Anne Boleyn (play)

Last updated

Anne Boleyn
Written by Howard Brenton
Characters Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, James I, George Villiers
Date premiered24 July 2010
Place premiered Shakespeare's Globe
Original languageEnglish
Subject English Reformation
GenreDrama
SettingEngland, 1519–1536 and 1603–1604
Official site

Anne Boleyn is a play on the life of Anne Boleyn by the English author Howard Brenton, which premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2010. Anne Boleyn is portrayed as a significant force in the political and religious in-fighting at court and a furtherer of the cause of Protestantism in her enthusiasm for the Tyndale Bible. [1]

Contents

Production history

The play was commissioned by Shakespeare's Globe, and premiered at The Globe from 24 July to 21 August 2010 in a production directed by John Dove and with the title role played by Miranda Raison (also playing Boleyn in Shakespeare's Henry VIII in the same season). It was presented alongside the Globe's first season of Shakespeare's history plays, made up of Henry VIII , Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2 . The same production was revived in 2011 as part of the 400th anniversary celebrations of the King James Version, with most of the same cast.

The play was awarded Best New Play at the WhatsOnStage Theatregoers Choice Awards 2011. [2]

In Spring 2012 the Globe's production was revived for a tour of England and Scotland, jointly produced by Shakespeare's Globe and English Touring Theatre and featuring many of the original cast although with Jo Herbert in the title role. [3]

Plot

The ghost of Anne Boleyn arrives, carrying a blood-stained bag containing her severed head and a copy of Tyndale's Bible, and addresses the audience. The action moves to 1603, where James I arrives in London for his English coronation and finds a chest containing Anne Boleyn's coronation dress. Searching the chest's secret compartments, he finds Anne's copies of the Tyndale Bible and The Obedience of a Christian Man . He and his lover George Villiers go to search the palace for Anne's ghost. The action shifts to Anne Boleyn at the English court, where Henry VIII meets her, falls in love with her and acquiesces to her demands to postpone their first sex until she can be his wife. Henry begins the divorce proceedings against Catherine of Aragon, with both Cardinal Wolsey and Wolsey's advisor manoeuvring for position.

Anne goes secretly to meet with William Tyndale and he gives her a copy of the forbidden text The Obedience of a Christian Man. She entrusts this to her ladies in waiting, but two of Wolsey's servants seize it from the ladies and take it to Wolsey, who is delighted to use it to discredit Anne with the king. Anne goes to Cromwell for advice and finds that he, like her, is a secret Protestant. Anne then takes Cromwell's advice and pre-empts Wolsey's action – in so doing she not only gets the book back but brings about Wolsey's fall. She also partially convinces Henry to accept the book's argument that the head of the church in England is not the pope but the king himself. The action then moves forward to winter 1532 in Calais, at a conference with Francis I of France, where Anne and Henry make love for the first time, with the divorce from Catherine and their marriage imminent.

The action returns to James's reign, where he attempts to calm the Reformation that Anne's actions and Henry's divorce had unleashed, by holding the Hampton Court Conference between the Puritan and Anglican wings of the Church of England. The Puritan faction is led by John Reynolds and the Anglican one by Lancelot Andrews, both of them moderates. However, extremists on both sides such as Henry Barrowe cause the debate to drag on for over five hours, only ending when James angrily quashes any thoughts of making the Church of England presbyterian rather than episcopal - his struggles with presbyterianism in the Church of Scotland have led him to believe it threatens the king's position as Supreme Head of the Church of England and supreme secular ruler by divine right. He then meets with Reynolds and Andrews privately for further discussions, which end in a compromise agreement to produce an Authorised Version of the Bible with an Anglican slant but based on the Puritan-favoured Tyndale translation.

The action shifts back to Anne and the birth of the future Elizabeth I of England. She then goes to Tyndale with an offer from Cromwell of a place on the Privy Council for the better advancement of the Protestant cause, but he refuses it and tells her that he opposes Henry's divorce and does not recognise her as Henry's true wife. Some time later Anne miscarries a male child, which bruises but does not destroy her relationship with Henry, still hopeful for a son. However, Henry then takes Anne's lady in waiting Jane Seymour as a mistress and his relationship with Anne is finally wrecked when she is imprisoned by Cromwell. Anne is then kept from communicating with Henry in the lead-up to her execution, in a pre-emptive strike by Cromwell to avoid her telling Henry of Cromwell's embezzlement of funds from dissolved monasteries. The play then ends in 1603, where Anne's ghost talks with James about the Protestant Reformation she unleashed and then addresses the audience before departing.

Cast (premiere production)

Unseen characters

See also

Reviews

Related Research Articles

Catherine of Aragon First wife of Henry VIII of England (1485–1536)

Catherine of Aragon was Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII from their marriage on 11 June 1509 until their annulment on 23 May 1533. She was previously Princess of Wales as the wife of Henry's elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales.

Henry VIII King of England from 1509 to 1547

Henry VIII was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, including his efforts to have his first marriage annulled. His disagreement with Pope Clement VII about such an annulment led Henry to initiate the English Reformation, separating the Church of England from papal authority. He appointed himself Supreme Head of the Church of England and dissolved convents and monasteries, for which he was excommunicated. Henry is also known as "the father of the Royal Navy," as he invested heavily in the navy, increasing its size from a few to more than 50 ships, and established the Navy Board.

House of Tudor English royal house of Welsh origin

The House of Tudor was a royal house of Welsh-French origin that held the English throne, descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd and Catherine of France. Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including their ancestral Wales and the Lordship of Ireland from 1485 until 1603, with five monarchs in that period: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII of England, descended through his mother from a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the Tudor-aligned House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.

