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The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Apr. 30th, 2009 03:22 pmI've been watching (in what very little free time I have right now--rehearsal for Ore has turned into a full-time job) the '70s BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII. I remember watching this as a child with my Mom when they reran it on PBS--the only scene that sticks in my head was Catherine Howard saying "Me? The King wants to see me?" The idea of the series is that each episode focuses on a different wife--each episode is kind of a mini-play. In theory this is an interesting idea but the fact is some wives mattered a lot more than others. Anne of Cleves, for example, was not that important at all, and wasn't around (as a wife) for very long. Catherine Howard also was not around for long, although her story marks Henry's entrance into old age--Catherine really did run around on him, and his vanity was devastated.
So the format inevitably leads to the more important wives sort of getting the shaft. The first one, Catherine of Aragon, was married the longest, 24 years. This episode actually came off quite well, even though they had to skip over quite a few years. It begins with her meeting Prince Arthur and then goes through her difficulties during her widowhood, her marriage to the new King Henry and the early years of their marriage. Then it skips way ahead to King Henry mulling over how to dissolve the marriage and so forth until her death. It sounds a little rushed but it actually comes off quite well--in contrast to The Tudors, this is very well-researched, and every scene and character are pretty much true to what happened. I like spotting characters and then thinking ahead to how they are connected, or will be connected in the future. For example, at one point during Henry and Catherine's impasse, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk (a close personal friend of Henry's), is confronting Catherine in her bedroom, and Maria de Salinas is running interference. (Great actress, I'm loving her.) I'm looking at this, thinking "her daughter will marry him someday."
I've just started the second episode, which is of course Anne Boleyn. The actress, Dorothy Tutin, is good enough but WAY too old--she's at least 10 years older than Anne Boleyn was during the events depicted. I only bring this up because part of Anne's appeal was that she was young and energetic (and, Henry assumed, fertile, whereas Catherine had already gone through menopause by then). Unlike the first episode, Anne's story is much more truncated--almost no time is spent on Henry's courtship of her, which is one of the more fascinating elements of the King's Great Matter. Henry was OBSESSED with Anne--he wrote her constantly and kowtowed to her at every turn in the first years of their relationship. That's what made his complete reversal later so startling--Henry could've put Anne into a nunnery but he chose to obliterate her, even to the extent of allowing himself to be portrayed as a cuckold--even to the extent of sacrificing the lives of innocent men, including one of his best friends. Anne is also written a little thinly--she has the requisite sharp tongue, but no charm or piety (that I've seen yet, that is. Perhaps it will get better). The actress playing Catherine did a great job and even looked the part--NOT like the stereotypical brunette Spaniard but with reddish hair, as the real Catherine had. It's nice when they get the little things right.
So the format inevitably leads to the more important wives sort of getting the shaft. The first one, Catherine of Aragon, was married the longest, 24 years. This episode actually came off quite well, even though they had to skip over quite a few years. It begins with her meeting Prince Arthur and then goes through her difficulties during her widowhood, her marriage to the new King Henry and the early years of their marriage. Then it skips way ahead to King Henry mulling over how to dissolve the marriage and so forth until her death. It sounds a little rushed but it actually comes off quite well--in contrast to The Tudors, this is very well-researched, and every scene and character are pretty much true to what happened. I like spotting characters and then thinking ahead to how they are connected, or will be connected in the future. For example, at one point during Henry and Catherine's impasse, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk (a close personal friend of Henry's), is confronting Catherine in her bedroom, and Maria de Salinas is running interference. (Great actress, I'm loving her.) I'm looking at this, thinking "her daughter will marry him someday."
I've just started the second episode, which is of course Anne Boleyn. The actress, Dorothy Tutin, is good enough but WAY too old--she's at least 10 years older than Anne Boleyn was during the events depicted. I only bring this up because part of Anne's appeal was that she was young and energetic (and, Henry assumed, fertile, whereas Catherine had already gone through menopause by then). Unlike the first episode, Anne's story is much more truncated--almost no time is spent on Henry's courtship of her, which is one of the more fascinating elements of the King's Great Matter. Henry was OBSESSED with Anne--he wrote her constantly and kowtowed to her at every turn in the first years of their relationship. That's what made his complete reversal later so startling--Henry could've put Anne into a nunnery but he chose to obliterate her, even to the extent of allowing himself to be portrayed as a cuckold--even to the extent of sacrificing the lives of innocent men, including one of his best friends. Anne is also written a little thinly--she has the requisite sharp tongue, but no charm or piety (that I've seen yet, that is. Perhaps it will get better). The actress playing Catherine did a great job and even looked the part--NOT like the stereotypical brunette Spaniard but with reddish hair, as the real Catherine had. It's nice when they get the little things right.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Mar. 1st, 2008 12:45 amInspired by the clips I saw on the Oscars, I Netflixed Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Holy crap, Clive Owen is WHITE hot in this movie. Damn. He is amazingly hot in this--I seriously want to have his children right now. I liked Closer a lot but never saw him as particularly attractive but the combination of his tan, his tight little doublets, his piracy privateering and his all-around awesomeness--rowr.
