– Masterpiece Studio –
WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Episode Six of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.
Actor Mark Rylance earned multiple awards for his nuanced portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall. He returns to the role in the sequel, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, and explores a more vulnerable side to Henry’s infamous fixer. Today, Mark discusses saying goodbye to this character, the importance of mentors, and the beauty of mystery.
TRANSCRIPT
Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.
July, 1540. The Tower of London. Thomas Cromwell might not have been a prisoner in the tower before, but he is no stranger to the room in which he is being kept, for it is the same room that Anne Boleyn was kept in, where she pleaded to Cromwell for her life shortly before her execution. The irony that Cromwell himself commissioned these very rooms where Anne spent her final days is not lost on him. As Cromwell awaits his fate, many thoughts occupy the once powerful man’s mind: thoughts of his past, thoughts of Anne, and a memory of his daughter Jenneke, who offered him an escape from Henry’s dangerous court.
CLIP
Cromwell: If I had known, I would have come.
Jenneke: Then come with me now, father. To Antwerp, that you were homesick for. But you will not.
But Cromwell chose to stay, to bask in the reflected glow of Henry’s power. Now, Cromwell’s ever faithful ward, Rafe Sadler, pays him a visit to share what few details he has about his master’s imprisonment.
CLIP
Cromwell: How did Parliament take it?
Rafe: In silence.
Cromwell: No doubt astonished. A man made Earl in the morning and kicked out by afternoon.
Through a series of questionable interrogations, Cromwell’s case begins to look less and less favorable. But hope is not lost yet.
CLIP
Wriothesley: The king tells me that you could write to him. Do it tonight.
Today, we talk with actor Sir Mark Rylance about playing one of the most powerful people in English Tudor history, embodying and redeeming Thomas Cromwell, and how Mark finds beauty in the mystery of life.
Jace Lacob: This week we are joined by Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light star, Sir Mark Rylance. Welcome.
Mark Rylance: Welcome. Thank you.
Jace Lacob: We are at the end of the road with Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. How does it feel to have reached the conclusion of Cromwell’s journey?
Mark Rylance: Oh, he’s a character I’ll miss, and it was the longest piece of work I think I’ve ever done on film. What is it, about 12 hours? Two six-episode series. So to live with a character that long and have a gap in between them too and grow older with him, yeah, it was a very, very lucky and special experience for me. I never would’ve believed I had it in me really.
Jace Lacob: Wolf Hall and The Mirror and the Light feel like a labor of love, not just a love letter to the complexity of Thomas Cromwell, but a love letter to the brilliance of the late Hilary Mantel and the beauty of this evocative world she created in her work. How bittersweet was filming The Mirror and the Light after Hilary’s passing?
Mark Rylance: Yeah, well, we were aware of that. I mean, Peter Kosminsky, who worked with her pretty constantly after the first series, she would send him a hundred pages of the new novel as she was writing it and talk to him about it. So she was very, very present for Peter, who really loved her and loved the collaboration that they had together on this second series. I didn’t know her so well.
She was very enamored of my friend Ben Miles, who played Cromwell for the Royal Shakespeare Company. And the only time she visited the set, she came by my trailer as she was leaving and said, Mr. Rylance, if you want to know anything about Thomas Cromwell, ask Ben Miles. He knows everything there is to know. And that was about it, I got from Hilary. Not that I held that against her, I was very amused by it and touched. And Ben Miles is a wonderful actor, a close friend, so it was all good. But, I didn’t know her so well.
Peter said he felt that she was quite sensitive, and her capacity, her mental capacity, her memory, and her wit, and her articulate eloquence when she spoke in public, she gave a series of lectures in England in between the first and second series, was very impressive, wonderful. And so I admired her very much. And Peter said that she had a sensitivity, almost like a channeler or a medium. And there’s a little bit at the end of the book where she describes doing a bit of research and the guide showing her this is where this happened, this is where, [and] she wanders into another room and feels in this other room, this is where Cromwell was. And so Peter and I both felt her spirit quite strongly with us as we were filming.
