GREGORY. What were the grounds?
THOMAS (checking no one overhears). Nobody could think of anything. So we were forced to settle on witchcraft. The King’s marriage is null because Anne witched him into it.
CHRISTOPHE. Told you! Told you! And you said there were no such thing as witches. Pah!
THOMAS. It was the Duke of Suffolk’s suggestion.
RAFE. Suffolk!
THOMAS. Nobody could come up with a better idea.
KINGSTON returns, worried, followed by a couple of GRAVEDIGGERS.
GREGORY. Why have they stripped the bodies?
KINGSTON. A traitors’ clothes are the perquisite of the headsman and his assistants. The blood will wash out.
CHRISTOPHE. I doubt that.
KINGSTON. Most of it will. But now the corpses are without their badges of rank… Well, there is some confusion…
GREGORY. Do you mean… you can’t tell which head goes with which body?
CHRISTOPHE. Oho!
KINGSTON. It’s difficult –
THOMAS. Master Kingston!
KINGSTON. My men are accustomed to one execution at a time. Today we’ve had five! We’ll hardly have time to mop up the mess – everything will have to be put in good order before… God’s Blood, man! Tomorrow we’ve a Queen of England to behead! It’s too much –
CHRISTOPHE. Fetch her here now – she should be able to put a cock to a face!
RAFE. Shame on you! Shame on you all.
THOMAS. Look at their hands, Rafe. Brereton has fists like blacksmiths’ hammers, Norris’s hands are long and slender – Weston bites his nails, and Mark has a lutenist’s fingers. It shouldn’t be difficult.
RAFE. Come with me. Master Constable?
All move to the pile of corpses, except THOMAS and GREGORY.
GREGORY. I caught sight of Wyatt looking down from the Bell Tower. I wanted to give him hope but I did not know how to send him the right signal.
THOMAS. Wyatt is innocent. The King himself told me so. He’ll go free. But perhaps I’ll keep him where he is until Anne is dead.
GREGORY (hugs him). If she’d reigned any longer she’d have given us to the dogs to eat.
THOMAS. If we’d let her reign any longer, we’d have deserved it.
Scene Thirty-Three
A scaffold is erected – CHRISTOPHE talking in French to a well-dressed young man. The audience should not realise the young man is the executioner of Calais. THOMAS enters.
CHRISTOPHE. Voici mon maître – il est le Secrétaire du Roi.
HEADSMAN. Oh merde – vous voulez dire Cremuel le boucher?
CHRISTOPHE. Oui – c’est lui.
THOMAS. J’ai entendu dire que. (Tests the steps as he climbs up.) Now, young man, tell me how this is to be done.
HEADSMAN. I shall surprise her. She never sees the sword. I put it there – in the straw. I shall distract her. She will not see from where I come.
THOMAS. Show me.
HEADSMAN. You are Cremuel. You are in charge of everything. (Takes the two-handed sword from under the straw and gives it to THOMAS.) They joke with me. This fellow says if I faint when I see her face – because she is so ugly – Cremuel will pick up the sword himself – and he is such a man he can cut off the head of the Hydra… Which I do not know what the Hydra is.
CHRISTOPHE. Cest ce que je t’ai dit. C’est un lézard ou un serpent et pour chaque tête que tu coupe, deux autres la remplacent.
THOMAS. Not in this case. Once the Boleyns are done, they are done. It’s heavy.
HEADSMAN. Of course. Let me show you. One has to practise – like this. (Whirls it expertly, like a dancer.) Every day one must handle the weapon. One may be called at any time. We do not kill so many in Calais. But one is called to other towns.
He gives it back to THOMAS, who handles it almost as expertly as the HEADSMAN.
CHRISTOPHE. It is a good trade. Let me have a turn, master.
THOMAS. Not yet.
HEADSMAN. They tell me I may speak French to her and she will understand me.
THOMAS. Yes – do so.
Gives the sword to CHRISTOPHE, who is not the equal of the other two.
HEADSMAN. She will kneel – she should be informed of this. Arms down. There is no block. No – she must kneel upright and not move. Not bow the head. If she is steady, it will be done in a moment. If not, she will be cut to pieces.
THOMAS. For the love of God, Christophe – be careful with that!
HEADSMAN. Here – give it back.
THOMAS. I can answer for her – she is brave. She will not move.
HEADSMAN. Between one beat of the heart and the next it is done. She knows nothing. She is in eternity.
He goes – testing the construction of the steps up to the scaffold as he does.
THOMAS. I’ve done that. They will bear her weight.
CHRISTOPHE. Master, he has said to me to tell her women that she should wrap her skirts about her feet when she kneels – in case she falls bad and shows off to the world what so many fine gentlemen have seen already.
THOMAS. I think her women will have thought of that,
Christophe. But remind them anyway. So long as you do not put it so crudely.
CHRISTOPHE. They are coming.
Scene Thirty-Four
Drums. The entire Court – living and ghosts – assembles. ANNE enters, accompanied by the HEADSMAN, her ALMONER, CRANMER and others. Bells. The procession leaves. We were expecting an execution but we are at the small-scale private wedding of KING HENRY and JANE SEYMOUR. WARHAM, assisted by STEPHEN, marries them. An anthem. Celebrations. KING HENRY comes to THOMAS.
KING HENRY (cheerful). What happened to her clothes? Her headdress?
THOMAS. The people at the Tower have them. It is their perquisite.
KING HENRY. Buy them back. Burn them – see to it yourself. I’m making you a baron. Lord Cromwell of Putney.
THOMAS. No… Not Putney, Majesty – I can’t introduce myself as Lord Cromwell of Putney – I might laugh.
