mtvessel | A Tudor Soap Opera

Aug 2022
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel – 4th Estate, 2019
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Historians and soap opera writers share an obsession with storytelling, which is why history as soap opera is a fertile ground for novelists and playwrights. Nowhere is this more evident than in the life and times of Henry VIII and his court. Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons depicts one episode of this history – the downfall of Thomas More – in crude but dramatic terms as a saintly man brought down by his calculating evil nemesis, Thomas Cromwell. But of course real history is much more complicated, knotty and ambiguous than that. Hilary Mantel clearly understood this and it is to her credit that her portrayal of Cromwell and the circles he moved in is consistent with the historical facts while retaining a compelling soap operatic drive.

Mantel points out a few facts about Cromwell that make him much more sympathetic to modern eyes. For a start he was a commoner, born in Putney, who spent a somewhat mysterious period of his teens and early twenties in France (having escaped from his abusive father, according to Mantel). He was also on the side of merchants against the aristocracy and religious reformers such as Cranmer against the Catholic hierarchy. By contrast, More is portrayed as a vicious and pigheaded adherent of the ancien regime who refuses to go along with Cromwell's attempts to save him. I am not certain if the dry wit with which Mantel imbues Cromwell is supported by the historical record, but it certainly helps to humanise him.

There are a few annoyances – while I generally like Mantel's present tense style and economy of phrasing, the narrative flits between author's description and Cromwell's point of view in ways that can be hard to follow. And the close focus on Cromwell means that we don't really get to understand the viewpoints of the many other characters in the story, which can make their opinions and behaviour seem capricious. But as any good soap opera writer knows, too much consistency of characterisation can get in the way of the story, so perhaps that's for the best.