And every morning we would compare the screenplay with the pages in the book that it was based on. And every morning, I think maybe apart from two or three, we would add things from the book back into the scenes. We would notice certain things that were a little bit sharper in the book and Peter, I think, had the confidence to do that partly because he’s an incredibly well prepared director, but partly because I think we felt Hilary with us and wanted to just have a last gaze at what she had written for this scene before we manifested it. So that was very, very pleasant. And so mostly our thoughts about Hillary were pleasant and happy.
Jace Lacob: What is it that ultimately resonated most deeply with you about Cromwell’s story? Is it that sense of humanity?
Mark Rylance: Well, it’s such a huge question. What comes into mind immediately was his care for his boys, for his son, and for his wards. He took on hundreds of young men. We see a few of them. Powerful people across the country sent their sons to him to try and learn what he knew, and he took on as many as he could.
That’s something you get from the book a little bit more than we had time to delve into in the TV series, is how much charitable work he was doing, how much he was connecting and looking after his own people, so to speak. As much as the aristocrats are looking after their own people. He was very concerned to share the benefits of his life and to ameliorate suffering wherever he could. At least that’s the impression I get from Hilary’s interpretation of him.
So that was a lovely thing to play. And I love the actors who played these parts and I got very close to them. So, that fondness piled into the sixth episode where out of love and fondness for some of them, he had to forbid them to come and see him, knowing that that meant he would never say goodbye to them, but that it would be too dangerous for them.
I think that the loyalty in the man, as Wolsey dubs him a butcher’s dog, and having a dog myself, it’s a very beautiful thing, the loyalty of dogs to any human being who treats them well, and memory of ones who treat them badly. And it was lovely to play a very loyal person for all the pain and discomfort that that loyalty to Wolsey, which he felt he had failed, caused him.
It just was such a, oh my God, will I ever play a character that’s so rounded again, you know, that has a thousand pages of notes that I can go delve into? I can open those books anywhere and find something completely precious and nutritious and fantastic. To be given the chance to live through that. Yeah, so it’s a big question, what’s the most special thing of all that? I wish I had his wit. I wish I had the beautiful language with which he addresses people both, both at length and even more the pithiness of some of his responses. Yeah, I wish I had his strength.
Jace Lacob: Has his shadow followed you then? I mean, is he still with you, Cromwell, in some way?
Mark Rylance: Oh yeah. Everything you play is. It’s a little bit easier when people say, oh, this is Thomas Cromwell to their friends than when mothers say to their little children, this is the BFG, and the little child looks at me, shrimp that I am, small ears, small nose, and tilts their head and go, no, I think mom’s lost her mind. That’s not the BFG. I love it.
But with Cromwell, at the moment, of course it will fade, but at the moment, a lot of people recognize me and want to talk to me about it, and that’s very nice. The people who don’t like you never say hello, you know, that’s what that means. They cross the other side of the street and speak behind your back. But the people who do like you say lovely things.
Jace Lacob: Cromwell attains a dizzying level of power within Henry’s court, but it’s reflected power. It’s courtesy of Henry. It flows from the prince, but that spigot can be turned off at any point. How seductive is that power for Cromwell, and given how much compromise he has to do in order to keep it, what is the cost?
Mark Rylance: He’s in some ways more powerful than the king. He knows the affairs of everything, everything that’s going on. And it is partly because his memory is so phenomenal, and his application. One of the temptations when I’ve had power and the power has come from someone else, like a board of trustees or a CEO in the arts world, or a director directing a play, or film producers, particularly when you feel trusted by them, you think, do I need to copy them in on this email, so to speak? Can I go beyond that? There’s so much to do, I will get more done if I don’t share every detail of not only what I’m doing, but how I’m doing it.
