6 posts tagged “henry viii”
"King Jamie hath made a vow,
Keepe it well if he may:
That he will be at lovely London
Upon Saint James his day"
Flodden Field is a grim, soaked name: soaked in rain, soaked in blood. The name is dark with lowering clouds, heavy against a gangrenous sky of gray and green. It is without warmth, save for the life forces absorbed into the parasitic ground as the great men lay dying. It is a name without horizon; a killing field symbolizing Scotland's shame and despair.
In 1513, King Henry VIII was in France. He rode arched Friesian horses into his small battles, feeling their muscular spirits through his hands and legs. He wore suits of armor tattooed with gems so audacious that they made the sun look away in a fit of pique. His tents were thick with tapestries; animals, a frozen heraldic population, stared from within their embroidered forests. Local girls ran out with wild, scented garlands in their hands to take a look at the young and beautiful English king.
He left his wife at home.
Queen Katherine was made regent in the king's absence. Symbolically, the cold and knight-errant island was hers. But although she was mild and devout, a pale nun in cold velvet, there were fires lurking inside her. Isabella of Castile was her mother: leader of the Spanish Inquisition, a warrior against the Jews and Muslims; fearless, intolerant, brilliant. It was her blood that warmed her daughter's pallid faith.
When it became known in Scotland that the king of England was away to France, James IV - linguist, scientist, builder, adulterer - raised his head from his mistress' breast to listen.
The 'Auld Alliance' with France, nearly 250 years old, had to be honored. England was ripe for invasion. So, despite his queen's protestations and precognitive dreams, a massive army - with an arrogance as heavy as the armor on their backs - was assembled.
Queen Margaret begged him not to go to war with her brother.
"Then bespake good Queene Margaret,
The teares fell from her eye:
'Leave off these warres, most noble King,
Keep your fidelitie.'"
Flodden Field is located in Northumberland, the darkest and saddest of English counties. The two armies met there in October 1513, behind a mourning veil of rain that beaded on the blades of swords like bold crystals. Katherine wisely named the Earl of Surrey - 70 years old, memories of past battles stitched into his skin - as the commander of her army. James, yearning for a chivalry which never existed, led his own army. Overcome by foolish courage, he galloped beneath the royal standard of Scotland, a blood-red lion that roared in dismay.
The result was a famous English victory, at the cost of 1,500 men. But the flat, blank field was suddenly mountainous with 10,000 Scottish corpses, and somewhere amongst them lay James IV, punished for his futile dreams.
His torn and bloody coat was sent to Katherine, who proudly had it delivered to her husband. No one knows what Henry thought as he ran the shattered cloth through his fingers. It is doubtful that he felt any guilt for his widowed sister, mourning far away from home.
"That day made many a fatherlesse child,
And many a widow poore,
And many a Scottish gay lady
Sate weeping in her bower."
Look at her. She once had a name, until historians took that name away, and she merely became 'An Unknown Lady'. Now I have just read that her name has been restored to her. This - finally - is the serious, oddly demure portrait of Catherine Howard, Henry VIII's friskiest, stupidest wife.
This painting is like a letter from home, assuring the teacher that the student had behaved well during her absence. Her hands fold like a solemn promise. Her lids are heavy - subduing eyes that once dazzled and dared. Now those eyes obediently stare into intermediate space, non-committal, haughty and bored.
Her features are thick: if you could run your hands over her face they would encounter broad plains, unsubtle angles, sudden heights and buried orbits of bone. The strap of her French Hood is buried in her soft, fleshy chin. Even though she was a Howard, an ancient name mired in wars, acreages, castles and the pride that came from a history of avarice, her face is more like that of a knowing peasant girl.
And yet she was a queen when this portrait was painted. Her face looks detached from her black gown; an unsettling example of painterly premonition. Streams of gold embroidery run in thick currents down her sleeves, ending in a white froth of starched cuffs. Though Henry gave all the jewels he had to his 'rose without a thorn', she only wears a few ornaments - a golden cord around her neck, chips of rubies shining like spots of blood. The neck of the bodice is nothing but a quiet, modest declaration of femininity.
It is a humble costume for a woman who has perhaps sensed her demise.
