Or they might become a soap. Ooops, stop there, woman: sudsie candle lit quicksand.

What about a prequel 'Cromwell - the wilderness years'?

Excellent final episode I thought, now I can start the books.

I am a bit concerned that I have not heard mention of this being shown in NZ.  Might have to visit my son more who has someone got all the BBC channels on his television here (I am bothered about the legality of this, but they say it must be legal since you can do it easily enough.  I could poison my husband easily enough - well perhaps not really - but that doesn't make it legal). 

To back up Temperance's feeling that the actors portrayed the inner life quite well, I saw on a books board I belong to the following:  Although I'm a fan of Mark Rylance, he wouldn't have been my first choice to play Cromwell. I always saw Cromwell as bulky, a heavyweight in both senses.  But Rylance put in a superb performance and the viewer could almost read his thoughts.



At any rate I don't particularly nitpick (or know enough to nitpick as regards the history anyway): all I want is to be able to watch this show. I don't want to watch it via the internet even if it was available that way here. That is not particularly enjoyable for me.

I'm not sure what Temp will make of this;



Rylance has gone from Shakespeare to Hollywood

Caro wrote:

I am a bit concerned that I have not heard mention of this being shown in NZ. 
At any rate I don't particularly nitpick (or know enough to nitpick as regards the history anyway): all I want is to be able to watch this show. I don't want to watch it via the internet even if it was available that way here. That is not particularly enjoyable for me.

Haven't been able to find any mention of it for New Zealand either, Caro. Not so far at any rate.
The Australians have picked it up but no mention of NZ. I'm sure it will appear in NZ television at some point.

Triceratops wrote:

I'm not sure what Temp will make of this;



Rylance has gone from Shakespeare to Hollywood

You are speaking to a woman who has slept through Die Hard three times, Trike. The Gunman looks like another film which will cure my insomnia. Just wake me up for Rylance's bits.

Talking of which, I have been given a very unexpected present - a collector's item no less - Rylance in Intimacy. I haven't watched it yet - but it is apparently a very controversial and sexually explicit film, but absolutely brilliant. Lots of scope there for smutty little boys to make jokes about Rylance fluffing his lines (yes, I had the joke explained to me  - eventually), but don't let's go there.

And make another joke like that, nordmann - dictator or no dictator - and I will personally send the Duke of Norfolk over to bite/tear off your b*llocks. I hope I make myself understood.

What joke? No, on second thoughts I'd rather not know. I'm happier in my innocence, even if a little aggrieved.

nordmann wrote:

What joke? No, on second thoughts I'd rather not know. I'm happier in my innocence, even if a little aggrieved.

What joke? was my reaction too. Language change is a minefield these days and we have all been caught out - innocently using words which make streetwise young people giggle - or snigger.

You must forgive me, nordmann, but you do not come over as a victim of semantic ignorance; furthermore, you are, as we all appreciate, a master of ambiguity. Put the two together, and I am sure you will understand my mistake in believing a friend (who is not that young, actually, but who is far, far more streetwise than I am) who informed me that you had made a deliciously ambiguous and malicious remark in response to my criticism of your criticism of Wolf Hall. I was more than aggrieved - I was pretty upset, actually.

But it was all a terrible misunderstanding! I cannot tell you how relieved I am to learn that! Let us put this distressing incident behind us, tell the Duke of Norfolk he can go home, and continue our interesting discussion of Mantel's wonderful work - a discussion which I think we were all enjoying.

PS Priscilla elsewhere has suggested that there could be a staging of Wolf Hall - the Musical. Which thought cheered me hugely. But can Rylance sing?

There is a Wolf Hall play, Temp. It was in the West End, currently on Broadway.

Blimey, I must be 'linguistically ignorant' as well, you've got me hunting for this delicious malice and ambiguity and I can't recognise it. Now I feel really old and off trend so I will mount this dudgeon and shuffle off to the corner reserved for the terminally passée.

Unless you check your Urban Dictionary much as you would the daily weather it is best not to speak within earshot of anyone under 25 these days. I dread the day when my grandchildren get beyond the "Who's nicked the Nutella?" age and reach the shared sniggering decade.

Now that my years of being educated in the patois by Glasgow's teenage miscreants are over, my street cred has gone. Once I could engage with any group hanging round a play park slugging Buckie in the East End and disarm them by my acquaintance with at least a couple of their compadres and my grasp of the latest vocab., now I'm just another old bat.

Sorry, off on a tangent again.

Get them needles out, P.


