11 May 2015 A.D. GUARDIAN: “Wolf Hall” recap: episode six – Anne Boleyn’s head on the block

Sutherland, John. “Wolf Hall recap: episode six—a head on the block.” The Guardian. 26 Feb 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/feb/25/wolf-hall-recap-episode-six-a-head-on-the-block. Accessed 10 May 2015.

Wolf Hall recap: episode six – a head on the block

Anne refuses to go quietly, and it is Cromwell who must carry out Henry’s dirtiest work yet in this unsettling conclusion to the series

With Wolf Hall’s final episode, Masters of Phantoms, we have a conclusion in which, as Scott put it at the end of Waverley, nothing is concluded. With this adaptation, of course, there is the added complication that Hilary Mantel has yet to publish The Mirror and The Light, the third part of her great historical romance. One looks forward to it with rather more eagerness than the newly announced third series of Broadchurch.

Cromwell has, over the years covered by the narrative, become less sympathetic. There is blood on his hands – a bucketful by the end of this episode. But, as ever, he evades any charge of being downright despicable (as, for example, Henry most certainly is). However shredded his scruples may be, Thomas Cromwell remains, in his own peculiar way, scrupulous.

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There is, for example, a haunting scene in which Thomas lies in bed in his house in Stepney. It is dark – inevitably. There are horrible screams preventing him sleep. Somewhere, below, a foolish young man is being tormented.

One historical account records that Mark Smeaton had his eyes pressed to jelly with knotted cords. Another account records his being racked, in the Tower, to perjuriously confess his adultery and name other foolish young men (Norris, Brereton, Weston), of less “inferior” rank than him. But Thomas has merely instructed Smeaton be “shown the instruments” adding, “I don’t want him hurt”.

That and subtle interrogation are enough. (The episode thereafter forgets Smeaton, who was not spared, as Thomas hinted he might be, for falsely informing). History’s Cromwell, one imagines, might have been more brutal and keener on the eyeball business.

Here, we watch Thomas carry out the ruthless demands of a monarch whose hands must appear clean. It means, for Cromwell, transgressing the law and Christian morality. For what?

There was something clear-cut and filial about Cromwell’s loyalty to Wolsey. But Henry? Why does he does he serve the monarch so loyally – to advance the “house of Cromwell?” But entitlement has, to this point, been slow coming. To enrich himself? But he’s already wealthy: “I am a banker,” he replies, with a rare smile, when prodded about his religion. Raisons d’etat – England Expects? Or because, at this stage of his career, he has no more autonomy over what he does than a backrow piece on the chessboard.

No need to ask who the player moving the pieces is. Henry has no more than a hundred words, and a few minutes on screen, in this episode. He does not speak until the episode is 20 minutes through. But it is the will of the king that drives the events. No need for words.

The episode opens, as the usual placard tells us, in 1536, with a banquet, given by Cromwell. The diners are “famished”. The scene transmutes into nightmare. The body of Anne is dragged along the table, like a suckling pig. Her eyes are open. At the head of the table, Thomas picks up a carving knife and plunges it into her.

The scene, without pause, transmutes again to the Cromwell breakfast table. He plays with his food. Is he history’s cannibal? We move to another domestic scene. Anne, dandling Elizabeth (“Dumpling” as her father has earlier named her) on her knee. Henry, lolling in an armchair, picks his teeth and leaves without a word. He is immune to domestic charm. At least, with Anne Boleyn.

After he has gone, Anne accuses Thomas, the ever-present silent bystander, of treachery. “I cannot hold the throne for an unborn baby,” he replies. Anne threatens him angrily: she has made him and “those who’ve been made can be unmade”. He replies, quietly, “I entirely agree.” A certain wife can be unmade. But how?

A certain wife can be unmade. But how?

The marriage crisis has created opportunities. Cromwell is solicited by the “True Faith” party. Once the King marries the Seymour girl, England can be brought back to Rome. Cromwell evades the invitation.

Anne, meanwhile, is laying the path for her own downfall. She flirts, coquettishly, with her courtiers. She insults her infatuated lutanist, Smeaton (“you’re an inferior person”). She insults her sister, Mary. Most dangerously, she not only insults, but slaps, her sister-in-law, Jane. For a woman who will desperately need allies in the struggle to come, it is reckless, verging on suicidal, behaviour.

Still smarting from the slap, it is Jane who drips the necessary poison into Thomas’s ear. Anne seduced the king with her “French” practices (anal intercourse, she explains, to a somewhat bemused Thomas). Her husband, George, she says has had incestuous relations with Anne. Why? Because the king cannot reproduce, and were she to choose one of her entourage Anne’s child might look like another man: “You can’t call it a bastard if it looks like a Boleyn.”

Do you want me to record that? asks an incredulous Cromwell. Apparently yes. Her last advice: “speak to Mark Smeaton”.

At Stepney one night (the fire is brighter than the candles), the luckless lutanist is flattered, before witnesses, into boastful indiscretion and then “enforced” into naming names. The future history of England pivots on the lies of a foolish boy.

And why does Thomas do it? “She won’t go quietly. She has to be pushed and I have to push her.” Quietly would presumably mean the same fate of her predecessor, Catherine: to be locked away in some remote castle to rot her life away.

The future history of England pivots on the lies of a foolish boy

A montage of arrests and interrogations of Anne’s alleged lovers follows. Cromwell contrives to weave falsehood into a case, again without “too much” hurt. Heads will, of course, roll – but in this world the sword is mercy killing. And Thomas, in his way, is scrupulous.

There is a trial, sham throughout, and Anne is charged and found guilty. There is an odd moment of intimacy, as Thomas takes the Queen’s hand to conduct her to captivity. It’s like opponents shaking hands, winner and loser, after a game.

In the most powerful one-on-one scene Thomas instructs Anne in the endgame. “You can do something for your daughter,” he counsels. Anne duly swears allegiance to her cruel spouse on the scaffold: “God save the King; gentler, no more merciful king was there ever.”

The episode climaxes with her extended decapitation. No “block”, no axe, but a sword, which Cromwell handles, thoughtfully, before passing it on to the nimble French executioner.

The last scene shows Cromwell walking, in slow motion, down a long, brightly lit corridor. At the end stands a smiling Henry, arms spread wide. He embraces his servant like a lover. The camera lingers on Thomas’s eyes. He has it now. But can he keep it?

Thoughts and observations

• Anne’s death is strikingly un-English. A French executioner is brought in. The act, itself, is balletic. In an act of kindness to Anne, so she will not anticipate which direction the blow is coming from, he slips off his pumps, pirouettes to get velocity, and slices off the head as neatly as a knife through butter.
• The unusual mode of execution was, apparently, decreed by Henry, after some thought. According to Leanda de Lisle, it was done because it pleased Henry to think the sword was “the symbol of Camelot, of a rightful king, and of masculinity”. In this episode, Anne says her neck is small. It seems just as plausible a reason.
• The screen explodes into life every time the foul-mouthed, loud-mouthed Norfolk appears. But what is his game? Why is he so collaborative in his niece’s downfall?
• The music, throughout (particularly the Smeaton evocative lute in this episode), has been superb. Thanks to Debbie Wiseman, Claire van Kampen.
• Dr Elizabeth Chase has written to me to suggest that what Cromwell’s father tells his burned son, is that locked wrists “diffuses”, not “confuses” the pain.