The Creation of Anne Boleyn (52 page)

45. Isabelle Fallon, July 31, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

46. Donna Fagan, August 1, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

47. Lindsey Nicholls, August 1, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook
page,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

48. Jerry Watkins, July 31, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
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www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

49. Lindsey Nicholls, August 2, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

50. Geneviève Bujold, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, June 21, 2010.

11. The Tudors

1. Fulkerson 1973.

2. Marcus 2004.

3. Wallenstein 2010.

4. Hohenadel 2007.

5. Stuttaford 2007.

6. Hohenadel 2007.

7. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. “When Royals Become Rock Stars,” 2007.

11. Das 2007.

12. Deggans 2007.

13. Moore 2007.

14. Ibid.

15. Whitelock 2007.

16. Brand 2008.

17. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

18. Ibid.

19. Hohenadel 2007.

20. Das 2011.

21. Natalie Dormer, interview with author, Richmond upon Thames, England, July 31, 2010.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

31. Ibid.

32. Hohenadel 2007.

33. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

34. Das 2007.

35. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

36. This all takes place in a dream of Henry’s, sidestepping any charges of historical inaccuracy.

37. Stanley 2007.

38. Cox 2007.

39. Bellafante 2008.

40. Mirror.co.uk 2008.

41. Fienberg 2007.

42. Moodie 2007.

43. Ibid.

44. Das 2007.

45. Cox 2011.

46. Das 2007.

47. Moodie 2007.

48. Marikar 2008.

49. Martin 2008.

50. Hough 2009.

51. Guy 2008.

52. Zobo, April 1, 2011, comment on Dugdale 2011.

53. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

54. Mantel 2013, 409.

55. Ibid., 159.

56. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

57. Natalie Dormer, interview with author, Richmond upon Thames, England, July 31, 2010.

58. Ibid.

59. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

60. Natalie Dormer, interview with author, Richmond upon Thames, England, July 31, 2010.

61. Ibid.

62. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

63. Natalie Dormer, interview with author, Richmond upon Thames, England, July 31, 2010.

64. Ibid.

65. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

66. Nordyke 2008.

67. Jenny Zeek-Schmeidler, September 10, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

68. Bernadette Boddin, September 10, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page
,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

69. Taken from promotional material found on
The Tudors,
Season 3, DVD case.

70. Gilbert 2011.

71. Natalie Dormer, interview with author, Richmond upon Thames, England, July 31, 2010.

12. Chapuys’ Revenge

1. Maxwell 1997, 279.

2. Plaidy 1986, 1.

3. Robin Maxwell, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, August 19, 2011.

4. Gregory 2007, 655.

5. Reaves 2008.

6. “Philippa Gregory watches as her bestseller ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ gets the Hollywood treatment,” 2008.

7. Rich 2008.

8. Purdon 2009.

9. Hilary Mantel, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 5, 2011.

10. Robin Maxwell, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, August 19, 2011.

11. Michael Hirst, interview with author, telephone, Lexington, KY, April 28, 2011.

12. Hanks 2007.

13. Jones 2011. But this is nothing new. In the acclaimed PBS series on Henry as well as in
Anne of the Thousand
Days, Anne is never seen reading a book, let alone conversing with Henry—as the actual Anne often did—about the religious debates of the day. Her role in Henry’s break from Rome is purely as the tantalizing object of his desire, his history-launching Helen, for whom he was willing to defy the pope, suffer excommunication, have old friends such as More executed, and create a poisonous schism in his kingdom. One of the innovations of
The Tudors
is its break with this convention, largely due to the intervention of Natalie Dormer.

14. Carbone 2008.

15. Stephenson 2010.

16. Driscoll 2008.

17. Flynn n.d.

18. Passafuime 2008.

19. Russell n.d.

20. Reed 2008.

21. Alexander 2008.

22. Rocchi 2008.

23. Gregory,
Washington Post
, 2008.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Gregory 2003, 668.

27. Gregory,
Washington Post
, 2008.

28. Gregory,
Telegraph
, 2008.

29. Ibid.

30. Alison Weir: “It really annoys me when historical novelists present themselves—or are publicized—as reliable historians when they know only the outline of a story and have no real understanding of the period or the social setting.” (Alison Weir, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, August 24, 2011.) David Loades: “What is important is that the author should be honest and not claim a historical basis that does not, in fact, exist. It would have been safer if Philippa Gregory had claimed to be writing fiction, because that is what she was doing.” (David Loades, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, August 29, 2011.)