No one is quite sure when she was born - the years vary, from 1520 to 1525. She spent her childhood at Lambeth Palace, red-bricked and stolid, shrouded by the fumes of Lambeth Marsh. Her upbringing was casual, offering no bridle or punishment for a girl who, by all accounts, was a libertine before her fifteenth birthday. She had an affair with her music teacher in 1536, when she was between the ages of eleven and fifteen. Two years later she and the household secretary became lovers.
But by 1540 she was at court, a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves, the poor hausfrau whose idea of marriage was a kiss in the morning and one more at night. The court openly mocked this queen with her clumsy gowns and awkward innocence.
The marriage was dissolved, and in two weeks Catherine was queen. In two years she was dead, the blood from her gaping neck seeping into the grass of Tower Green, joining the blood of her cousin, Anne Boleyn, long dried and linked with the earth.
Catherine had come to the king claiming to be chaste. She had committed adultery with Thomas Culpepper, one of Henry's courtiers (her scrawled love letter to him was discovered in her chambers). She had brought the lovers of her youth to work in her royal household, an act of stupid bravado, possibly to order and torment these takers of her young body, these men who had corrupted her childhood. (Though she was more than willing.) They were all arrested on charges of treasonable acts.
Culpepper, as a gentleman, was permitted to die as one, and was beheaded. The two others, a mere teacher and secretary, were reminded of their low birth by the executioner's axe, wielded like a butcher's knife, as it disembowled, slashed and then divided their bodies into quarters. Before death silenced them, they might have found the breath to curse themselves, to curse the king and to curse the girl who had tempted them. Their streaming remains were displayed throughout the city, turning London into a human abbatoir.
Some say she still lives - that her ghost can be heard screaming in the halls of Hampton Court, that her gray, clammy hands still beat on the doors, still trying to beg her husband's forgiveness. A shadow that claws at freedom, that shatters its fingernails as it tries to hold onto the precipice, that dislocates limbs and splinters tendons before it is forced to let go and fall into despair.
A song from earlier in Henry's reign - some say it was written by him - reminds me of Catherine: bold, spirited, long hair separating like rivers in the wind as she danced the galliard, cloth of gold glinting in the candlelight, being passed from partner to partner:
"And I was a maydyn
As many one is
For all the golde in Englalnd
I wold not do amysse
When I was a wanton wench of
Twelve yere of age,
These courtiers with there amours
They kindled my courage
When I was come to
The age of fifteen yere
In all this land, neither free nor bond,
Methought I had no peer"
She was born in Madrid, amongst hushed duennas and modest women. Her parents expelled the Jews from Spain. Her mother was the patroness of Christopher Columbus. Her father was the 'cunning fox' so admired by Machiavelli. Her sister was mad, refusing to abandon the rotten, cholera-ridden body of her dead husband. She grew up against the scarlet agonies of the Inquisition. She came to England when she was barely sixteen, the bride-to-be for a King.
The next year, in 1502, she lost her husband to the 'sweate'. She watched him, soothed him, pressed a damp handkerchief to his temples to absorb the thick, stinking sweat. She prayed.
This portrait was painted at about this time. A widowed cherub, with gaze lowered and focused on worries she was too young to name. Thoughtful, she eyed an unfair fate that mocked her and gamboled at her feet.
Her weeds are black and plum; her chains are simple weaves, and scallops - emblems of the pilgrims of St. James - bite the square shoreline of her bodice.
For seven years, she waited. She wandered the palace, ignored by her distant parents, a shadow to her father-in-law. He and his advisors were too busy grooming the golden lion who was growing into adulthood in their midst. They had plans for him; they imagined a marriage with a princess whose veins would tangle Europe like vines, drenching countries in their royal sap. A sad princess, already used, was not good enough.
In 1509, it was time for another son to be crowned. And this Spanish princess - despite, or possibly because of, palace politics - was the chosen bride. On June 11, Katherine of Aragon was wedded to Henry VIII. Witnesses noted her thick hair, a river of melted bronze shot with gold, pouring down her back. Her plump oval face, pink and white, agreed happily with the English vision of healthy womanhood: innocent, yet of good child-bearing stock.