That’s a big temptation and Cromwell falls for it and stops communicating as much, stops probably having that cup of coffee or drink after work with the boss just to make sure that the boss knows where you are. And so in the gap, in that gap that occurs naturally when you are a trusted worker, those who want to bring you down, who are jealous or disagree with what you are doing, they can get in there as Stephen Gardiner does and misrepresent what you’re doing, not by lying, but by focusing on certain things that you’ve done, perhaps in order to achieve an end.
In this case, the very difficult managing of Henry’s daughter, Mary, princess Mary, very difficult managing of her and all the people around her who want her to be their leader, that gets confused in with, what the hell is he going to do if and when Henry VIII dies? And so his attentions to Mary are able to be used against him in a very damaging manner. I don’t know what he could have done differently about that. I don’t know what he could have done. But that’s an area that he absolutely should have been reporting to Henry all the time what he was doing.
And if I was ever in a position of power like that, I would take much more care to communicate as clearly as possible, particularly when something is sensitive with those who are giving me my power and make sure that they understand and agree and are defended against those enemies who will insinuate that you have a different ambition than to serve your master.
Jace Lacob: I want to talk about Mary in a second, but you mentioned trust and I want to hone in a little bit more on trust. This is the fourth time you’ve worked with Peter. You’ve said it’s like, “Working with a brother.” What is it like being directed by Peter and what sort of alchemy happens on set? Is it a form of magic?
Mark Rylance: I’ve worked with lovely directors, including Steven Spielberg, who’s a great friend and like a brother as well. So, this is not meant in any disrespect to any of the wonderful directors I’ve worked with, but Peter’s the only director I’ve ever worked with who turns up in the makeup van every morning. Now, in the makeup van, that’s the earliest workers on a film set. Well, there are crew and people setting up the set, but directors don’t have to come in for the makeup that the actors need to do. He will always visit the makeup van.
He knows everyone’s name. Hundreds of people in that van over the course of three months. A day player or me, he treats them absolutely the same, knows their name, respects them, treats them absolutely the same. With those of us who he’s worked with regularly, he knows where you peak, generally speaking, in your takes. He knows with me, where I am in take one, take two, three, four, five, six, where generally he’s going to get what he wants. And with someone else he’ll know this is where they are.
He gives brilliant notes. Of all the directors I worked with, I’d say he knows the most about acting, has paid the most attention to it. He’s very calm, very quiet. Leads a very quiet set, which is enormously helpful. He is a wonderful writer and so he did a lot of writing with Peter Straughan on this, as all directors do, but he often writes his own thing, so you get that added skill with him.
And yet, he’s impeccably prepared, impeccably prepared. He’ll have imagined how he’s going to shoot it and have that in his back pocket, but he never gets it out. He knows. And if you come up with something different on the floor on the day, he will change as much as he can if it makes sense to the story.
So pretty much every morning, as I was saying, we would compare the screenplay to the book again at the beginning of the day for each of the scenes we were going to do. And invariably we made changes. I hasten to add, not just changes in my part, but in other people’s parts where I felt, or he felt that the dialogue Hilary had given us had been cut a little bit too hard, or we were missing a particular turn or a particular color that she had given a character. And I trust him. Absolutely, absolutely trust him with anything and everything. He’s one of the great artists, it’s been my luck to work with.
Jace Lacob: I love that. This is a narrative where what’s unspoken is just as important as what’s spoken. And one of my favorite scenes in Mirror and the Light, which I spoke to Lilit Lesser about, is the bed chamber scene between Cromwell and Mary which teeters on this knife’s edge of the romantic and illicit. And then Mary makes it clear that she thinks of Cromwell as a father, her own father being of course the king. What did you make of this scene at the time you filmed it?
Mark Rylance: Steamy. Steamy and hot. Oh my, what the hell is she up to? By she, I mean Princess Mary. It was as confusing to play as it was in the book from Cromwell’s point of view.
