Magdalene Sunday 2023: Anne, Anne and Jane

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/magdalene-sunday

Welcome to our Magdalene Sunday of 2023 when we will honour – with and without a ‘u’ – three special women who embodied the spirit of Magdalene. I believe that Mary M is not a redeemed prostitute as the Catholic church pedalled for many years, but Jesus’ No 2, who best understood and embodied his message. Her surname means ‘tower’ or ‘enlightened one’ – it’s a title of honour.

I would go further and say that despite an evangelical upbringing, I’ve come to see Mary as divine, or at least the human embodiment of the divine feminine, along with Jesus’ mother, the other Mary. However, I differ from some who elevate Magdalene in that I don’t see her as Jesus’ partner.

You can read more about my Magdalene thoughts here.

WONDER WOMEN: A Sermon For Magdalene Day 2020

In previous Magdalene services, I’ve compared Mary M to Wonder Woman – yes I did eventually see the second film, 1984, which didn’t go where I expected although it did take a much needed swipe at capitalism; the next year, my late Mum was the speaker for Magdalene Sunday, since it coincided with her 70^th; and last year, Diana, Princess of Wales was our focus – in the month of what would’ve been her 61^st birthday. I see Diana a very human manifestation of divine feminine.

I shared before – most recently at Easter – about my belief that one can be a real human and embody the divine, and have allegorical and what director Shekhar Kapur calls ‘operatic’ meaning in one’s life, even consciously. He saw ‘operatic’ meaning in the subject of his Elizabeth films, whom we’ll discuss in September close to her birthday.

Tonight, I wish to turn to her era, but before her reign.

Our first woman of the half hour is Elizabeth’s mother, whom we spent some time with during Lent and Easter. The second is a woman who was meant to stop Elizabeth’s half sister from reaching the throne. The third woman, who I’ve not talked about yet, wasn’t interested in a game of thrones at all.

PRAYER

There is something that unites these three women, other than their gender, country and time: their death. All three were executed, and all arguably were martyrs. I believe them to be. When researching this, the manner of their deaths and their sufferings before came much to the fore. I make clear that I do not wish to focus on this. This is a spiritual community, not a gore fest. I see no merit in wallowing in such details, which are distressing, and relegate their lives and achievements to an unpleasant end. It is what they stood for which interests me. Why did they die? Why were they each seen as a threat? I do not see their endings as a failure or loss – it rather says more about who gave the orders (never exculpating those who carry them out). I believe that we all, on a soul level, must choose from a small number of exit strategies: these three, living in violent and tyrannical times, left Earth via the orders of the same family – the Tudors.

Each of tonight’s women feature in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, a catalogue of Christian sufferings compiled by one John Foxe in the 16^th C. Its language is as colourful as its monochrome woodcut illustrations. I borrowed a copy published in Chicago by the Moody Press. Its date is unrecorded – it misses off the usual bibliographic information – but was purchased in the mid 1960s. Its title is “Foxe’s Christian Martyrs of the World” – not the original – and Anne Boleyn, keenly recorded by Foxe, does not have an entry. The jacket flaps tell us that this unpleasant read is necessary to remind us that in renewed times of persecution and “terrors at the hands of Satan-driven men”, we may have to face what our forebears did. This injunction repeatedly uses the phrase “shall we not…” refracting a famous speech of a modern martyr who we’re thinking on in November.

Thus the author of the blurb of this edition draws the reader in personally with a challenge, ending with the words “alarm call.” I am alarmed by all the above, and felt uneasy with this volume. There are few words about many saints – saints of the reformed, not Catholic sense – although of course, Catholics have many saints, in both senses, themselves. I just want to honour those especially who in the same era suffered on the other side. The entry on each person tells us of how their bodies wore out in this world, but little to nought of what they were martyred for.

This is an ideologically abridged version, as I’ve found sections elsewhere that are missing here. Occasionally, there are brave quotes of those flouting the flames, refusing to change their faith under the ultimate pressure. In contrast to the hysterical heretics at the start of Shekhar Kapur’s film Elizabeth, the martyrs which Foxe records prayed publicly before their execution in a firm, clear voice. When his impending doom was described to him – as I shall not be doing – a Suffolk man called Kerby said that any who witnessed his departure would say “‘There standeth a Christian solider in the fire’: for I know that fire and water, sword and all other things, are in the hands of God, and He will suffer no more to be laid upon me than He will give me strength to bear.”

Why didn’t Moody Press put that on the back of the dust jacket?

