make it a line of dialogue. It’s a kind of magpie process of not wanting to waste any of the beautiful things.
Jace Lacob: If you are moving those mosaic tiles, then, to continue that metaphor, how conscious are you of leaving your fingerprints on an adaptation? You’re obviously altering the work by what you choose to remove or keep in, but how cognizant are you of putting your own influence, your own values and morality on a script?
Peter Straughan: It will happen anyway, whether I choose to or not. And I think that’s what I mean by the most important thing being that emotional connection you have with it, so it already feels as if it’s your story on some very deep level. And I think when it’s a happy adaptation, you are at least running parallel with the story that the author had in mind or had in their heart.
I’ve noticed that there is a common kind of story that I seem to be responding to in books that seem quite varied from the outside, and that’s a story to do with those that are loyal and those who betray. And I don’t really know why that’s the story that I respond to, but I think that’s what I connected with. I sort of realized that that was really very much what I responded to in Wolf Hall. It’s like a forest. There are lots of paths you could take through Wolf Hall. And obviously Cromwell’s loyalty to the Cardinal is central, but for me, that became really what it was about, that it was a kind of revenge tale in a way where Cromwell decides to take revenge upon those who betrayed his master.
The other thing which is interesting I think is to some extent when you’re adapting, you need to be able to be a ventriloquist as well, because there will be moments where you are adding dialogue or even moments or scenes that aren’t from the original material, but you want them to match. So that can feel a little sacrilegious, especially with authors that you hugely admire, but you need a certain amount of chutzpah and to be prepared to do that.
Jace Lacob: With Wolf Hall, you’ve said that you had to settle on a spine for your adaptation of the novels, “… a kind of safety rope flung from one end of the narrative to the other” and settled upon a revenge tale as your narrative engine. How did that inform the narrative structure for Wolf Hall and then moving into The Mirror and the Light?
Peter Straughan: It was exactly the same process. Peter and I met early on and said, okay, so what is the spine for The Mirror and the Light? And also, it felt important to us that it was a continuation of Wolf Hall, because I think Hilary saw them as essentially one book that had been cut into three parts. So, the starting point for us was that there is a mystery in The Mirror and the Light, really, there’s a historical mystery, which is that Cromwell’s fall is difficult to understand, it’s difficult to explain. There’s a kind of hidden process at work. And I remember Hillary saying that for her as a writer, at the beginning of the process, she goes straight to where the problem is because that’s where the energy is that you can release into your story.
So, the problem, and I thought a useful way of looking at it was the problem is, why does Cromwell fall? And so, what felt like the solution to Peter and I was that it’s of his own doing really. There were so many people, there’s the old families, the Poles who hate him. There’s Norfolk who hates him. There’s Gardiner who hates him. The king is unpredictable. But in the end, it felt most interesting that the only person really who could bring Cromwell down was Cromwell.
And so, once we had that idea, it was then, then why? What’s the mechanism for that? And it seemed to us that the answer to that was Wolsey’s daughter, Dorothea, who Cromwell goes to see. And Dorothea accuses him of being a traitor, of betraying her father, Wolsey. And I think Cromwell’s notion of himself as he says, the loyal butcher’s dog who protected and defended and fought for his master, it’s a real foundational idea he has of himself. And when that’s attacked by Dorothea, it cracks.
And I think that’s the start of the fall of Cromwell there because I think he begins to question, am I a traitor? Did I abandon my master in order to forge my own relationship with Henry, my own career? Did I betray him? And if he betrays him, then he’s on that list of other traitors that he brought down in Wolf Hall. So, one way of looking at it is, he accepts that he is the last of the traitors of Wolsey and is involved in bringing himself down. And Wolsey’s ghost disappears when he’s accused of being a traitor and reappears when he’s finally paid the price for that and goes into the tower. And he’s kind of free of the curse.
Jace Lacob: I love, as you say, the fact that Wolsey disappears in Episode Two and only comes back later on once Cromwell has been sort of taken down. That sense of humanity of Cromwell, I think, is both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness, and maybe the cause of his undoing as he fails to act against his enemies while in the king’s favor. As a writer, how sympathetic a character do you find Cromwell to be?