31. Margaret George, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, August 15, 2011.

32. “My Cromwell,” she writes, “shakes hands with the Cromwell of the
Book of Martyrs
, and with the trickster Cromwell of the truly awful but funny Elizabethan play about him. I am conscious of all his later, if fugitive, incarnations in fiction and drama. I am conscious on every page of hard choices to be made, and I make sure I never believe my own story.” (Hilary Mantel, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 5, 2011.)

33. Mantel 2012, 409.

34. Philippa Gregory official website n.d.

35. Kosman 2008.

36. Ibid.

37. Gareth Russell, October 10, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page, accessed October 15, 2011,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

38. Katherine Stinson, October 10, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page, accessed October 15, 2011,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

39. Michael, February 28, 2011, comment on “What are the differences between history and historical fiction?” accessed March 21, 2011.
http://www.philippagregory.com/debates/what-are-the-differences-between-history-and-historical-fiction
.

40. Gregory 2005, 241.

41. Ibid.

42. Hanks 2007.

43. Margaret George, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, August 15, 2011.

44. Marche 2011.

45. Hilary Mantel, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 2011.

46. Ibid.

47. Weir 1991, 3.

48. Ibid., 173.

49. Ibid., 3.

50. Weir 2010, 150.

51. Raz 2010.

52. Ibid.

53. Pascual de Gayangos (editor), “Spain: May 1536, 16–31,”
Calendar of State Papers, Spain
, Volume 5, Part 2: 1536–1538, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87961
.

54. Weir 2011, 73.

55. Ibid., 76.

56. The works from which I quote in this chapter are all “popular” histories and novels. Among more scholarly works, there are many that are more sensitive to the social context—including gender inequities—that constrained and condemned Anne. Among these are (in publication order) Retha Warnicke’s
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
(1989), Antonia Fraser’s
The Wives of Henry VIII
(1994), Eric Ives’s
The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn
(2004), Joanna Denny’s
Anne Boleyn
(2004), David Loades’s
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
(2009; revised from 2004), and Suzannah Lipscomb’s
The Year That Changed Henry VIII
(2009).

57. Bernard 2010, 192.

58. Ibid., 185. Bernard also cites all those who had called Anne a “whore” during her lifetime and suggests it would be unreasonable to suppose that all of this was pure slander, based only on hostility toward Anne. “Would any woman who had won the king . . . have been dismissed as a whore?” (Bernard 2010, 184.) The answer to that—and it’s hardly as preposterous as Bernard makes it out to be, given Anne’s nonroyal status and the popularity of Katherine of Aragon—seems to have been a resounding yes. Anne did not have many genuflectors to her queenly status (except on formal occasions, when Henry was watching, or in the coerced signatures to his oaths and decrees); up until the end, there was a critical mass who didn’t even see her as a legitimate queen. But Bernard chooses instead to take the “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” approach to the gossip about Anne via a series of “suppose that”s and “could have”s, beginning with the unfounded premise (“for the sake of argument,” he says) that the dates given, at her trial, for the adulteries, were “broadly correct.”
Anne would then have committed adultery with Henry Norris in October/November 1533 and with William Brereton in November 1533, just after what was for Henry the disappointment that Anne’s child born in September was a daughter rather than the hoped-for son and heir, and just after Henry’s interest in another lady had provoked Anne, if Chapuys is to be believed. Anne was then accused of having committed adultery with Mark Smeaton in April/May 1534 and with Sir Francis Weston in May/June 1534. If Anne was indeed pregnant in those months, that would be highly improbable; but suppose Anne knew that she was not pregnant, but experiencing a phantom pregnancy, then maybe such affairs could be seen as an attempt to become pregnant by someone else. And Anne’s alleged incest with her brother in November/December 1535 could just be seen as an ever more desperate attempt at pregnancy: and an early miscarriage in January could be seen as her body’s swift rejection of an unnatural pregnancy. (Bernard 2010, 188)
All these “could have”s and “maybe”s—some of them, such as the phantom pregnancy and the desire for intercourse with another so shortly after Elizabeth’s birth (out of jealous vengeance, Bernard suggests), seemingly pulled out of thin air—make Bernard’s purportedly scholarly study sound more like the closing statements of a particularly sleazy lawyer.