Our first woman is someone that I’ve touched on from February, which was when she died. This month of July is when she reigned – for just nine days. Jane Grey might easily be relegated to a footnote of English history, a pub quiz question. We learn little of her via Foxe, who focusses more on the woman (whom we thought of in March) who had her executed. Foxe’s Lady Jane is like the traditional Virgin Mary: mild, obedient, good. She takes the throne because she’s asked to; she gives it up for the same. She’s womanly enough to faint when greatness is thrust upon her. At the scaffold she states the wrongness of taking what was Mary’s. She shows those British traits of acceptance and lack of emotion. And she would not turn to Catholicism (which I doubt would have saved her, since she was convicted of usurping the throne). Thus, according to Foxe (and his unnamed editors of Illinois), she died a good death.

Recent historians have made out Jane to be an unfortunate pawn; a few have attempted a feminist revision of her short life. Modern documentaries – a media I struggle with – have both stylised repeating tableaux of murky menacing throne grabbing lords, and serious historians sitting begloved in archives, wrangling over Edward VI’s teenage handwriting. For me, neither approach is convincing or satisfying; and I’m not concerned with the terms of his device of succession and whether Jane was a traitorous usurper or deposed legitimate claimant.

I find the near death questioning of Jane’s faith interesting – it is similar in content to the answers of our last lady. Jane begins by seemingly quoting back a catechism, but then there is a question that although predictable, required Jane to show her own religious reasoning. Teenage Jane had theological logic: how can Christ as God have truly died for us in a once for all in sacrificial atonement if he had two bodies – one on the cross and another to be continually eaten during communion? Instead of converting to the Romish way, Jane exhorts her questioner to be moved by the Holy Spirit to hers, or face damnation. This tableau inspired a painting: Jane was more than a tragic failed footnote of history to 18^th C artist John Ogborne: she was a Protestant martyr.

I wish to turn again to that maligned medium – feature film – which I champion, along with fiction. Documentary and academic tomes aren’t automatically or even generally greater forms of truth, as I have said before. I’m interested in Lady Jane’s portrayal in a movie with Helena Bonham Carter in the title role. What was this saying about our world and hopes to change it?

In this film, the arranged marriage between Guildford Dudley and Lady Jane is a love story, and this pair courageously plan to change England and beyond. There is a memorable glass smashing scene where the newlyweds state their hopes for a more equal world, punctuated by dropping a goblet for each point of their manifesto. Guildford has understanding of the world outside their privileged cocoons; and whether we think that the real brother of Lord Robert (who would become Queen Elizabeth’s favourite) did, the point is that this film shows him as having this awareness to help awaken his bride. They both have a deep sense of justice, and want to use the positions thrust upon them to fight for fairness.

It could be said of them, as was of biblical queen Esther: “You have come to royal position for such a time as this”. Esther 4:14

The film was premiered in 1986, the year before the great Harmonic Convergence, a long prophesied end to the hellish cycles punctuated by a peace summit to bring in the new age. It coincided with He-Man and She-Ra – another duo who fight for justice in a seemingly innocuous TV show which alerts to deeper truths. I believe that in that decade of heightened capitalism and materialism, Cold War (where we again were encouraged to demonise rival superpower Russia), where leadership took away more civil rights and made greater divisions between rich and poor, the different and those approved of, here came a film based on history but which was a vehicle to challenge those things in our time as much as the 1550s.

What moves me is that a 1980s film wanted to say this of Jane Grey and her husband Guildford (who was potentially a pawn as much as she) and to use that couple to speak that vital gospel.

Our second lady of the night is linked in two ways: she has also been portrayed on screen by Helena BC – this time in 2003 – and there is a possible understanding of her relationship as a pairing which challenged the status quo and brought about change. I’m reluctant to call Henry VIII a twin flame but I do see a link to a modern Henry, also red haired and the royal second son who married someone outside of usual expectation and had to fight for that relationship. The parallels between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle might be clearer with his great great uncle David/Edward VIII (his actual name was different from his regnant title) and Wallis Simpson. I have heard spiritual teachers speak of Meghan and Harry as twin flames with an important role, carrying on the reforming work of Harry’s mother. I can also link via the racism that both Meghan and tonight’s second subject experienced; the latter was vilified for having darker skin.