There’s something about very, very magnetic, powerful events and people that you get pulled in. I remember the first time I met King Charles, [I] went to his home in Highgrove with my friend. And afterwards we came out and my friend said, wasn’t that amazing, all the decor and everything? I said, what? All I could see was King Charles! It was so extraordinary being in his presence after seeing him on television for so long. I didn’t notice anything else about the house at all. I mean, that’s what it’s like when you meet people like Bob Dylan or people like that who I’ve had the fortune to meet on occasions. They played it, I have to say of Lilit, completely true to that kind of magnetic enigma of someone.
CLIP
Mary: Do not make light of what you have done for me. You saved me when I was drowning in folly, when I was almost past recovery. Your care of me has been so tender, like that of a father.
Jace Lacob: I’ve seen it so many times, and every time I find something else in that scene. It just is two actors working at the top of their craft to deliver this scene that is so enigmatic, so mysterious, so tense, and it turns completely on a pinhead. It’s amazing.
While the central relationship in Wolf Hall is really between Cromwell and Henry, a lot of Wolf Hall focuses on Cromwell’s dynamic with the women around him; Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Mary, Jenneke, Bess. How would you describe Cromwell’s rapport with women? What drives his understanding of women?
Mark Rylance: Well, this Cromwell written by Hilary Mantel has a very good rapport with women. She understands women well and at times, I felt like though I knew I was playing a man, a very masculine man, but inside the consciousness was, after a month or so I thought, oh, this is really the consciousness of a woman in here. The listening and, I mean, who can be general about the sexes, but I’d say of the feminine then perhaps inside me that it was pulling at my own mother, my own awareness and love for women. And one of the great delights of playing Cromwell was how many scenes I had with wonderful actresses, playing characters that were in very powerful situations. Those were the more enjoyable scenes than some of the scenes with the crazy men that were around Cromwell.
MIDROLL
Jace Lacob: Over the course of The Mirror and the Light, we see Cromwell’s companions being pulled away from him, Rafe Sadler, Gregory, William FitzWilliam. He’s betrayed by most of his inner circle and the echo of his former master, Wolsey, becomes his only counsel. What does this shade represent to you? Does Wolsey represent Cromwell’s guilt? His conscience? How did you see the appearance of Wolsey throughout this?
Mark Rylance: As an actor, I don’t respond really to representation of ideas or themes. I don’t really think of people that way, so I don’t really have an answer to that. I like those kinds of thoughts over dinner, talking about a Shakespeare play or talking about anything, you know, and that can be very pleasant. But it’s not something I ever indulge in anymore. I used to as a young man with Shakespeare plays, but I found it didn’t help really. People are not representations, they are real living organic things. And so I don’t know about what Wolsey represented.
I mean, for me, he connected in my heart with many of the elder men who mentored me. Robert Bly, the great Minnesota poet who mentored a whole bunch of us young men. He really helped me in my late thirties and forties, even earlier than that too, when he came and heard me play Hamlet. And one of the things he taught me was, there’s something a father can’t do for you, a mother can’t do it either as a young man, they can’t recognize the diamond in you. And the diamond is something about your soul’s code, the core of you.
Because often, it’s not aligned necessarily with their own diamonds. It takes someone else. It takes, and in the case of young men, I think it really takes a man who, it might be an uncle or a grandfather, but ideally, if it’s a man who’s not part of your immediate family, has no reason to praise you or witness you, and they do so, that makes a huge difference. At least it did to me. I had no idea that I would be an actor until someone outside my family said that to me, and then put a lot of time into me being an actor selflessly.
And then I had no idea that I, to some degree, had a soul until Robert Bly and others encouraged that in me. So Wolsey, it was easy to weep about Wolsey. It was easy to worry about it because you can never feel you give enough thanks or enough attention to those older men who support you and witness you. Because you often end up partly because of their witnessing, being very busy doing what they encouraged you to do when they get old and frail.
And certainly I have regrets about not visiting my old friends enough when they were at the end of their lives being busy and distracted with my midlife work. And I suspect that’s something that many of us feel. So that was what Wolsey meant to me, I suppose. And it came very easily to me.