She was the first, and she had him at his best. He was fit, virile, slim, athletic. He still had his shy ways: his childhood was a sheltered one and he trod carefully on the words of his tutors as if each syllable was an eggshell. He was optimistic and careless. He was a handsome boy. And she was in love.
But he grew up. Power drove her heel into his neck and taught him the ways of cruelty, impatience and greed. She stood in the way of...so many things. But she would not move: her core of resolve was an alloy of steel buried in the meek earth. Quietly, she kept Anne Boleyn listening at the keyhole. She was the silent figurehead around whom the people rallied: against the king, his new religion and his filthy mistress. The Vatican was in awe - she was exotic, she was fearsome: she was honest.
But honesty does not breed kings. Her babies died, one after the other, except for one daughter. And this child, in time, would suffer too.
And when Katherine lay dying, she was alone once more, even denied communication with her daughter. Did she think of her years as a young widow, a living ghost in dusty velvet? Maybe all she remembered was her final letter to her husband - the words hanging before her eyes like curtains - that ended with a vow of shattering devotion:
"Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things."
Which book would you love to see adapted into a film?
I'll get to that - because there is something else that is getting screen time: history. History is hot. History is money. And one family in particular is attracting the attention of filmmakers who know as much about their subject as I know about roof thatching. In their eyes, the Tudors are tight-bodiced, heaving, pouting, smooth-faced and spotless.
I can start with the soon-to-be-relased The Other Boleyn Girl. Now, it's a little unfair to tease it for any inaccuracies, as its origins are in Philippa Gregory's book of historical fiction. It's speculative reality. Also the relations between Anne and Mary Boleyn are not my strong points. I do, however, know that Anne was black-haired and olive-skinned, slim and sharp. I just don't think that a dewy Natalie Portman is the girl for the job. And why the devil someone couldn't run to the nearest drugstore and buy a henna rinse for Eric Bana (Henry VIII's hair was auburn - a small point maybe, but still a physical trait closely associated with the man) is beyond me.
And then there was Showtime's gangsta epic, The Tudors, starring 'Henry 8'. I've written about this in more detail, some time ago. But suffice it to say that the sight of a whisper-thin, brooding Henry, in a blouson shirt and tight, shiny pants simply withers my soul. People, I am not interested in your new, swinging version of history. History has happened. It is an established fact. That's why we call it history. Don't f*ck with it.
Moving on. First, let me say that I positively revere Helen Mirren. She's tough, talented, dignified and beautiful. I just can't understand why she portrayed Elizabeth I as a hormone-addled schoolgirl.
When she and Leicester (Jeremy Irons) were strolling together towards her assembled army at Tilbury, where she would give her famous speech, she said something like, "You know, Bobby, my Edible Earl, I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King!" He pauses...he has a look in his eyes...yes: it...just...might...work...
Cut to the next scene, she's speaking to her men and using that very line. I believe that is when I set my hair on fire and went outside to howl at the moon.
I can't say much about Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I haven't seen it, and you know Aubrey likes to be fair.
And on a side, non-Tudor note: Ms. Coppola: if the only way you can portray a teenager's angst - as she is flung from the safety of her home to a foreign court, to marry a foreign king - is to throw in a pair of Keds amongst her satin slippers, you, madam, deserve to be slapped. History has its own irony - it doesn't need yours.
OK. That's better. As for books to film: this weekend I read in Vanity Fair that a screen version of 'Brideshead Revisited' is in the offing. I will be watching developments very carefully. I've read the book close to ten times. I've seen the PBS series nearly as often. Both are thrillingly wonderful. Suffice to say, I know the story well.
I didn't find any of the acting choices offensive. Julie Flyte looked a little lost, but perhaps she'd just had an ice cream and was exhibiting the symptoms of a brain freeze. I am pleased to say that Emma Thompson will play Lady Marchmain - however in her photo, she looked a little too cold, too intimidating. Weren't her destructive qualities seen only through th eyes of the most dysfunctional members of her family - her husband and her younger son? Still, she was weariang a lovely olive and black cloak, so that made it better.
I know that I can be too judgemental when it comes to historical re-enactments and portrayals. I can be very steely-eyed when it comes to a new interpretation of something I care deeply about. But I'm not saying people shouldn't try.
