I’d like to say first off that blaming the reformation in England entirely on Anne Boleyn is not fair. However, I understand the need for a show to take a stance on Anne’s religion one way or another and these episodes do address some of the accounts (which might be true and might not be true) about Anne and her hand in the reformation of the English church. There is simply not enough evidence for historians to say conclusively that she bought into Luther or not. Or, if she was, we do not know how strong her feelings were. In truth, we do not know if Anne Boleyn was a reformer or not. The horror overtones worked really well with Thomas More yelling about Lutherans. There is another problem I have with history left out of this sweating sickness episode but I’ll address it at the end of the post and leave this now by saying I think that this episode was one of the most well done. What do you mean, "You have to come back to the show"? Anne must have had some kind of relationship with her sister and not just her brother and it would have been nice to watch the show develop that relationship to heighten the drama when Mary makes her ill-conceived alliance. I do think the show could stand to show more Mary and develop her character past the easy woman we saw earlier in the season. This death would allow Mary to remarry, and she ended up picking someone completely different than her family would have liked. Mary’s husband fell ill with the sweating sickness and died in this outbreak. One significant death they do leave out of the mix concerns Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn (or at this point, Mary Carey). It sounds like her brother George was also sick and apart from her at this time, but that’s not the most important mistake. It’s also true that Anne and Cardinal Wolsey fell ill with the sweating sickness and that Anne seemed near death at one point at her home in Hever. Having him yell “Where is my wife?” at the guards while Anne Boleyn stood nearby was nicely done. The other part of this arc that I thought well done was Henry’s immediate concern for Katherine when he heard about the outbreak. Whenever something like a plague broke out in London he would immediately make for the countryside to protect himself. As the show portrays quite well, Henry was terrified of getting sick. So, it probably relates to some illness that people can get today, but we don’t know what.Īn outbreak of the sweating sickness hit England in the summer of 1528.
Scientists today don’t really know what it was, as it seemed to basically go away. The sweating sickness was a real disease that happened on and off in England over the course of roughly a century. It did a good job capturing the horror of the illness, the fear people felt at the prospect of getting it, and the sorts of things people thought could cure it or prevent it. I thought this part of the show was actually done really well. With all that said, there are still some pretty silly things going on. I love this man, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. These episodes also showed Thomas More in a light that was more than the saintly man, gave Anne Boleyn a hint of depth, and introduced one of my favorite players in the reign of Henry VIII: Thomas Cromwell. As I watched the show I was also struck by the writers’ willingness to make Henry VIII continually more selfish and authoritative and ultimately, more unlikeable. I do think these last four episodes contain some of the best moments of the season, particularly the episode the focuses around the sweating sickness. Why then, I always wonder, did they not bother to make the costumes more correct? Why do they sometimes swap historical interest for overblown drama? It annoys me. Someone read through several biographies and sources concerning these people because characters occasionally drop lines that you find in personal letters and other primary sources. There was obviously a lot of effort to make it look good – the sets and the costumes in particular reflect hard work and attention to detail. Today, instead, I will bring you the end of Season 1 of The Tudors.
I’m skipping over Anonymous for the time being because I missed when it was in theaters, but it is sitting in my Netflix queue waiting for release in early February. What I will do is try to stay more on top of this blog for the new year.
You know what they say about excuses, so I won’t make any. Period of history in focus: Tudor England (specifically the reign of Henry VIII) Starring: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Natalie Dormer, Sam Neill
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