Jace Lacob: I am curious about that, the notion of diamonds. What was it, do you think, that Robert Bly with his jewelers loupe, to use that analogy, what was it he saw when he looked inside and saw the diamond that was inside you that made him say, you should be an actor?
Mark Rylance: I think when you are lucky enough to be gifted as I was with a certain skill, like someone learning to play the piano, you kind of isolate yourself or separate yourself from other people in order to hone that skill. You become very, very attached to getting better, sharpening the knives and increasing the understanding. And what Robert did for me was he really encouraged me that I could connect with other people, that Rumi and I could be friends, that Walt Whitman, who had been a friend for ages and I could be friends, that I didn’t need to match these peoples to be in a collective space of soul with them.
And so, from that time on, certainly when I act in the theater, I’m most interested in what’s happening in the collective unconscious of the audience. I know that I’ve got to do a certain amount myself on the stage or in front of the camera, but I’m most curious about where we all connect, and that’s in a soulful place. A place of soul, collective soul, collective unconscious. And he really opened me to ways of doing that, ways of thinking, ways of feeling that way.
I guess in some ways, he opened me to the path towards having a positive attitude about father figures. And we’ve all got a father in us. And it’s harder to find positive father figures. I love my father dearly, by the way, but it’s harder to find positive father figures, I think, than it is to find positive mother figures. And so, he did that for a lot of us, and he did that for me. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to play someone like Thomas Cromwell if I hadn’t done that work and been a friend of Robert.
So, for instance, one morning, I was at his home in Minneapolis with his dear wife, his widow Ruth, and I was going to do some auditioning that day at the Guthrie Theater. And Ruth said to Robert when he came in, what should Mark be looking for? Why do we like Mark’s acting so much? And Robert, who hadn’t been talking very much at that point, he was over 90, picked up a paper and just said straight out, “Because he doesn’t know who he is. Because he doesn’t know who he is.”
And I’d always worried that I didn’t know who I was. And he said, that’s the key! That’s the key. That’s why we like to go see him act, because he really needs to be someone other than who he is because he doesn’t know who he is. I love that. If I was born to be an actor, it’s because I was born not knowing who I am and I remain that way.
Jace Lacob: I mean, it’s interesting to hear you talk about Robert and his work and the role of fathers. And you mentioned earlier, Cromwell’s roaring boys. I think the most heartbreaking scene for me within The Mirror and the Light is Cromwell’s final scene with Rafe.
CLIP
Cromwell: You did well, Rafe. You did more than I had any right to expect.
Rafe: When I was a young child, you came for me, brought me on a journey. You set me down by the fire and you said, “This is where you live now, Rafe. We will be your family now. We will be good to you. Never fear.” I had just left my mother that day and I did not know where I was. And I had never been to London and still less, your house. But I never cried. Did I? I never cried.
Jace Lacob: Your rapport with Thomas Brodie-Sangster ten years on from Wolf Hall is absolutely beautiful to behold. And in many ways, Rafe is closer to Cromwell than his own true son. And there’s this beautiful sense embedded within the scene of steadfast loyalty and love. What was it like filming the scene with Thomas?
Mark Rylance: Oh, incredibly moving. Incredibly moving. A lot of the scenes were very moving. You know, as I said earlier, I identified Wolsey with older men who mentored me and gave me opportunities, saw something in me that no one else saw. I’m lucky enough to be a stepfather with two daughters and they both, once they became old enough, swore to me that they’d come into this life because there was a possibility that I would join their natural father as a stepfather. A curious thing for them to say.
But my eldest daughter, Juliet, has become a wonderful actress. I met her at seven and immediately, I think the first time I met her, I carried her on my shoulders on the National Theater stage because we were doing an understudy rehearsal, and I carried her, and she said I said to her, “Take off and fly. You can fly.” Or something like that. So, the deep love between stepchildren or wards or adopted children or fostered children, in my experience is undeniable. It can be, well, I don’t know because I don’t have any of my own biological children, but I would think it’s as strong as having children biologically speaking. So that scene with Thomas was similar to if I had had to say goodbye to my beloved Juliet. Even talking about it now, I get moved by it.