Peter Straughan: Hugely sympathetic. I remember reading the first page of Wolf Hall, before you really know who your character is, it’s just a boy who’s close to being murdered by his father. He’d been beaten by his father, “Now get up” is the command. And you’re with him from that moment on really in this battle to survive. And I think you’re absolutely right, it’s his humanity that is why he becomes our man in that terrible tournament, which is essentially the world he enters. And it’s also the chink in the armor that will bring him down.
Jace Lacob: With both Wolf Hall and The Mirror and the Light, you’re working with director Peter Kosminsky. How would you describe your working relationship as screenwriter and director? Is it a symbiosis of sorts?
Peter Straughan: Absolutely. I mean, even more so with The Mirror and the Light because I started Wolf Hall before Peter was attached initially, and then we worked on the script together. But Peter was here from the very beginning. He was in close contact with Hilary as she was writing the book and was in correspondence with her and would then discuss things with me and send me emails. And then we talked through, and Peter worked much more closely on the scripts with The Mirror and the Light. You know, we practically did them together. So, it’s very much a partnership.
Jace Lacob: Cromwell is aware of how utterly volatile and unpredictable his master is, as he tells Rafe in Episode Five:
CLIP
Rafe: The king would not elevate you, make you Lord High Chamberlain, Earl of Essex, if he meant to destroy you.
Cromwell: Have I not taught you, Rafe? Have you not read it in the ‘Book Called Henry’ which I wrote for you? Never say what the king will not do.
Jace Lacob: And others can see it too, like imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, as he tells Cromwell in Episode One:
CLIP
Chapuys: You have Henry’s favor, it’s true, but if he withdraws it? You know the cardinal’s fate. And you have no affinity, no great family at your back, for when all is said, you are a blacksmith’s son. Your whole life depends on the next beat of Henry’s heart.
Jace Lacob: But we also get the sense that Cromwell believes his success has insulated him from reprisal. Has Cromwell constructed a false version of Henry in his head?
Peter Straughan: There’s an image in Wolf Hall, which is a young Cromwell when he is a soldier, holding a snake for a bet to see how long he can hold it before it bites him. It was originally the very first scene of Wolf Hall, we changed it in the end. But I always thought that was the central image. How long can you stay close to danger, believing that you’re doing good by being there? The other thing that’s very sympathetic about Cromwell is, I don’t think it’s power for power’s sake. I mean, there’s an element of that, but he has projects that he wants to see through, religious reform. He also, I think, sees himself as a diluting force in terms of Henry’s savagery. He tries to save heads from the block.
So, I think he’s aware of the risk. I think he’s a little addicted to the power, I think that is true. There’s a dream in The Mirror and the Light of another life he could lead, a peaceful life and a safe life. He could go with his daughter. Or, he dreams of the abbey that he wants to buy, that he once visited, which feels like a dream and an idyll of the peaceful life. But I think someone says in the book, you’re a gambler, you like the risk of the bet, essentially. And I think that’s true. I think he’d be bored by the normal life. He wants to be in the center, he wants to be at the heart of the battle.
But I also think when he’s at greatest risk, he feels if he can just get face to face with the king, it’ll be all right. He believes in his relationship with the king and his ability to reach the king and touch the king. And he probably is right to some extent about that, and that’s why others are so concerned with keeping him away from the king.
Jace Lacob: He has the gift of finesse, especially with Henry. He can finesse his way out of almost any situation. But yes, keeping him from Henry prevents that. If that’s the role of power in The Mirror and the Light, what do you see as the role of utility here? In Henry’s court, is someone’s worth based entirely on their utility, and has Cromwell’s utility therefore run out?
Peter Straughan: Here’s the thing, it’s a mystery what Henry thinks, actually. Why does Henry, having just made him the Earl of Essex, raise him as high as he could, weeks later, destroy him? And we don’t really know why. Now to some extent, I think Henry in The Mirror and the Light is not Henry from Wolf Hall. The illness is progressing. He’s in pain a lot more. And there’s this kind of eruption of the irrational and the violent. There’s far less of that in Wolf Hall, really. You feel like you can, there’ll be flare ups of anger, but you feel you can reason with him. But there’s a kind of murderous irrationality to Henry in The Mirror and the Light.
