The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Page 36
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Sue Booth, July 31, 2011, comment on The Creation of Anne Boleyn Facebook page, www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn.
43. Ginger James, July 31, 2011, comment on The Creation of Anne Boleyn Facebook page, www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn.
44. Ralphine Lamonica, July 31, 2011, comment on The Creation of Anne Boleyn Facebook page, www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn.
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 Facebook page, 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.
59. Hull and Alberge 2010.
60. Marshall n.d.
61. Hull and Alberge 2010.
62. Erickson 2011.
63. Mantel 2009, 317.
64. Ibid., 287.
65. Ibid., 137.
66. Ibid., 317.
67. Mantel 2013, 304.
68. Ibid., 345.
69. Ibid., 409
70. See page 101 for discussion of this incident.
71. Clapp 2010.
72. Billington 2010.
73. Bermingham 2011.
74. Dowell 2010.
75. Ridgway 2011.
76. Broadbent 2010.
77. Billington 2010.
78. Letts 2010.
79. Williams 2011.
80. Howard Brenton, interview with author, London, England, July 30, 2010.
81. Ibid.
82. Paglia 1991, 13.
83. Melissa Mazza, October 10, 2011, comment on The Creation of Anne Boleyn Facebook page, accessed October 15, 2011, www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn.
84. The Real Housewives of Atlanta, season 1.
85. The Real Housewives of Orange County, season 3.
86. The Real Housewives of Atlanta, season 1.
87. Stevens 2011. Stevens here is actually talking about prime-time sitcoms. But reality television, clearly, is the nastiest and—judging from its dominance as a genre—broadest platform for the bitch to perform on. Whether they are competing with their nails out on The Bachelor or hurling insults at one another (and sometimes threatening physical violence) on the “reunion” shows of The Real Housewives, the women of reality television, apparently, have no impulse control whatsoever. And those impulses are generally envious, narcissistic, knee-jerk defensive, and brutally catty. They seem incapable of seeing another person’s point of view, which is why their fights inevitably escalate into increasingly juvenile rants. They goad one another: “Bring it on!” is their favorite mantra. (Or what amounts to the same thing—“You don’t want to go there!”—which virtually ensures that they will.)
Are these people for real? Yes and no. Many of the housewives seem to have been chosen on the basis of the size of their houses and the ostentation of their decorating, pretty much ensuring that the shows won’t be about the lifestyles of the modest and self-restraining. The most attention-getting reality-show participants get rewarded with fame, book deals, record contracts—talent is irrelevant—so bad behavior pays off. (One of the housewives of the Miami franchise complained that their show wasn’t as popular as the others because the women weren’t being outrageous enough.) The footage is “real,” reality-TV execs emphasize, and captures nothing that didn’t actually happen. But psychological manipulation on shows such as The Bachelor (constant surveillance, feeding misinformation to participants, abundant alcohol, and isolation) and skillful editing ensures that the worst comes out, often in the mode of various regional and ethnic stereotypes.
88. Herbst 2010, 133.
89. Eades 2007.
90. Stepp 2011.
91. Ibid.
92. Denby 2009.
93. Douglas 2009.
94. N. Wolf 1994, xxvii.
95. Ibid.
96. Ibid., xxvii–xxviii.
97. Roiphe 1994.
98. Paglia 1992, 62.
99. Argov 2002.
100. Dargis 2008.
101. Emerson 2008.
102. LaSalle 2008.
103. Burr 2008.
104. Kosman 2008.
105. Merin n.d.
13. Anne Gets the Last Word (for Now)
1. Phyllis Wolf, 2011, comment on The Creation of Anne Boleyn Facebook page, www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn.
2. Connie Panzariello, 2011, comment on The Creation of Anne Boleyn Facebook page, www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn.
3. Lara Eakins, interview with author, e
-mail, Lexington, KY, November 25, 2011.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. The Tudors Wiki 2008.
10. Claire Ridgway, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
11. Sue Booth, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
12. Ibid.
13. Natalie Sweet, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
14. Barb Alexander, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
15. Natalie Sweet, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
16. Claire Ridgway, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
17. Jessica Prestes, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
18. Sarah Bryson, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
19. Sylwia Sobczak Zupanec, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.
20. Brown 2007, 75.
21. Ibid.
22. Marlessa Stivala, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
23. Karissa Baker, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
24. Sara Compton, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
25. Sophie Walker, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
26. Michelle Kistler, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
27. Makenzie Case, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
28. Jessica Crowley, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
29. Kristian, 2011, comment on The Anne Boleyn Files Facebook page, http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/1142/anne-boleyn-the-great-whore.
30. Cris Gomez, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
31. Sara Compton, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
32. Phillips 2000, 150.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 10.
35. Robyn, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.
36. Brittani Hall, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.