I again refer to Queen Anne Boleyn; whatever her consort embodied (clue, not Jesus), I and others have seen in her the divine feminine redolent of She Whom We Honour Today. I even wondered if Anne was a reincarnation of that divine. It seems that she was joined with someone who was the very aberration of divinity, but that his vile ego was used to create what New Agers would call a new timeline. However, as I further understand the difference between Protestant and Dissent, I cannot now say that I feel God used Henry VIII, and I reject the church/state he created. I am thinking of the significance as once again, Britain is cast adrift from the rest of Europe, and the comments that French writer Vercors made in the 1960s about Anne Boleyn and her influence on this nation to continue to stand alone.

(I said more on Anne Boleyn during Easter and at her last anniversary).

During Lent, I spoke of the Bible in one’s own language as being key to Anne Boleyn’s mission, and to another, whom we would think of today: our third lady.

Anne Askew, like John Foxe, was born in Lincolnshire – I feel a pilgrimage coming on. He was her contemporary, but reports of Anne Askew’s birth year vary; they seem to be born within 5 years of one another. Anne’s story recalls Bristolian Dorothy Hazzard in the next century (more sermon fodder) whose religious convictions also led her to leave her conservative husband for faith spreading. For Anne, Bible reading was freedom. It’s perhaps the most exciting part of evangelical teaching – although that word has changed use since the 16^th century and non-catholic labels are often misapplied by outsiders, and so I must be careful of that myself.

For Anne Askew, being able to read the Bible was a great leveller. She travelled to London and participated in Bible studies with men and women and those of different ‘classes’, freeing her from the strictures that the establishment placed on everyone. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the establishment disliked this freedom. It took away their hegemony. Priests – even post reformation ones – no longer had all the secret knowledge of what the Bible contains and sole power to dispense it. ‘Ordinary’ folk were able to share and debate its words – not just be told what it says. Latin was the language of conquering elitists, which is why I dislike it and won’t use it (relevant to our Christmas service); it hitherto had been the only translation of the Bible.

To translate the Bible into one’s native tongue had been a capital offence for centuries: William Wycliffe died for it; and being caught with a copy was dangerous to reformation Germans too.

Then in 1538, Henry VIII decreed that every parish should have one, known as the English Bible – the first ‘authorised’ version in that language (I’ve heard that the version of that title in the next century was not truly authorised, but note that it was again issued in the name of the king). Having the tome placed in churches meant that it was accessible to all and that laity read it and discussed it in groups (according to Karen Lindsey) whilst priests had to stand by. That five years on Henry suddenly created it an offence for women and men below a certain rank to read their holy book tells us as much about him and his true feelings on reform as it does about the capricious and unjust nature of law.

Anne Askew had been among those of the new religion who had gathered her household, including servants, round her and as today’s evangelicals would put it, ‘opened God’s word’. When confined to bear children, she carried on teaching the servants who attended her. When the Bible ban came in, Anne complied, because she didn’t actually read the Bible; she’d memorised large sections and so just recited instead – to other people.

Anne allegedly learned of the new learning via her Cambridge educated brothers who were kidnapped during the Pilgrimage of Grace – a Catholic uprising against Henry. This, it’s said, cemented her view of the old way, but she was expected to marry a local who still upheld it. He disliked Anne’s Bible teaching and was advised to send her away, in the hope that Anne would cease this unwomanly behaviour, but it actually set her free. Her husband and his advisors didn’t know that the Bible says, in Paul’s words, that if an unbelieving spouse of either sex separates from you, that you are no longer bound by that marriage (1 Corinthians 7:15). I’d add that this section is clearly headed “I, not the Lord, say”, thus being Paul’s advice not God’s law, but it was scripture enough for Anne to feel vindicated and released. She reverted to her birth surname of Askew and moved in with her brother and then to London to petition for a divorce, taking lodgings in the Inns of Court (the legal district) where she was introduced to sympathisers of the New Learning. People who spread this by teaching were known as Gospellers; Anne earned the adjective ‘fair’ allegedly for being female, nice looking and genteel. I find that disappointingly point-missing: one’s looks are irrelevant to the Gospel, and the capital’s taverns and churchyards apparently seethed with groups that didn’t recognize rank and gender as dividers.

I think this is why the conservative faction panicked so. It wasn’t their commitment to the Roman way but to their own power, as Anne ably and daringly pointed out to the bishop of Winchester. Stephen Gardiner had enjoyed new wealth of dissolved monastic lands; he’d upheld Henry’s claim to being the head of the English church (thus surviving, unlike More and Fisher), but still wanted suppression of the protestant populace. He was keen to move on Henry’s sixth wife, Catherine Parr, another Protestant reformer, perhaps (guesses Lindsey) to gain favour for having influenced Mrs Tudor #7. It seems that Anne’s fate was based on this larger political move. Surely Anne Askew, who became famous on the London New Learning scene, would have associations with Queen Catherine and her set? Anne was tortured after being condemned, which upset even the Tower’s constable, (odd that even torturers have a code of honour) but this unprecedented act appears to have been for the purpose of bringing the Queen’s downfall, as Anne was asked to name those of her ‘sect’. Anne did not supply the information wished for.