There’s a point towards the end where Cromwell bemoans the terrible mistake they’re making by getting rid of him because he knows no one will run the kingdom as well as he does. There’s an arrogance to that, but I think that’s also a truth. So, I don’t think, it’s not that his utility is at an end, it’s that the fools are getting rid of him, and they’ll pay the price for that.
Jace Lacob: Wolf Hall tracks not only Cromwell’s rise and fall, but that of a large slew of other characters: Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Risley, Rafe, Gregory Cromwell, Jane Rochford. While you’re obviously tracking each of their ascents and descents, did you have a personal favorite character to write for?
Peter Straughan: Yeah, this is two different things. So, my favorite character is Rafe, who I just love. And I find him very moving. There’s a scene near the end with Rafe that always undoes me. It’s a lovely performance. Again, I think it’s the story of those who are loyal and those who betray. And Rafe is one of the few who always remains loyal. And I was always pleased that historically he survived all of the wreckage.
But in terms of who you enjoy writing, sometimes that’s the characters who have bitterness or have a wicked sense of humor, whatever. So, someone like Lady Rochford, for example, was always great to write. Mary, who is strange and twisted and dark and dangerous and pitiful all at the same time was great to write. And a lovely performance, I thought, by Lilit. The women actually, I think probably often the scenes between Cromwell and the women were the ones I most enjoyed writing.
Jace Lacob: Cromwell and Mary, they are polar opposites politically. They seem thrust together time and time again, and their scenes together do pulse with intrigue in intention. And that bed chamber scene is filled with a subtext that ricochets between romantic intrigue and paternal concern. How did you approach writing these very loaded scenes between Cromwell and Mary?
Peter Straughan: There’s a lot of static in the air between them that you can really rely on. So, those scenes can hold silence like no other scenes in the drama. The first episode of The Mirror and the Light between Mary and Cromwell, there’s a moment where he holds out a letter that he wants her to sign, and she stares at him and it just holds. And it’s just such a beautiful performance by Lilit. It takes a great actor to really hold our attention and to see something unfolding in front of us without saying a word, without any major facial gestures, you know, it just radiates from her. There’s a kind of rich psychodrama playing out between them always that just made those scenes a joy to work with.
Jace Lacob: Episode Five, “Mirror”, finds Cromwell losing his influence over the king. For far too long, he’s had his hand on the tiller of the king’s will, and now others are seizing it for themselves. At the same time, the return of Cromwell’s enemy Stephen Gardiner seems to spell doom. How did you approach this penultimate installment? What’s at stake here?
Peter Straughan: This is the Anne of Cleves episode. There are lots of different elements that you can lay at the door of the failure of Cromwell, and this is one of them. The failure of the marriage. The failure to kill Pole is another, that’s another thing that you think Henry doesn’t forgive him for. But the failure of the marriage with Anne of Cleves is Henry’s rejection really, as we experience in the drama, his rejection by Anne of Cleves that he won’t forgive him for. This feels like a major fault line suddenly in the relationship with Henry.
So, I think it’s that thing that for Cromwell to survive, he has to have this impeccable record, this perfect record of not failing. And he fails here, he fails to give the king what he wants. Which is exactly what the Cardinal did and look what happened to the Cardinal. So, you can feel the luck starting to run out here.
Jace Lacob: Cromwell manages to convince Henry not to disguise himself as among other things, a Russian nobleman or a shepherd.
CLIP
Cromwell: Perhaps just go as a gentleman?
Henry: A gentleman of England? A gentleman with no name. Yes. Very well, I shall be ruled by Lord Cromwell as all of the foreigners claim I am.
Jace Lacob: And there’s a deep undercurrent of danger here that the audience seems more aware of than Cromwell himself. What’s embedded within that final whispered line?