                                                                       

Great stuff, ferv - but I am only at the Cub Cottage level of skill - in several respects. Please let us know when tickets go out for WH on Ice. I dread as much the Disney film with those close ups of huge faces and big eyes. I have never forgiven them for Pooh with an American accent...... we ought do one of Butch Cassidy with a Norfolk dialect.

Priscilla wrote:

Great stuff, ferv - but I am only at the Cub Cottage level of skill - in several respects. Please let us know when tickets go out for WH on Ice. I dread as much the Disney film with those close ups of huge faces and big eyes. I have never forgiven them for Pooh with an American accent...... we ought do one of Butch Cassidy with a Norfolk dialect.

Do you do a Norfolk dialect, Priscilla?
Is that the regional one or the one - Duke of Norfolk - with which someone threatened Nordmann?

ferval wrote:

Get them needles out, P.


                                                                       

Ferval, I have got to have one of those. Seriously, where did you find it? Is there a pattern?


I also wish to commission one - possibly more - of these:


http://fluffandfuzz.weebly.com/pattern-store/voodoo-doll

It's from here, Temp, http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/wolf-hall-knitting-witch-bridgend-8742799

I don't think there's a pattern available so perhaps a private commission?

deleted - duplicate post.

Thanks, ferval. Not so keen on Henry and the women, but her TC is great.

On a more serious note after all our nonsense here - I have been visiting a friend this afternoon who is very, very ill. She has, however, informed her doctors that their job is to keep her alive and conscious until a) she's read The Mirror and the Light and b) she's seen the next BBC adaptation. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when she told me this, so I did both. What an accolade for Mantel/Kosminsky/Rylance - giving someone the will to keep living - to keep fighting a horrible disease. I just hope she makes it - please, Hilary, get a move on with Part 3.

I believe Part 3 isn't likely to appear before next year.  (Personally I still haven't read the first two books yet!)  At least Mark Rylance had said he wants to be in the adaptation.

Coming late to the thread, just as Phil Archer came late to avocados*, I thought it was a superb drama, one of the best things the Beeb has done for a long time.  There seems to have been some meticulous research into getting the look right: costumes, lighting, etiquette etc - the manner of doffing hats seems to have provoked great fascination in the public (one or two errors though, either accidents or dramatic license).  The manner of Anne's beheading was a beautiful bit of balletic choreography and, I understand, based on the recorded accounts.  Despite seeming to endlessly do the Tudors at school, though, I don't feel I know enough about the people to judge the accuracy of the characters in the way they were portrayed.  Although I'm prepared to give the benefit of the doubt, I suspect Thomas Cromwell was not as sympathetic a figure as shown.  As I say, though, I don't know enough in depth about him.  I think I'll stick with great-great-great nephew Ollie.

*Don't ask.  Just... don't.

Anglo-Norman wrote:

I thought it was a superb drama, one of the best things the Beeb has done for a long time.

Yep - so did most people.

Wolf Hall the DVD is now on sale in Morrisons - £16.99: it is being offered as an "ideal gift for Mother's Day".  

I have just started reading Mantel's Fludd. It is set around 1965, but Fludd was apparently an alchemist. I had never heard of him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fludd

The book is about a Roman Catholic priest, Father Angwin. It is already making me laugh - I love Mantel's dark humour. Here is a bit from Chapter 2. Father Angwin is talking to his bishop who is keen to bring in New Things:

" 'But I am afraid,' Father Angwin said, 'that if you take away the statues, and next the Latin, next the feast days, the fast days, the vestments - '

'I said nothing about this, did I?'

'I can see the future. They won't come any more. Why should they? Why should they come to church? They might as well be out on the street.'

'We are not here for frills and baubles, Father,' said the bishop. 'We are here for Christian witness.'

'Rubbish,' Father Angwin said. 'These people aren't Christians. These people are are heathens and Catholics.' "


Not quite certain how this all fits in with Fludd yet, but only on Chapter 3. At the beginning of the book there is an Author's Note:


The real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical.

I have got my Wolf Hall DVD for Un-Mother's Day. I am now going to watch the "deleted scenes".

I wish someone would say something. This silence is awful.

EDIT: Just been watching/listening to Peter Straughan, explaining how he interpreted Mantel's novels as essentially revenge tragedy - ah - now that makes an awful lot of sense:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/500360/revenge-tragedy

We in Uk are busy preparing for street fighting about Jeremy Clarkson in the naughty boy corner to have much to say here at the moment. For one thing he can no longer be considered for the latter day Henry V111th partof WH - if ever it gets to production - and he seems well suited for it. However, he does not appear to be in a sulk and the affair is causing more conversation than any act of Parliament could. Only a great move by the Royal family could trump it for opinionated interest at the moment.