But that happened a lot. The daughter that comes from the Netherlands, that was very, very moving and affecting to me. In fact, at one point I said to Peter, I think I’m crying a bit much for Tommy the act. Are you sure this is all right? And he said, don’t worry I’ll edit it if it’s not. But he and Colin Calendar, who produced the show, were early on intrigued and excited that this second series, the first series showed the shoulder and head of Tommy Cromwell, this one is showing more the belly and the heart, and he doesn’t have the same power and grasp.
I think the brutalization really of killing Anne Boleyn and the other people around her who he wanted to kill for revenge for Wolsey, you don’t do that kind of thing and see that kind of thing without it killing a part of you as well. And that was a strong part of doing this second series.
Jace Lacob: I think he is sort of infected by those actions. And I think it does come to a head in the scene with Rafe.
CLIP
Cromwell: I couldn’t do it again, you know, Rafe. I couldn’t. The sleepless toil. The ax work. When Henry dies and comes to judgement, he will answer for me. And he will have to account for what he did to Cromwell. Now, it is time for you to go.
Jace Lacob: This is, I think Cromwell finally sort of stripped bare, a man at his most vulnerable and his most human. We see the weight of all of this, of everything he’s done for so long, and it finally, I think, catches up with him, not on the scaffold, not as he’s about to die, but here in this scene with a man who is essentially his son.
Mark Rylance: Yeah, very good, yeah. That was an extraordinary period in the shoot, those four weeks that he was in the tower, we were obviously on one set. We were in the room where the long interview scenes take place. And then in the room next to it where I wait to find out, well basically to find out whether I’m going to be executed with an ax or hung, drawn, and quartered basically. Or even worse, if there is a worse than that, be burnt alive.
So, sitting in the tower for the ten days or whatever we filmed those scenes, imagining these different fates and then having these different people come and visit. The relief actually that I was going to be executed was enormous. But the saying goodbye to people you love, that was very, very powerful stuff, all that.
Jace Lacob: Cromwell gives a speech upon the scaffold begging for forgiveness, not of Henry it seems, but of his former master, Wolsey. And Wolsey he sees in the crowd and he responds with a smile. But if this Wolsey isn’t a ghost, but perhaps a manifestation of Cromwell’s inner thoughts, how did you as an actor read that smile? Did you feel Cromwell has finally forgiven himself for his sins?
Mark Rylance: I hate to answer questions like that which the audience will so enjoy answering for themselves. So if I do answer, you must understand my opinion is no more authentic than your opinion, those of you who are listening to this, if you’re still listening, this is a long talk we’re having.
I mean, Cromwell was a man, a devout man of faith. He had no doubt about the afterlife. He had doubt that you had to pay money to a Catholic priest to get yourself into the afterlife, but I think he would’ve believed absolutely in spirits not just being made up by our imagination, but something that is received and heard or seen through our imagination. All I’m coming to say is, if he saw Wolsey smiling and shaking his head, nodding his head at the moment before he was executed, he would’ve taken it as an authentic sign of mercy and forgiveness.
For all the dogma about fires of hell and all that kind of stuff that perhaps he would still have believed in, that kind of thing. But I think with, in terms of settling the score with Wolsey, the visitation in the prison, and then the visitation at the moment of death, my odds would be that he would’ve taken that as a very good sign.
Jace Lacob: I do love the fact that before the blade comes down, Cromwell imagines Launde Abbey, the sound of industrious bees buzzing around him, paradise on earth. That’s denied to him.
CLIP
Cromwell: There is an Abbey, Launde, in the heart of England. The air is always sweet there, and it’s quiet. A little heaven here on Earth. And I’d think to myself, I’ll live here one day when all my work is done.
Jace Lacob: And I love the fact that our final image of Cromwell is that he looks not forward, but back. And I think that that is such a beautiful thing to leave us with a man at the end looking back.