It's a terrific movie, BTW--several sequences are breath-taking. The Spanish Armada sequence is just awesome, and there's an amazing shot of her standing on--I guess--the cliffs of Dover observing the Armada (I guess? That seems off). But the shot is incredible--in general, the mythos of the movie, the way it constructs her march toward her destiny, is wonderful, some incredible direction.
It's a terrific movie, BTW--several sequences are breath-taking. The Spanish Armada sequence is just awesome, and there's an amazing shot of her standing on--I guess--the cliffs of Dover observing the Armada (I guess? That seems off). But the shot is incredible--in general, the mythos of the movie, the way it constructs her march toward her destiny, is wonderful, some incredible direction.
Je suis Henry VIII, mais oui
Mar. 15th, 2007 03:51 pmI just upgraded my cable package to get Showtime (quite a step for me--I never get the premium channels, that's what Netflix is for). Showtime is premiering a new series in April called The Tudors--it's about Henry VIII mainly. They're saturating the subways with print ads that make it look quite fun--they're trying to market it as a kind of historical soap. However the nitpicker in me is grumbling about the actor playing Henry--he is far too slight and dark-looking. Henry was quite tall and broad in his youth (though not fat--that happened later in his life) and very fair. Reddish-blonde hair and fair skin--Jonathan Rhys-Meyers doesn't look like him at all. He'd just better be good in the part.
One of the ads says something like "The King's best friend is having an affair with the King's sister." They're talking about Charles Brandon, a very close friend of Henry's (he was the son of William Brandon who carried the standard into Bosworth Field next to Henry VII and died in the battle (killed, I believe, by Richard III)--Charles was basically raised with the Royal Family). Henry VIII's younger sister, Princess Mary, had a crush on him that developed into a full-blown romance (kind of like Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, now that I think of it, and when her marriage to Louis of France ended (he was much older) she and Charles married in secret and then begged Henry for forgiveness which he eventually gave. Mary and Charles were the grandparents of Lady Jane Grey, the original nine-day-wonder. Jane was eventually executed for the various rebellions on her behalf thanks to her dumbass father and one of my Tudor books ends her chapter with "sometime later the mangled corpse of Henry VIII's great-niece was unceremoniously thrust into St. Peter's ad Vincula, between two former queens. The debt incurred at Cluny Chapel 39 years before had been repaid at last." St. Peter's was where Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were buried, and Cluny Chapel was where Charles and Mary married in secret. I thought that was a rather poetic way of characterizing Jane's fate.
However, the site for the series has Princess Margaret--Henry's older sister--as a major character and doesn't list Mary at all. I hope they're not conflating the two Princesses!--Margaret was no Mary and certainly not the sexpot shown on the site. Margaret married James IV of Scotland at 13 and had kind of a rough time of it there--she sure wasn't vamping it up with Charles Brandon.
I'm such a nitpicker. But I'm sure I'll enjoy it anyway.
One of the ads says something like "The King's best friend is having an affair with the King's sister." They're talking about Charles Brandon, a very close friend of Henry's (he was the son of William Brandon who carried the standard into Bosworth Field next to Henry VII and died in the battle (killed, I believe, by Richard III)--Charles was basically raised with the Royal Family). Henry VIII's younger sister, Princess Mary, had a crush on him that developed into a full-blown romance (kind of like Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, now that I think of it, and when her marriage to Louis of France ended (he was much older) she and Charles married in secret and then begged Henry for forgiveness which he eventually gave. Mary and Charles were the grandparents of Lady Jane Grey, the original nine-day-wonder. Jane was eventually executed for the various rebellions on her behalf thanks to her dumbass father and one of my Tudor books ends her chapter with "sometime later the mangled corpse of Henry VIII's great-niece was unceremoniously thrust into St. Peter's ad Vincula, between two former queens. The debt incurred at Cluny Chapel 39 years before had been repaid at last." St. Peter's was where Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were buried, and Cluny Chapel was where Charles and Mary married in secret. I thought that was a rather poetic way of characterizing Jane's fate.
However, the site for the series has Princess Margaret--Henry's older sister--as a major character and doesn't list Mary at all. I hope they're not conflating the two Princesses!--Margaret was no Mary and certainly not the sexpot shown on the site. Margaret married James IV of Scotland at 13 and had kind of a rough time of it there--she sure wasn't vamping it up with Charles Brandon.