Here is something for you,Temp.

Oh, Trike, thank you for that clip - wonderful!

Only Mark Rylance could still manage to look super-cool while dancing a jig!

Aye - and the smile reveals the mark of the man, too.  Funny thing about smiles. I have been quite won over by them. Just once in The Gladiator, Crowe smiled and it was a winning one. In real life a true smile shines out - a indeed does a false one send other messages.

Rylance was the man for this production. Thank goodness there thinking people out there because it is not always so in casting.

The jig itself was fun. I do like Globe productions but it took a while for me to clear my head for them; the clutter of too many lavish productions on stage and screens got in the way.

Hever Castle have unveiled a replica of a portrait of Henry VIII, painted by Joos van Cleve around 1532. The original is in the Royal Collection. The portrait is not as well known as the Holbein work;



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-31818256

Temperance wrote:

Oh, Trike, thank you for that clip - wonderful!

Only Mark Rylance could still manage to look super-cool while dancing a jig!

Just to be super annoyingly nit-picky ... it's not a jig. A jig would be in 6:8 time (or 9:8 if a slip jig), that was in 4:4 time and the music was for a pavane although taken at a faster pace than would be usual. It's the 'Pavanne La Bataille', written by Tielman Susato and published in his collection of dance music 'Danserye' in 1551, (so it's orfentick like!).

Good picture of King Hal ... and with the same distinctive pert little mouth and piggy eyes.

Meles meles wrote:

Temperance wrote:

Oh, Trike, thank you for that clip - wonderful!

Only Mark Rylance could still manage to look super-cool while dancing a jig!

Just to be super annoyingly nit-picky ... it's not a jig. A jig would be in 6:8 time (or 9:8 if a slip jig), that was in 4:4 time and the music was for a pavanne although taken at a faster pace than would be usual. It's the 'Pavanne La Bataille', written by Tielman Susato and published in his collection of dance music 'Danserye' in 1551, (so it's orfentick like!).

Now don't you start on about bloody nits too, MM. That'll be the last straw!

Seriously, thank you - excellent information, as always. I did wonder if it was a jig actually - all that hopping about convinced me - wrongly! Watching it just made me so happy - can't say why. I want to learn that dance!

PS This thread has now gone over 5000 views - it is at 5032. It can't just be We Happy Few who are reading it.

But why does no one join in?

The deleted scenes on the Wolf Hall video are really good. Perhaps the contents of a second DVD ended up on the cutting room floor.

One very funny one is when our favourite Duke, His Grace of Norfolk, visits Cromwell who is still ill in bed.

"Yer liver is it?" the Duke growls. He then tells Cromwell how he himself suffers terribly from the "gripes" and he adds, "Sometimes I'm at my stool all night."

The mind boggles.

As he leaves, he gives Cromwell a get-well-soon gift - a holy medal blessed by the Pope. Or, rather (as he swiftly corrects himself) by the Bishop of Rome. "Don't suppose you've got one of those," he grunts at the bemused Cromwell.

Meles meles wrote:

Just to be super annoyingly nit-picky ... it's not a jig.

I need to unpick my nitpick and re-knit a bit.....

It seems that originally a jig was often in 12:8 time and only later generally became associated with dances in 6:8 or 9:8 time when it was adopted into Ireland and Scotland. Moreover in Elizabethan England the term 'jig' was often specifically used for the post-play dance entertainment which actually employed a great variety of dances, to different metres and tempos ... so solo dances, paired, round, and processional, court dances all might be performed. So you were actually spot on in referring to the dance as a jig, even though the tune is actually a pavane (normally a slow, very formal processional court dance).

There is a tune, in 4:4 time, given in Playford's Dancing Master (1651) called  ‘Kemps Jegg’ named after the Elizabethan actor and clown, William Kemp (or Kempe) who was one of the original players in Shakespeare's early plays - the role of Falstaff may have been specifically written with him in mind. He was one of the five actor-shareholders in the Lord Chamberlain's Men alongside Shakespeare, but split from the group about 1600 and died in poverty just a few years later.