Anne Boleyn Second wife of Henry VIII of England

Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and of her execution by beheading for treason and other charges made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation. Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Queen Claude of France. Anne returned to England in early 1522, to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; the marriage plans were broken off, and instead she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon.

<i>Anne of the Thousand Days</i> 1969 British film

Anne of the Thousand Days is a 1969 British period drama film based on the life of Anne Boleyn, directed by Charles Jarrott and produced by Hal B. Wallis. The screenplay by Bridget Boland and John Hale is an adaptation of the 1948 play of the same name by Maxwell Anderson.

Thomas Cromwell English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charges for the execution.

The Six Wives of Henry VIII is a series of six television plays produced by the BBC and first transmitted between 1 January and 5 February 1970. The series was later aired in the United States on CBS from 1 August to 5 September 1971 with narration added by Anthony Quayle. The series was rebroadcast in the United States without commercials on PBS as part of its Masterpiece Theatre series.

Robert Barnes (martyr) 16th century martyr in the English Reformation

Robert Barnes was an English reformer and martyr.

<i>Henry VIII</i> (play) Play by Shakespeare

Henry VIII is a collaborative history play, written by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, based on the life of Henry VIII. An alternative title, All Is True, is recorded in contemporary documents, with the title Henry VIII not appearing until the play's publication in the First Folio of 1623. Stylistic evidence indicates that individual scenes were written by either Shakespeare or his collaborator and successor, John Fletcher. It is also somewhat characteristic of the late romances in its structure. It is noted for having more stage directions than any of Shakespeare's other plays.

Wives of Henry VIII Six queens consort wedded to Henry VIII of England between 1509 and his death in 1547

In common parlance, the wives of Henry VIII were the six queens consort wedded to Henry between 1509 and his death in 1547. In legal terms, King Henry VIII of England had only three wives, because three of his marriages were annulled by the Church of England. However, he was never granted an annulment by the Pope, as he desired, for Catherine of Aragon, his first wife. Annulments declare that a true marriage never took place, unlike a divorce, in which a married couple end their union. Along with his six wives, Henry took several mistresses.

<i>The Tudors</i> Historical fiction television series

The Tudors is a historical fiction television series set primarily in 16th-century England, created and written by Michael Hirst and produced for the American premium cable television channel Showtime. The series was a collaboration among American, British, and Canadian producers, and was filmed mostly in Ireland. It is named after the Tudor dynasty as a whole, although it is based specifically upon the reign of King Henry VIII.

<i>Henry VIII</i> (TV serial)

Henry VIII is a two-part British television serial produced principally by Granada Television for ITV from 12 to 19 October 2003. It chronicles the life of Henry VIII of England from the disintegration of his first marriage to an aging Spanish princess until his death following a stroke in 1547, by which time he had married for the sixth time. Additional production funding was provided by WGBH Boston, Powercorp and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

<i>Henry VIII and His Six Wives</i> 1972 British film

Henry VIII and His Six Wives is a 1972 British historical film adaptation, directed by Waris Hussein, of the BBC 1970 six-part miniseries The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Keith Michell, who plays Henry VIII in the TV series, also portrays the king in the film. His six wives are portrayed by different actresses, among them Frances Cuka as Catherine of Aragon, and Jane Asher as Jane Seymour. Donald Pleasence portrays Thomas Cromwell and Bernard Hepton portrays Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, a role he had also played in the miniseries and briefly in its follow-up Elizabeth R.

Events from the 1530s in England.

Anne Berkeley, Baroness Berkeley was a lady-in-waiting and companion of Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England. She was reputed to be one of the witnesses at the secret wedding ceremony of the King and Anne Boleyn which occurred on 25 January 1533.

English Reformation 16th-century separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church

The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. These events were, in part, associated with the wider European Protestant Reformation, a religious and political movement that affected the practice of Christianity in western and central Europe. Causes included the invention of the printing press, increased circulation of the Bible and the transmission of new knowledge and ideas among scholars, the upper and middle classes and readers in general. The phases of the English Reformation, which also covered Wales and Ireland, were largely driven by changes in government policy, to which public opinion gradually accommodated itself.

Elizabeth, Lady Boleyn was a lady-in-waiting at the court of Henry VIII of England. Through her marriage to Sir James Boleyn, she was the aunt of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn. The two were not close, and Elizabeth Boleyn acted as her niece's gaoler when Queen Anne was arrested on charges of adultery, incest and conspiracy to kill the King.

Margaret Dymoke was a lady-in-waiting at the court of Henry VIII of England. Her married names were Vernon, Coffin and Manners. She was born around 1500 in Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire, the daughter of Sir Robert Dymoke of Scrivelsby and Jane Cressner. Her first husband was Richard Vernon of Haddon (d. 1517), by whom she had at least two children. Her second husband was Sir William Coffin, Master of the Horse to Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII.

Anne Gainsford

Anne Gainsford, Lady Zouche was a close friend and lady-in-waiting to Queen consort Anne Boleyn.

God's Outlaw is a 1986 British historical film directed by Tony Tew and starring Roger Rees, Bernard Archard and Keith Barron. It depicts the historical figure of William Tyndale and his struggles with the authorities in the time of Henry VIII for translating the Bible into English.

References

  1. ↑ Michael Coveney, The Independent, 19 July 2011
  2. ↑ "WOS Awards | Home".
  3. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 11 January 2012. Retrieved 22 December 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.