I'm such a nitpicker. But I'm sure I'll enjoy it anyway.
Really geeky Tudor England discussion
May. 30th, 2006 05:32 pmSo I read The Other Boleyn Girl this weekend. It's about Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne (most sources I've checked seem to indicate she was older than Anne, but the book makes her a few years younger)--she was also Henry VIII's mistress after Bessie Blount and before he was involved with Anne. Mary was also rumored to be Francois I's mistress (both Anne and Mary served in the French court--Anne was noted for her love of French fashion, and in her portraits she is usually wearing the French (curved) hood, whereas Catherine of Aragon (Anne's queenly predecessor) and Jane Seymour (Anne's replacement) both wore a gabled hood. The book doesn't mention Mary's reputation for promiscuity--in fact she is extremely sympathetically portrayed, and Anne is much less so. The book shows Mary as respecting and caring for Catherine (whom she served as lady-in-waiting) and torn between her desire to do the decent thing, her loyalty toward her family, and her love for Henry. It's all well-written and interesting, although parts of it do not quite ring true--the book assumes that Henry Carey was Henry Tudor's bastard, but then the King takes no interest in his upbringing which we know was not the case with Henry Fitzroy (his acknowledged bastard by Bessie Blount). The King is shown as being thrilled when Mary is pregnant both times, and then forgets about the kids--inconsistent characterization. The book also says that Anne assumed the role of Henry Carey's guardian--first off, I'd *never* heard this before (but it seems this really did happen?--I think I found confirmation online), but how could one woman take away parental rights from another? Mary Boleyn was still alive, still there and I believe William Carey had other family. I realize family law was different back then but it still doesn't make sense, or at any rate, Gregory (the author) doesn't make it plausible--she says Anne's motive was to have a trump spare heir in the wings (because the King's Great Matter was all about Finding That Heir). Why would Anne do this when it's Henry's bastard? How would that be her trump? It just didn't make sense.
Mary and Anne had another noted sibling, their brother George, who was executed along with Anne when his wife, Lady Rochford, testified to their incestuous affair. Gregory's theories are more plausible here, because she paints a decent characterization of George and Anne as the only two who really understand each other (George is homosexual in this portrayal and Anne is the prototypical fruit fly--historians are divided on George's proclivities but Lady Rochford certainly did have it in for her husband. And the rest of the Howards--she also turned in Catherine Howard (George, Mary and Anne's first cousin) a few years later for adultery. She was directly responsible for the deaths of three Howards!). Anyway, Anne is desperate to conceive a child and apparently Henry is impotent (okay, Gregory, we KNOW he fathered Edward VI--that child was a classic Tudor male, dying at 15), so driven nearly insane by her ambition and that of her family, she hooks up with her brother, and the result is a monster baby that miscarries. Anne's mounting instability and its effect on the rest of the family is nicely portrayed, as is her relationship with her two siblings. There's a lovely, weirdly evocative scene just before everything comes crashing down, the night before the day everyone is arrested, and Anne and George sense something is about to happen, and they cuddle in front of the fire all night, whistling past the graveyard. I also like the portrayal of Mary's relationship with William Stafford (her married-for-love second husband who was much lower socially than she). Stafford seemed like a straight up guy!
I would love to read a novel about Catherine Howard. She fascinates me, for some reason.
Mary and Anne had another noted sibling, their brother George, who was executed along with Anne when his wife, Lady Rochford, testified to their incestuous affair. Gregory's theories are more plausible here, because she paints a decent characterization of George and Anne as the only two who really understand each other (George is homosexual in this portrayal and Anne is the prototypical fruit fly--historians are divided on George's proclivities but Lady Rochford certainly did have it in for her husband. And the rest of the Howards--she also turned in Catherine Howard (George, Mary and Anne's first cousin) a few years later for adultery. She was directly responsible for the deaths of three Howards!). Anyway, Anne is desperate to conceive a child and apparently Henry is impotent (okay, Gregory, we KNOW he fathered Edward VI--that child was a classic Tudor male, dying at 15), so driven nearly insane by her ambition and that of her family, she hooks up with her brother, and the result is a monster baby that miscarries. Anne's mounting instability and its effect on the rest of the family is nicely portrayed, as is her relationship with her two siblings. There's a lovely, weirdly evocative scene just before everything comes crashing down, the night before the day everyone is arrested, and Anne and George sense something is about to happen, and they cuddle in front of the fire all night, whistling past the graveyard. I also like the portrayal of Mary's relationship with William Stafford (her married-for-love second husband who was much lower socially than she). Stafford seemed like a straight up guy!
I would love to read a novel about Catherine Howard. She fascinates me, for some reason.