Mark Rylance: Yeah. And that’s Peter, the two Peters, Kosminsky and Straughan. I think they checked it with Hilary before she died, but that’s their creation. She writes the most extraordinary last chapter of the book. Absolutely extraordinary. Maybe even more extraordinary when you think it’s one of the last things she wrote before her own death. Things that come to my mind is the taste of the steel. The taste of the steel. He tastes steel in his throat. That’s such a powerful image of having your head cut off with an ax.
But she takes it past that physical moment. She gives him consciousness even as his head and his torso have been separated in the blood, on the platform. In my memory of it, the last thing she leaves us with is him standing against a wall, moving along the wall as you would in a basement or in a dark room looking for the door, or looking for the light, looking for a crack of light through a door or something. It is a remarkable, remarkable ending.
I love the ending of the TV series as well, but I guess I’m kind of encouraging people to have a look at the book as well. Even if you’re daunted by reading the whole thing, read the last hundred pages. You know now from the TV series where you’ve got to, but read those last 80 pages. I think they’re a remarkable piece of literature and a lot of the interview scene, I have to say, none of the dialogue is made up in that interview scene. Not that I’m aware of it. It’s pretty much all Hilary Mantel, those wonderful long interview scenes, which is rare stuff to see on television or in film now. A story trusting the actors as much as the producers and the director and writers trusted us to hold the audience through a lot of dialogue.
Jace Lacob: There are several possibilities contained within Mantel’s use of the title, The Mirror and the Light, reflection, illumination, doubling, power, et cetera. Mark, you’ve said, “Our culture is terrified of anything mysterious.” Is there beauty to be found in the mystery of the title’s meaning, that by the act of observing it, we can apply our own import to it?
Mark Rylance: Well, certainly the greatness of someone like Einstein is very connected to him believing and saying that the most beautiful thing he witnessed in all the things he witnessed and understood, was mystery. And he went further to say he felt that was the most beautiful thing, and that’s the word he used, is beautiful, that humanity can consider and perceive. And certainly the greatest artists I’ve ever worked with, I’ve admired, I’ve been frustrated by them at first, but then realize that they have this ability to sit in chaos, sit in mystery not knowing what’s happening next much more than I did.
I’m getting better at it. But once I saw that’s what they were doing, like a great cook that has all these vegetables and spices and herbs and meats and all different things all over the kitchen, but reduces them or distills them is a better word, maybe, to a fantastic meal. And so yes, mystery, the contemplation of mystery is for me as I get older, a really important thing, and I would certainly make it part of the teaching of young artists. Don’t be comforted or too distracted or attracted to clarity. It’s a wonderful thing, clarity, but it’s simplistic, if it hasn’t got the distillation of a lot of stuff behind it, then it will be empty and shallow.
So that’s important. The Mirror and the Light, it’s a beautiful title. I was taught once that the primary opposites are light and darkness or matter. And light being the quality in the universe of infinite distance, infinite speed, and so it’s usually portrayed by a straight line or a spear or an arrow, light, like thought that it can fly faster than anything.
Infinite density, or darkness, is portrayed by the spiral, infinitely deep and dark. And so they have a beautiful relationship, the earth and the sun. Or the light and the darkness, they’re very essential. And any alien coming towards our planet with it all lit up at night as you can see from airplanes when you fly at night, would the first thing they’d think is, this is a species that’s frightened of the dark. And I think we are, we’re really frightened of the dark. It could have been called The Dark and the Light, but the fact that she gives the darkness and the earth the quality of a mirror, that it’s through all these things around us, this material world we live in, that we can see the light. The light is within all of it.
In fact, someone said to me the other day reminded me that we, as well as being a part of the earth, our atoms are a part of the earth, we’re also a part of the sun because the planets, the earth and all the planets were at one time, the scientists tell us, part of the sun and exploded it out. So we have both the light and the mirror within us. Both the sun and the Earth within us. They are both part of our very atoms. So, the title is very beautiful to me, the marriage of the earth and the sun, or matter and light, density and speed, and this beautiful idea that actually the way we can feel and see the light is to look at its mirror. Look at it in the mirror.