Peter Straughan: Another reading of what happens really, fundamentally, is that Cromwell, ironically with the king’s help, becomes more and more powerful to the point where the king begins to resent, or even fear Cromwell. Some say that he fears Cromwell, and this is one of the things that Cromwell’s accused of later on, that he wanted the throne for himself. So, there’s always that paranoia.
I remember reading Solzhenitsyn, the Gulag Archipelago, I think, and there was a recurring image in there of Stalin as a spider at the center of the web. And as you rise in power, you get closer and closer to the spider at the center, and it’s more and more dangerous. And the spider is paranoid. And that’s Henry as well, isn’t it? The closer you get to him, the longer you’re around him, how long is it before you fall out of favor and you become accused?
Jace Lacob: So as much as Henry discovers that Anne of Cleves’ portrait didn’t exactly capture her as she is, she’s said to have recoiled when she sees Henry for the first time. Is this the moment, a deliciously off camera one, where Cromwell’s fate is sealed?
Peter Straughan: I’m not sure there is one particular moment, or that’s not the way we decided to go with it anyway. I think there are various, real-world reasons. There are things you could put on paper and go, yep, that’s the reason. You didn’t kill Pole. You messed up with Anne of Cleves. You didn’t give the king what he wanted. You didn’t get rid of Norfolk when you could have done it earlier. You didn’t rise in the morning with the ax in your hand as he gives Rafe that advice in the first episode. You didn’t do that, you let Norfolk survive, which is inexplicable.
So, there were lots of reasons where you think, well, that’s why. But all of it for me, I found most interesting to think all of that has been allowed by Cromwell himself. So, the fundamental reason for the fall of Cromwell is that Cromwell, on some level, decides to destroy himself. Now, that’s never made explicit in the scripts, and I don’t think Peter ever said it to Mark. It was just a way for Peter and I to kind of navigate the psychodrama going on underneath.
Jace Lacob: Well, we get echoes, I think of Jane Seymour’s line,
CLIP
Jane Seymour: The king never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.
Jace Lacob: But we don’t get a goodbye from Henry to Cromwell. He doesn’t see him. And how does the lack of a final encounter sort of make Henry’s decision even more vicious, even more final?
Peter Straughan: I like that scene, that we can sense is the final encounter between Henry and Cromwell.
CLIP
Cromwell: Let’s say the ironmasters gave us their best welcome, opened their minds to us, showed us all their secrets.
Henry: They must. No one could keep their secrets from me.
Peter Straughan: As with Wolsey as with various characters as with Boleyn obviously, Anne Boleyn, there’s a moment where he’ll just discard another person, no matter how close he’s been to them, discard them and not look back. Or even worse, discard them and then eulogize them afterwards as if it was not his responsibility that they’ve been killed or taken away. I mean, there’s an element of being a psychopath in Henry, honestly.
Jace Lacob: Completely, completely. I love the scene where the Privy Council walks behind Cromwell. And it’s only when the men around him don’t stop that Cromwell seems to realize what’s about to happen to him and his body sort of catches up with the momentum around him. How did you look to show that dawning realization, how significant a moment is this for Cromwell?
Peter Straughan: He has a soldier’s instincts, I suppose, or a fighter’s instincts. And I think you’re absolutely right to say that it’s his mind catching up with what his body’s already understood, which is, here it comes, here comes the threat. Any sequence like that is just wonderful to write and it’s wonderful to film that mounting tension as they walk in. And when he sits down and acts very calmly and says, well, we should go with the business. But he knows already. They’re all standing around and he knows.
And then I find it heartbreaking, that moment where he fights back against them physically as if this could be stopped. It’s like an animal suddenly breaking through, a sort of corned animal.
Jace Lacob: No, it’s a baited bear. I mean, he’s cornered, and they fall on him. It’s a surprisingly violent scene. His chain is seized and ripped off his neck, and he takes them all on. He’s this baited bear in the corner.
Peter Straughan: And he’s a street fighter, you know? The keeper of the tower who comes and says, come with me. And so, the fight goes out of him when he says that. But you’re right, it’s a little moment, isn’t it, and they happen every now and then in Wolf Hall where all of this sort of courtly chivalric polish falls away and you see that it’s a savage world and it’s built on savagery. The whole thing’s built on; can you kill someone else? And there were these little eruptions every now and then where that’s revealed clearly.