Here's Will Kemp dancing a jig - supposedly for a bet he once danced all the way from Norwich to London ... it took him nine days:



And this is the tune 'Kemp's Jig' which nowadays would not be recognised as being a jig at all:

Oh yes - it was Kemp who danced from London to Norwich, wasn't it.  His "Nine Days Wonder" as he called it (wonder if there's a link to the expression).

Thank you, MM for that musical interlude that brought further joy to a spring morning. And also for the info; I had mulled about  fast pavanes. My last letters between me and  my gran - she 86 - had been an argument about the timing of pavanes because I had  been to a lute and mandolin recital. Sounds heartless but such was her liking.

The music from the Richard II jig, I have realised, is the Battle Pavane and Galliard.

Trike - the deleted scenes from Wolf Hall are now on YouTube, but it says they are "property of the BBC". Is it illegal to post them here? I don't want to do anything that will get us/the site/El Supremo into trouble.

But I would like to post the Duke of Norfolk (deleted scene 4). The sound's very poor, mind you, and the subtitles are in Russian, which isn't much help.

I loved today's music too, MM. And you have nitpicked your nitpick which is a very honest thing to do.

You can read Kemp's own account of his merry dance here. It is great fun.

http://pages.uoregon.edu/rbear/kemp.html

Wherein is somewhat set downe worth note ... many things merry,
nothing hurtfull.

I also really like his description of himself:

...such a one as Will Kemp, that hath spent his life in mad Iigges and merry iestes.

I am all for mad Iigges and merry iestes - but nothing hurtfull, of course.  

I don't think it's illegal for us to post them. Whoever posted them on youtube, that was probably illegal. When the BBC find out they will most likely force youtube to remove them.

Until that time;



you're right Temp, it's barely audible on my computer.

The sound on this one is OK;

Thanks, Trike.

Just ordered the Wolf Hall DVD from Amazon, so I'll finally get see what you've all be raving about. And I've also ordered The Globe's production of 'Twelfth Night', with Rylance playing Olivia, which should be fun!
 
PS : Then there's also a DVD of the Globe production of Richard III, in which Rylance plays the infamous kiddy-throttler!
Now that's one I'd definitely like to get ... but as my credit card has just been refused for all my above purchases, it will have to deferred for a month, as will my comments on Wolf Hall ...  (it seems I was a bit over zealous in transferring pounds to euros to try and benefit from the exchange rate, and so have left the UK cupboard rather bare).

Can't you use some of those lovely cheap euros to buy it from Amazon.fr? 
http://www.amazon.fr/Wolf-Hall-DVD-UK-IMPORT/dp/B00SB9SL3A/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1426272520&sr=1-1

Mark Rylance as Richard III?




But where? where? where?

I have looked on Amazon and on the Globe site, but no joy. Are you sure you haven't misread the II as III, MM?

With Twelth Night (in which Rylance played Olivia) it went to Broadway in 2013 where it won a few Tonys.



Here is Rylance playing Dickon in his own unique style ... almost as comedy in this scene:



The Twelfth Night performance was filmed at the Globe, but I too haven't yet found anything to suggest the Richard III was filmed ... but I bet it was, probably for later release ... maybe when they've planted the actual body later this month!

And a clip from the original Globe production of Twelfth Night, with Rylance as a very plausible Olivia and Stephen Fry as Malvolio (and that DVD I do now have on order):

MM wrote:

Here is Rylance playing Dickon in his own unique style ... almost as comedy in this scene...

That's how it should be played: Shakespeare's Richard is very funny - really sardonic. Olivier plays him like that too.

When the body has been "planted" indeed.  The last Plantagenet king is not a shrub, MM.

But yes, the release of the DVD of Richard III (starring Rylance) to coincide with the solemn re-burial of our lad would indeed be a canny move by the Globe.

And it would unleash a fresh pack of hounds on the chase for  elusive truths; Rylance being flavour of the day and this portrayal. What a tasty dish this is turning out to be.

Quote :

When the body has been "planted" indeed. The last Plantagenet king is not a shrub, MM.

Maybe not but I bet we can still find a suitable bush to plant in that hole in the carpark ...

In the catalogue I've found the rosebush, 'Smooth Prince' ... which while unfortunately a red rose, is rather aptly described as sans épines - ie spineless!:



Though if it really is the last Plantagenet King I suppose it should be a bush of common broom (Cytisus scoparius) known as plantegenest or planta genista in medieval England.

Common broom as in what one sweeps the mess he made 0f  guardianship under the tarmac carpet?

... or swept a couple of small, but inconvenient pieces, out of the way under the paving stones of the back stairs to the chapel in the Tower of London.