Jace Lacob: I love that. Sir Mark Rylance, thank you so very much.
Mark Rylance: Oh, what a lovely, fascinating talk.
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 Six.
Jace Lacob: Rafe has always been loyal to Cromwell and was kept in the dark about his former master’s arrest. He’s now in service to the king as Master Secretary. What happens to Rafe when all is done and dusted?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: So, initially he’s perhaps a little bit marginalized. He’s a little bit on the edges, he doesn’t go with Henry on his big expedition to the north of England, which finally happens in 1541, having been put off since 1537. But ultimately he’s an incredibly hard working person. Some of his letters are not just dated, but he’s written the time on them, and he writes some of his letters at like four o’clock in the morning. He’s industrious, he’s been around Cromwell, learning from him. And so those kinds of administrative organizational skills that were valuable in Cromwell, Sadler has a lot of them too.
So to a certain extent, he is too useful as a sort of administrative servant to the king to be completely marginalized. And so, by the time Catherine Howard is being accused of adultery, he’s involved with the investigations. He becomes master of the great wardrobe, he becomes treasurer of war later in Henry’s reign and is involved alongside Edward Seymour with the campaign that’s going on against Scotland.
If anything, he suffers a little bit from the fact that his wife, turns out that her husband’s still alive. And he turns up in London boasting about how he’s married to Lady Sadler, which they try to hush up as much as they can and get a kind of act of parliament to get rid of the old marriage and legitimize the children, but it’s a little bit of a scandal which probably throws his career off a little bit.
And he suffers a bit, obviously, under Mary, he’s not super popular. But he is one of the people who, he makes it all the way through to Elizabeth I’s reign, he’s one of the richest men in England when he dies. I think in general, overall, he does quite well out of the Tudor period, as well as you can, really, when you’re that closely involved with the royal court.
Jace Lacob: The “mercy, mercy, mercy” that Cromwell asks of Henry never actually arrives. And instead we have a mirroring of the opening of The Mirror and the Light, an execution and a wedding side by side. In this instance it’s Cromwell’s execution, which is juxtaposed with Henry’s marriage to Catherine Howard. Did they really happen on the very same day?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Yes, Thomas Cromwell is executed on the 28th of July, and at the same time, Henry VIII is down in Surrey marrying Catherine Howard.
Jace Lacob: That’s insane to me.
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Yeah, Henry VIII is not a terribly pleasant person. His actions to the outside observation, can be incredibly cold hearted. To take someone who has been such a dedicated servant to him for so long, and have a wedding on the same day. And I don’t quite know what it really says to Catherine Howard either. Your wedding day and this execution are going to go hand in hand.
Jace Lacob: So Henry refused to change his mind about Cromwell’s execution, despite Rafe urging him to reconsider. And we know Henry isn’t even present at Cromwell’s execution, as you say, because he’s actually getting married to Catherine Howard that same day. Do we know, however, whether Henry ever regretted his decision to have his fixer executed?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: So, I can’t remember the exact quote off the top of my head, but there is a comment that’s made a few months later, or reportedly made a few months later, where he says something about, the gist of it is that he wishes he’d never executed Cromwell. I think he’s annoyed with his advisors, probably.
It’s a bit of a matter of debate amongst historians, like, did he really mean that? It’s the type of comment that some people will tell you that it’s another sign of Henry acting impulsively and then regretting his decisions and proof that other people were pushing him into making this decision, and then he regrets it. So it ties in a little bit with debates about how much influence do you think people around Henry had on him? But then, some people just go, no. It’s the type of thing you say, maybe you say as part of an argument with your current advisors. It doesn’t actually mean that he really could undo it. There’s not a huge amount of other real evidence for us to go on, hence it being a topic of debate.
Jace Lacob: Kirsten Claiden-Yardley, thank you so very much.
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: You’re welcome.
Source: PBS Masterpiece