I broke a rule a few months ago when I watched the BBC/PBS production of Wolf Hall before reading the two Hilary Mantel books on which it was based (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies). Usually I read a book first so the interpretations of actors and directors don't get mixed up with the pictures and voices in my head. I was wringing my hands over this in one of the posts above (Mark Rylance's interpretation of Thomas Cromwell had been beyond masterful and I knew I would be stuck with it) when Whifflingpin told me--in effect--to stop whining: Mark Rylance was good enough for the likes of me.
Having read both books now, I can report that we were both partially correct. I was right that I would be unable to rid myself of the image of Mark Rylance, but that cut both ways. For one thing, Thomas Cromwell did not look like Mark Rylance, at least based on the famous portrait that Hans Holbein painted of him. The real Cromwell lacked the actor's sad, patient, vaguely bemused face. If Holbein is to be believed (and it was a portrait), Cromwell ran to fat, with little piggish eyes and the face of a pissed off thug (which he was as a youth). Even Mantel comments on the discrepancy between Holbein's Cromwell and her own, who is often surprised (and sometimes offended) that others find in him the face of a killer. "Did you not know?" his own son asks him.
But for me it was Rylance's voice that endured through the books, and about that Whifflingpin was right: it was good enough, and I'm not sure I could have come up with anything better on my own. Its calm control and competence while the sky (or Christendom in any case) seems to be falling in is what gives Rylance's Cromwell his peculiar force and likability. The only flaw in Rylance's characterization is that he makes Cromwell a little more sincere than Mantel wrote him. By the end of Bring Up the Bodies, Cromwell's ethics have worn pretty thin, even by Tudor-era standards. When Anne Boleyn (his one-time ally) will not go quietly, he initiates a miniature reign of terror in which he brings about the execution of men for whom he bears personal grudges, and get's off the hook a family friend (one of the few who may actually have been guilty of adultery with Boleyn), all as a pretext for sending her to the chopping block. That's right, Mantel seems to be saying, that's the way the real world works. And maybe she's right; but if so, shouldn't Cromwell at least sound like more of a killer by that point? In the books, his easy demeanor is to some extent a calculation meant to disarm. But in Rylance's performance it is just a little too sincere--a little too likable. And it sets him up to be too much of a victim when, in the still unpublished book (and presumed installation of the television series), --SPOILER ALERT-- he will follow Boleyn to the block only four years later. In some ways, he deserved what he got.
But if Rylance intruded into my personal reading of the books, I was surprised by those who did not. Claire Foy's Anne Boleyn was intelligent and sexy (it takes broad talent to play as convincing an Anne Boleyn as a Little Dorrit), though personally I read the character a little differently. I saw her as more of an opportunist and less as a regal presence than Foy played her. (To be blunt, I saw her as a self-aware fraud--or is that true of all royalty?) Will Keen as Thomas Cranmer was a bigger problem. The part was grossly underwritten (though that is hardly Keen's fault). In history, Cranmer was at least as important as Cromwell in the English Reformation, and Mantel gives him an important role and a nuanced, believable character (he reminded me of a theology student I once knew). Keen does little more than blink frequently--apparently a mannerism of Cranmer's in--just to let you know who he is.
But the actor who intruded least into my imagination was, oddly enough, the otherwise talented Damian Lewis as Henry VIII. And it's not that Lewis was having a bad day of acting, either. He is quite powerful throughout. But his characterization of Henry (or perhaps the director's) was different than Mantel wrote it in some important ways, and author's version is frankly the more interesting. Lewis plays Henry as a bully. He is Mr Big: he knows what he wants, and controls events far more than Mantel's Henry does. Cromwell has to scramble to keep up with his agenda. But what Lewis misses is that Henry as an alpha male is almost beside the point, although he was certainly was that, too. But Mantel's Henry is also (ironically) hopelessly awash in the bardic illusions of a chivalry. He is described again and again as the truest gentleman in Christendom; and he is genuinely shocked by the lurid tales that Cromwell's informers and victims cook up against his wife. In other words Henry lives in his own world: one in which the leader is not expected to be the dirtiest political dealer (that was Cromwell's job), but the greatest athlete of his day (as Henry was), the manliest man, and the most exemplary Christian gentleman. But as Mantel is also at pains to point out, these ideals (however realized they had ever been) were dying by Cromwell's time. Henry on the jousting field is already a dinosaur. The future belonged to people like Cromwell and even Anne--despite certain spectacular setbacks. So where (I suspect Mantel to be implicitly asking) does that leave royalty today? Where the British monarchy (between the which and Mantel there is remarkably little love lost)? Such considerations remain in the codpiece, so to speak, if Henry is just portrayed as the biggest d*ck of his day. But in Lewis' defense, he does deliver the best and funniest line in the series (taken straight from Mantel): "Call her Elizabeth. And cancel the joust!"
But if some of the leads in the series left me alone as I was reading, I was surprised to see which of the supporting players did manage to shoulder their way in. Bernard Hill's Fielding-esque Duke of Norfolk was beyond resistance; I could not free my reading from his voice or his face (although the historical Thomas Howard looked nothing like that). Anton Lesser's Thomas More did not look much like the humanist intellectual (the author of Utopia), sadistic anti-Reformation persecutor, and Catholic saint and martyr whose beheading Cromwell engineered, either. (Ironically the historical More looked a little like Mark Rylance!) But Lesser's haunting voice--just needling enough, just self-pitying enough, just believable enough to be terrifying--stayed with me to the end. I read some of his lines out loud and I was surprised how well I could mimic him. And then there was Lady Rochefort, Anne Boleyn's venomous sister-in-law, a minor but important character in the book, who is played to tawdry perfection by Jessica Raine. I smiled every time the character appeared in writing because I could just hear Raine's jaded and slightly bitter voice: "Oh tra-la-la, tell it to the Commons!"
So what do I get for breaking my own rules? More than I expected, I'll admit. But the Wolf Hall series was a powerhouse of talent, and Mark Rylance's performance alone would have justified a peek. I cannot help but think that I got lucky with this one. I hope they can get the actors back for the third installment.
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