Jace Lacob: I think it is, yeah, William Kingston showing up, it stops Cromwell completely. He knows in that second, he’s going to the tower. He knows that it’s over. Yet he’s still trying to hold onto his dignity. He demands they use his hard-won title.
CLIP
Stephen Gardiner: Adieu, Cromwell.
Cromwell: You give me my title, Stephen.
Stephen Gardiner: You have no title. It’s gone. You are no more than God made you. May he take you to his mercy.
Jace Lacob: How significant is it that Gardiner refuses to grant him the title, that he reduces Cromwell back to his more humble origins?
Peter Straughan: It’s the fulcrum moment in the whole thing, isn’t it? It’s the wheel turning full circle and he drops back to where he was when we met him. And Gardiner, who was the great antagonist of the story from the very beginning is the first real antagonist apart from the world I suppose itself, who comes back and is the instrument of the downfall alongside Norfolk.
But the thing I always really liked about the scenes with Gardiner is, this was to some extent true with Thomas More as well, that they are implacable enemies, but there’s a kind of comradeship as well. In the later scenes with Gardiner and Cromwell, they have so much in common because they both have to work with Henry, and they know what a terrible task that is.
There’s another layer on top of the enmity, which I find makes it quite moving and just truer, I suppose, you know, richer and truer. They’re all expendable. He’s no safer than Cromwell, and at times has been very close to being executed. So, I always found that quite moving that all of these enemies, in a sense, have the comradeship of having to work with Henry.
Jace Lacob: The setting for Wolf Hall might be the Tudor period, but there is a timelessness to Henry and Cromwell’s story that is palpably relevant for our times. What do you hope audiences in 2025 ultimately take away from this narrative?
Peter Straughan: I suppose for me it’s an emotional rather than a kind of theoretical relationship. I just want them to keep that position on Cromwell’s shoulder and go with him step by step through this and feel it, identify with him, feel it as he feels it. Because that’s how I experienced it and that’s what I found so moving about the books. So, I suppose I’ll be delighted if audiences have that same experience with the TV series.
Jace Lacob: Is it about then sort of connecting to that inner humanity of Cromwell, a person who traditionally has been seen as sort of a villainous character and transforming his story into something that we can all understand, that we can all relate to, that we can all sympathize with, that he’s not the villain perhaps that we’ve come to think of for the last 400 years?
Peter Straughan: Absolutely. I think that was always Hilary’s project, to take this character from the wings, who, as you say, was always presented as a two-dimensional sort of pantomime villain, and to reexamine him and reanimate him, and find in him a kind of underdog hero.
Jace Lacob: You’ve got quite a few projects in the works, including adaptations of Ned Beauman’s, The Teleportation Accident, and Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe series. What is next for you?
Peter Straughan: Well, the next thing that’s going to shoot is another adaptation. There are a series of books by Philip Kerr, loosely grouped under Berlin Noir, which is a detective story, but sort of spans through from twenties Germany through under the Nazi rule to post-war. So, I’ve adapted a sort of origin series for that, and that’s going to be shooting this year.
Jace Lacob: So, Bernie Gunther.
Peter Straughan: So, Bernie Gunther is exactly right. Yeah.
Jace Lacob: Peter Straughan, thank you so very much.
Peter Straughan: It was a pleasure. Thank you.
And now we’re back with Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light production researcher Kirsten Claiden-Yardley to discuss fact and fiction in Episode Five.
Jace Lacob: The education of Anne of Cleves, it is said she knows no other language than German and can neither sing nor dance. Was Anne’s education quite as cheerless as it’s made out to be here?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: It’s probably not quite as dull as they make out, Henry VIII and the English courtiers. The Cleve’s court in the 15th century is quite influenced by Burgundy, and so jesters, music, hunting, these are all things that they’re aware of and that they indulge in. The problem that they have by the time that Anne of Cleves is a child is that they’re not as wealthy. So, they probably can’t afford to do as much as they did in the 15th century. So, she’s probably missed that high point of Burgundian culture in her home.
