"You're going to bring them down? The oldest and richest familes in the land?"
"Like skittles!"
It's redundant, by now, for me to point out that any given episode of Wolf Hall, this one most certainly included, is a televisual masterpiece. But I seem to have done so anyway. Yes, big things are happening- the birth of a son for the king, the tragic, negligent death of Jane, the peace between King Francis and Charles V and the dangers posed to England. And yet this series ais about Thomas Cromwell, and this is where his position starts to slip.
Oh, he finds happiness in Jenneke, the lovely daughter of whom he's just learned... yet he is loving, good, tender and fatherly, a good man. In stark contrast to the things which Dorothea said to him, things that have truly shaken to him and, as we often see, haunt his nightmares. He doubts himself, wonders if he betrayed Wolsey after all, knowingly or not, and confesses himself "undone".
Jane's death upsets him deeply, more so than his tyrant king, play-acting at mourning. And Stephen Gardiner is back, with the ear of the king, pushing him against "heresy". Cromwell, baring his soul to Archbishop Cranmer, begins to despair that all he's done to bring Protestantism to England may perhaps be for naught. And Gardiner (Alex Jennings a worthy successor to Mark Gatiss) is an insidious foe, one in the ascendant.
He is getting nowhere with the Poles. He clashes with the Duke of Norfolk, ironically in defence of Wolsey and the old ways. His influence with Mary is diminished.
All hope rests in an alliance with the German princes, and a new bride from Cleves. We know the history here, of course. Yet this episode gives us a much deeper context in which Cromwell is already losing ground.
As Cromwell's vaunted ambassador to Charles V, Thomas Wyatt, would say... circa regna tonat.
No comments:
Post a Comment