The Steve Tiberius Donoghue Book Club - Wolf Hall Concludes!
Having now finished Wolf Hall, it's time to once again check in on Steve Donoghue's bookclub videos. (For my commentary on Steve's commentary on part 1 and 2, see HERE. For parts 3 and 4, see HERE.)
* Before I get into my nitpicks and observations, let me just say this is another great video. I love listening to Steve explain the themes of this book.
* I agree with Steve that this is a book that makes you think about the full horror of being burned at the stake.
* Steve Donoghue mentions in this video how Hilary Mantel is playing off of A Man for all Seasons.
As I've mentioned in the past- couple - Weekly Reading Vlogs, I have unfortunately never seen the famous movie A Man for All Seasons, but I got the impression that Hilary Mantel was operating under the assumption that her readers were familiar with this movie when she started dropping in unexplained references to Will Roper changing his religion. I looked William Roper up on Wikipedia, and the entry read:
Roper is an important character in Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons, portrayed as a contrarian, somewhat thick-headed man who always opposes whatever doctrine is the established one. After arguing theology with Roper, More says, "They're a cantankerous lot, the Ropers, always swimming against the stream. Old Roper was the same."
In the 1966 film adaptation, Roper was portrayed by Corin Redgrave.[6]
So, Hilary Mantel isn't explaining these references, because she's assuming her readers have seen A Man for All Seasons.
I'm sure I would appreciate this book better if I had seen that movie. But unfortunately I can't track a copy down out here in Vietnam. I tried to find the full movie on Youtube, but no luck.
I did, however, find some clips on Youtube, and I was surprised how closely a couple scenes in Wolf Hall followed what is portrayed in these scenes.
...but I am unsure if that is because Hilary Mantel is directly referencing the movie, or if it is because they are both based on the same historical documents.
* Steve Donoghue says that Hilary Mantel portrays Thomas Cromwell as someone who absolutely hates Thomas More. A few other reviews I've read had said similar things, so I was fully expecting to see that dynamic when I read the book myself, but...
...but when I actually read the book, I thought Mantel's portrayal of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More was of frenemies. They're ideologically opposed, and also of differing temperaments, but they are fond of each other in a way. Mantel portrays Cromwell not as trying to kill Thomas More, but as trying to save Thomas More, by trying to convince Thomas More to save himself. Right? Or am I missing something?
* Steve says he doesn't think the works of John Frith have ever been translated into English. Strange, John Frith is English. But I guess he must have been writing in Latin?
Wikipedia links to project Gutenberg, which has at least one book by John Frith written in English: A boke made by John Fryth, prysoner in the Tower of London (Although... I just had a go of reading some of it just now, and the style is so archaic that it's not really readable for an ordinary speaker of modern English.)
* In his first video on Wolf Hall, Steve said that Mantel made the writerly decision to exclude two characters who she thought would derail the narrative, and he said we would get to that when we discussed the end of the book.
Well, this is the end of the book now, and Steve still hasn't mentioned who they were. He must have forgotten to follow up on this. But who were they? I initially thought they might be Henry's two daughters, but now that I'm at the end, I realize Mary is not really excluded from Wolf Hall. (She's not a major character, but she's in the book enough that I don't get the impression that Mantel is trying to exclude her.) So then, who are they?
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