KING HENRY. I might laugh. Wimbledon then. Baron Cromwell of Wimbledon.
KING HENRY and JANE SEYMOUR lead everybody out – except THOMAS and STEPHEN. GHOSTS gather.
STEPHEN. I stand, as if upon a headland, my back to the sea, and below me a burning plain.
THOMAS. Do you, Stephen? Have a cup of this wine. A good one – Lord Lisle sends it from France for the King’s own drinking. (Gives him a cup.)
STEPHEN. Do you believe there can be peace in England now?
THOMAS. Peace? What was that saying of Thomas More’s?
MORE’S GHOST. ‘The peace of the hen coop when the fox has run home’?
STEPHEN. I smell burning buildings. Fallen towers. Indeed, there is nothing but ash. Wreckage.
THOMAS. Wreckage is useful, isn’t it? It can be fashioned into all sorts of new things. Ask any dweller by the shore.
STEPHEN. Why did you let Wyatt go free – other than because he’s your friend?
WOLSEY’S GHOST. Perhaps Stephen does not rate friendship as highly as we do.
STEPHEN. Brereton was high-handed and offended many. Harry Norris, Weston, well, there are gaps where they stood and you can put your own friends in the Privy Chamber alongside your man Rafe. And Mark – that squib of a boy with his lute – I grant you, the place looks tidier without him. But George Rochford struck down and the rest of the Boleyns scurrying away – the Howards thrown into confusion – now that really is wreckage. It’s the end of everything. The Emperor will be delighted.
THOMAS. There are no endings. If you think so, you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. This is one. (Turns upstage.)
STEPHEN. But all the players are gone! All those who carried the Cardinal to Hell –
WOLSEY’S GHOST. All of them.
STEPHEN. I am thinking… if this is what Cromwell does to the Cardinal’s lesser enemies, what will he do, by and by, to the King himself?
THOMAS, among the GHOSTS, turns slowly and fixes
STEPHEN with a look that turns him to jelly. He holds him, mesmerised, for a moment, then suddenly smiles.
THOMAS. Drink my health.
STEPHEN, trembling, does so.
End.
HILARY MANTEL
Hilary Mantel is the author of eleven novels, a collection of short stories and a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. She writes both historical and contemporary fiction, and her settings range from a South African township under apartheid to Paris in the Revolution, from a city in twentieth-century Saudi Arabia to rural Ireland in the eighteenth century.
Her novel Wolf Hall is about Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII. It won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, the inaugural Walter Scott Prize, and in the US won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Bring Up the Bodies won the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. Taken together Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies have sold over three million copies and have been translated into thirty-six languages. She is working on The Mirror and the Light, the third book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy.
MIKE POULTON
Mike Poulton’s recent adaptations and translations for the stage include Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (directed by Lucy Bailey at The Print Room, London); Schiller’s Luise Miller (directed by Michael Grandage for the Donmar Warehouse, London); Anjin: The English Samurai (directed by Gregory Doran for Horipro in Tokyo); Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Schiller’s Wallenstein (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester Festival Theatre); Schiller’s Mary Stuart (directed by Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea (directed by Lucy Bailey at Birmingham Repertory Theatre); Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (directed by Philip Franks at Chichester Festival Theatre, and Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen’s Rosmersholm (directed by Anthony Page at the Almeida Theatre, London); Strindberg’s The Father (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester); Myrmidons (directed by Simon Coury at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin); and a two-part adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performed at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in the West End, and on tour of the US and Spain).
His acclaimed version of Schiller’s Don Carlos premiered at the Sheffield Crucible in a production directed by Michael Grandage with Derek Jacobi as King Philip II of Spain. It has since been widely performed, including by Rough Magic Theatre Company in Dublin (directed by Lynne Parker), and at the Göteborgs Stadsteater (directed by Eva Bergman). Other productions include Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Liverpool Playhouse); Turgenev’s Fortune’s Fool (directed by Arthur Penn at the Music Box Theater, Broadway; nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play, and winner of seven major awards including the Tony Awards for Best Actor for Alan Bates and Best Featured Actor for Frank Langella); Uncle Vanya (directed by Michael Mayer at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, Broadway; with Derek Jacobi, Roger Rees and Laura Linney); Three Sisters (directed by Bill Bryden at the Birmingham Rep; with Charles Dance); Ghosts (Theatre Royal Plymouth); The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Dance of Death and an adaptation of Euripides’ Ion (all directed by David Hunt at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester).
A Nick Hern and Fourth Estate Book
These stage adaptations of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies first published in Great Britain as a paperback original in 2014 jointly by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB and Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP
This ebook edition first published in 2014
Wolf Hall (novel) copyright © 2009 Tertius Enterprises Ltd
Bring Up the Bodies (novel) copyright © 2012 Tertius Enterprises Ltd
Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (two plays) copyright © 2013 Mike Poulton and Tertius Enterprises Ltd
Introduction copyright © 2014 Mike Poulton
Notes on Characters copyright © 2014 Tertius Enterprises Ltd
The right of Hilary Mantel and Mike Poulton to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1998
Image design by Edwina Kelly and RSC Visual Communications
Cover design by Ned Hoste, 2H
Typeset by Nick Hern Books, London
ISBN 978 0 00754 990 0 (ebook edition)
ISBN 978 0 00754 989 4 (print edition)
Ebook Edition © JAN 2014
Version: 2013-12-24
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Amateur Performing Rights Applications for performance, including readings and excerpts, by amateurs in the English language throughout the world (excluding the USA and Canada) should be made before rehearsals begin to the Performing Rights Manager, Nick Hern Books, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP, tel +44 (0)20 8749 4953, e-mail [email protected], except as follows:
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