Culture

Wolf Hall: the Dark Side of Thomas Cromwell

The final episode of Wolf Hall showed how Anne Boleyn's execution began Cromwell's downfall

February 26, 2015
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“Madam, nothing here is personal.” Thomas Cromwell’s words to Anne Boleyn in the last episode of Wolf Hall are chillingly ambiguous. In one sense, he is trying to cynically exculpate himself in advance for framing the Queen for adultery. Yet in another way, he’s right. At this Tudor court, it doesn’t matter how powerful (Cardinal Wolsey) or clever (Thomas More) or adored (Boleyn) you are, if you stand in the way of Henry’s latest desire, you will be dispatched without mercy. Boleyn, the truth only slowly dawning, snaps back: “Those who have been made can be unmade.” Cromwell, a self-made man facing a self-made queen, turns her words back on her: “I entirely agree”.

One of the pleasures of Peter Kosminsky’s six-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels has been the way it captures the oppressive theatricality of the Tudor court. Each person must play the part allotted to them by birth, by gender, by the king and any form of self-fashioning—in the words of Stephen Greenblatt—easily leads to the scaffold. Boleyn, played by Claire Foy as by turns wilful, haughty and flirtatious, was trained from a young age to use her alluring charisma to get what she wanted. When she caught the King’s eye her body was her only weapon; when it misfired her fate was sealed. Cromwell’s daydream at the start of this episode—more a day-nightmare—had Anne lying prone on a dining table like a piece of meat; he had a carving knife in his hand, and stuck it in.

Cromwell, played with darker intensity by Mark Rylance in this episode, is equally trapped by his role. He does not have Thomas More’s intellectual fame nor the aristocratic status of the other men round Henry. These lacks were initially to his advantage because the King knew a blacksmith’s son from Putney could never threaten his power. But after reluctantly putting More to death, and now forced to concoct adultery charges against Boleyn, Cromwell realises that his only support is Henry. In the heart-stopping sequence  from the last episode, when Henry falls from his horse and is thought to be dead, Cromwell is immediately turned on by rival courtiers. When he resuscitated the king, he also saved his own life.

The knowledge of his own dependence on the King eats away at him. There is a moment in episode six when, sitting in a boat taking Boleyn to the Tower, he turns his face to the camera. His expression—filled with suppressed anger—looked uncannily like the Holbein portrait we saw him sitting for earlier in the series. That painting was designed to strike fear into his enemies: Cromwell the bruiser, Cromwell the enforcer. Now the man is becoming his image.

Mantel has been criticised for being too soft on Cromwell. But though there are some false notes—can we believe it was only the threat of torture that led pathetic lutenist Mark Smeaton into confessing adultery with the Queen?—what she shows us is a monster in the making. The concluding part of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, which Mantel is writing now, will show his overreaching and final downfall. (Kosminsky and Rylance have confirmed that they would like to film the final book.) A taste of that atmosphere is captured in the final scenes of the TV Wolf Hall, when Boleyn is taken to the Tower. Cromwell speaks to the French executioner specially brought over to do the job quickly—Henry’s last mercy. He wields the sword (echoes of his dream with the carving knife), sensing his own guilt and perhaps his eventual fate. The actual killing was carried out with a balletic grace, reminding us of how Boleyn danced with Henry at the start of her courtship.

Approaching the end, Boleyn looks up and around the Tower. According to Cromwell she’s looking for the King to give her a last-minute reprieve. It occurred to me, though, that she might have been looking for a man who doesn’t appear in the TV series but does in the books: the poet Thomas Wyatt, rumoured to be her lover before the King, who at the time was being held in the Bell Tower. In a later poem that is said to be a reflection on the Boleyn tragedy, Wyatt wrote that “These bloody days have broken my heart.” It’s an apt line for Cromwell, and the audience watching.

Wolf Hall has been enthralling television—certainly the equal of the best US imports of recent years. Given that it only lasted six episodes, though, and will not be back for years, it won't become the rolling phenomena of a Game of Thrones or House of Cards (which returns on Friday on Netflix). The series started with a very healthy 3.9 million viewers but that figure dropped by a million by the second episode, with some viewers citing a confusing plot or dingy candlelit scenes as reasons for turning off. But the BBC shouldn't worry. Many more people watched Wolf Hall than they did the premiere of series four on Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic (that figure was 1.2 million) and there's still DVD sales to come. And if there's more justice at the TV awards world than there was at Henry's court, it will clean up at the Baftas.