"The King of France gave me gloves. He didn't want to marry me..."
Wow. And with that... I'm broken.
The genius of this real piece of televisual splendour is that... well, wew know what happens. This is documented histoiry. We know how and when Thomas Cromwell dies. There's no suspense here, but suspense is not the point. There is only character, and emotion.
There is Cromnwell's true stoicism, as he runs rings round his interlocutors while knowing he is nevertheless doomed. Oh, he's accused of arrogance, getting above himself, wanting to marry Mary, othersuch absurdities... and heresy, of which he is guilty by the standards of the age, rejecting the Pope only for a very Enflish Catholicism. Yet above all, I think, it's his impatience for the grinding of due process, his manipulation of events, that he is damned. And so, as he says, he will be followed by slower men, and England will suffer.]
He is clear-minded, cautioning his friends to stay apart and not seem to be plotting. He insists that Gregory denounce him for his own safety, as would any father in his position. Yet his calm does not mean absence of feeling, as Mark Rylance shows us with sublime subtlety. Some peoople are vlatile, but those of us whonare calm and composed have feelings too, and Cromwell has his demons... and yet one, at least, is healed. He feels himself reconciled with Wolsey's ghost, and his final plrea for forgiveness before his beheading, are clearly aimed at his former master, a lovely touch. And, as a parallel, his own protege Rafe has the most love for his own master.
And so it ends, and so does he. The ending is devatating. Liuke Anne Boleyn, he finds dignity before the blade takes his life, all as the king prepares to wed yet again...
Sublime television.
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