They had just better be careful.
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind
But as for me, alas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame."
This sonnet was written as a cry of dispair, as a warning to others and as an acceptance of the way things had to be. Written in the early 1520's, it was an expression of love for the brightest creature at Henry's court. She came to England fresh from her training in France: her wit, style, and grace had a touch of continental dash which set her apart from the rest of Queen Katherine's prim and devout ladies. Barely 20, her dancing black eyes already knew every step to every measure, and were suitable partners to her bold words and daring smiles.
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She gathered many hunters about her. Here, it was said, was "a fresh young damsel, that could trip and go." She was not a classic beauty - she was too thin, too sallow. And yet she was dangerously beguiling. She wore her thick black hair down her back - the onyx whisps lifting gently as she went through the paces of the 'Frog Galliard' and 'My Lord of Oxenford's March'. Her white teeth would show hard and brilliant with every outrageous comment: each word shot quickly and with deadly accuracy. She loved to gossip; she loved to gamble. Her long throat would lean forward as she peered at the dice she threw down during a game of backgammon.
As she would lean her throat forward at the last moment of her life, to meet the edge of a gilded sword.
This lady was Anne Boleyn - later called 'The Witch', 'The Night Crow', 'The Great Whore'. On her coronation progress the crowds stood silent and staring. On a tour of the northern counties, the women of the villages spat at her.
But now, nearly ten years before she would marry Henry VIII, whoso list to hunt still had a chance. Numbered amongst these hopefuls was a poet, specializing in the sonnet, Sir Thomas Wyatt. He saw her first in 1522, when she was introduced to court as a young performer in a masquerede, holding a carved mask in front of her sprite's face, singing in a high, clear voice. 'Fainting' and with 'wearied mind' he persued her, but fast and knowing, she 'fleeth afore' leaving him 'furthest come behind.' With the net he had, he could only 'seek to hold the wind.'
Then, in 1524-1525 he met up with a much more formidable obstacle - more threatening than a mere slip of a dark girl: his King. Henry had grown weary of his previous mistress - Anne's older sister, Mary - and had become deeply enamored of Anne. And as soon as his desire became common knowledge, Sir Thomas and his companions were put 'out of doubt', for now each 'may spend his time in vain'.
Just by becoming the object of 'Ceasar's' passion, the hind had been run to ground. She had proven her wildness and fire - in time she would be tamed. She was his property now: 'Noli me tangere': 'Touch me not'. All that was left for Wyatt to do was write this sonnet of longing and resignation. Maybe he continued to watch her - through arguments, jealousies, accusations, miscarriages, trials...waiting for the diamond words around her neck to cast some of their fire and light up the caverns of her face.
Sometimes tragedy embraces both ends, like a serpent grasping its own tail: Wyatt's son was hanged, drawn and quartered for leading a rebellion against Queen Mary, allegedly fighting for the interests of Elizabeth Tudor, Anne Boleyn's daughter.
I've decided to refrain from writing a truly lengthy post about Showtime's upcoming series 'The Tudors'. I figured that if I did, I would become too emotionally involved, and my head would explode our of sheer frustration. And then I'd have to wear a hat for the rest of the year. Not to say that I don't think I could carry it off, but it might become somewhat of a hindrance during the sweaty Summer.
I know that lots of people are looking forward to this series. I wish them well. Enjoy. Besides, I always thought, in sort of an off-handed way, how would MTV interpret the reign of Henry VIII?
But I just received my TV 'Guide' for next week, and I must discuss the back cover. It is an advertisment for 'The Tudors' - premiering on April 1, and if you don't think that doesn't give me a fit of giggles - step back, take a deep breath, remove the steel spike impeding your brain pan and think again.
Anyway, it announces Jonathan Rhys Meyers as 'Henry 8'.
HENRY 8?
Stop trying to be edgy. Stop trying to be radical. Stop trying to be avant-garde. Stop trying. Stop. It.
Look...I have a sneaking suspicion that the Thames is about to be diverted into Dawson's Creek. I hope I'll be proved wrong.
But the least Showtime can do is get his f**king name right.
(Henry VIII, 1520 - 29 years old)
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I need to calm down. I'm going to look at some Mourning Doves.