She could read, she could write, but there’s kind of different expectations on her. Anne of Cleves is perhaps a little bit more domestic in her education. So, she’s learning about how you manage your household, like how you manage finances, cooking and sewing and embroidering. And I think the other big difference in her education is that the German education that she would have had has this concept of the Frauenzimmer. So, this is a female only space. So, boys are only allowed in there up to the age of 12. And after that, the only man who’s allowed in is the doctor to the household. And when the girls growing up in this room socialize, it’s often in the afternoons and they’re quite carefully watched by chaperones.
If we jump well forwards of where The Mirror and the Light gets to, it’s quite a contrast with what later comes out about Catherine Howard’s earlier education, where she has a male music tutor, for example. And there’s a lot more, I suppose, hijinks almost, and kind of a distinct lack of supervision. Whereas Anne of Cleves has this quite tightly controlled environment so then it’s a little bit of a shock coming over to England where I suppose things are perhaps a bit more relaxed, a bit freer than she’s used to, a bit more intermingled between the male and female members of the court.
Jace Lacob: Henry wants to disguise himself when he meets his new bride, and he comes up with a series of outlandish costumes. Everyone seems afraid that Henry will not approve of Anne.
CLIP
Cromwell: Christ.
Wriothesley: Well, we did what we could. You are afraid that he will not find her as reported, because for sure she will find him not as reported.
Jace Lacob: Did she recoil when she saw him for the first time, and was he disguised?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: He did go down to meet her in disguise. Accounts of what happened at that time have got a little bit distorted perhaps by the fact that he then later wanted to divorce her and so the narrative of it all is getting interpreted through the evidence that they’re trying to put forward to annul the marriage. So, he does go down in disguise and there probably was an element of shock for her. As we said, as much as anything, it’s quite alien to the way things took place in Cleves, like if you go with this concept of sort of the Frauenzimmer and things having a band barge in, in disguise, it’s perhaps a bit of a shock.
I’ve read different things by historians as to whether she really didn’t know this was going to happen at all. I know there’s a work by a lady called Nikki Clark who has written about ladies in waiting and she’s a little bit skeptical about this idea that there would have been no warning at all. Because obviously Anne has people with her, she has English ladies with her, she’s got some English men of the court and I know she’s a little bit skeptical that nobody would have sent a message going, heads up, Henry’s on his way, and that they wouldn’t have been able to warn her at all.
But, even if you’ve been warned, if it’s not what you’re used to, can you stop yourself from recoiling a bit? That takes quite a strength of sort of self-control over your physical reactions.
Jace Lacob: Did Henry elevate Cromwell to Lord High Chamberlain and Earl of Essex only to have him stripped of his title immediately? Or conversely, how long passed between his elevation and his downfall? Is it the same day in reality?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: It’s not the same day. The way it’s portrayed is a little bit unclear of exactly how much time is passing in that bit of the episode. Because if I remember correctly, we have him being told that he tells Rafe Sadler and Risley that he’s Lord Chamberlain and Earl of Essex. Then we have the scene that Henry and Cromwell have their heart to heart, Rafe and Cromwell walk out together and then we roll into the scene where it’s taken away. So, it looks like it’s not very long.
And certainly, there’s also this idea that the Earl of Essex dies, and Cromwell becomes Earl of Essex the next day. That’s all being compressed a little bit. The Earl of Essex dies in March, Cromwell becomes the new Earl of Essex in April, and then it’s about two months, roughly, until he is arrested. So, it’s a fairly short timeline in, in the overall scale of the reign, but it’s perhaps a bit longer than it comes across when you’re watching the show.
Jace Lacob: Kirsten Claiden-Yardley, thank you so very much.
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: You’re welcome.
Next time, Cromwell is imprisoned in the Tower of London. Rafe, his ever-loyal ward, pays him a visit.
CLIP
Rafe: I did not know myself what was happening. If I had known, I would have got warning to you somehow.
Next week, we sit down with Thomas Cromwell himself, actor Mark Rylance, to discuss how he got inside the mind of King Henry VIII’s infamous fixer.
Source: PBS Masterpiece