Anne had wittily and cleverly handled the first round of trial, where many supporters were present. She knew the Bible better than her questioners and frustrated them by using their sexism against them. As a poor woman, how could she expound the Bible before so many learned men? They’d wanted to draw her out on transubstantiation, which oddly hung on as orthodox belief. Henry’s Acts (in both senses) show that it was some of his wives who were protestant; and that not only did he hang on to Catholic tenets, but that he suppressed all believers who didn’t uphold the golden rule of his religion: that he was at the top of the pyramid and controlled everything.

When she was arrested again the next year – 1546 – Anne held forth: the Lord’s statement that he is the Door did not make him present in every portal, so surely her detractors realised that his statement “I am The Bread/Vine” was likewise metaphorical? Evangelicals are oft critiqued for being too literalist and not understanding allegory, but Anne, like Jane Grey, showed that the New Learning can discern; for them, inappropriately verbatim renderings were the province of Catholics.

My own view on the bread and wine is less fussed either way, but I think that it is the hegemony of the magic in the ritual – the incantation ‘hocus pocus’ is apparently a corruption of the Latin for ‘here is my body’ – that the traditional catholics were defending.

Anne left us an account of herself which was posthumously published in Germany; that so little of that is in the Moody Foxe volume (and I’ve yet been unable to read it elsewhere) shows that we are being influenced second hand. Once again, academia hopes to make the masses pass through them to gain knowledge. The Bible in English is much like today’s internet – it allows people to know and discuss things which are hitherto hidden. Although I’m unsure if having the Bible in English heightened literacy, there is the potential that being able to read the Bible allows you to read anything, and also that much can be learned through hearing and memory. However, it is the assimilation and inquiry which matters most.

These women knew that the true Gospel transcends our earthly status and categories; it is egalitarian and open to all. Jesus’ and Magdalene’s message is not about heterodoxy but a life changing encounter that is about outward signs of inner workings and a relationship with the living God, not pleasing a tyrant ruler and his ambitious lackeys, who were the true ‘extremists’.

There’s sad irony that Anne Askew had admired Henry as bringer of the True Faith, had hoped for his support in divorcing unsuitable spouses, and yet it was he (via horrible men I’ll not honour by naming) who had her tried and executed.

I see that both Annes were part of a marriage split that led to heresy charges but advanced protestant faith. We might see their advances as monkeys on a greasy pole, slipping more than they climbed, but progress is often like that – especially when portrayed by their detractors. Like Magdalene, their messages continued underground, waiting to shoot again. Under Mary, and in a different way, Elizabeth, the New Learning was suppressed, but people continued to gather whether legal or safe and by the end of the next century, evangelicals were officially free to meet openly. Catholics had to wait longer, but emancipation came, as it always does and will again.

Thank you for joining me

Next time, we meet on August 20^th (same time) for “A Morbid Taste For Bones” – which won’t be morbid at all, but involve a sleuthing monk and a creatively exhumed king.

In September, we think of Elizabeth 1^st, and (truly) me on a special birthday – more anon

Blessings to you all, do contact me (Elspeth) on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

Good Night, and hope to see you soon

O Death, Rock Me Asleep – Maundy Thursday Watchnight

Easter 2023

Thursday 6^th April 9.30pm

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/o-death-rock-me-asleep

Welcome to Between The Stools Maundy Thursday watchnight with Jesus and Anne Boleyn, the prism through whom we’ll be seeing the Easter story this year. There won’t be many words but there will be a little music.

We’re following a history theme this year and have spent Lent with the wives of Henry VIII. I saved Anne B until last. There is a parallel between Jesus and Anne’s swiftly organised arrests, sham trials and deaths – along with others. And the others matter too. We don’t know the men with Jesus’ names but Anne died with her brother George, Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton, William Brereton and Henry Norris.

Those in precarious power abuse it against those who bring a new order which threatens theirs – not by military might, but words. I am not saying that Anne is Jesus (I did wonder about who else’s spirit she embodies), but she and several others we have or will speak of can also be included in our watchnight… Mary Stuart, Jane Grey, Katherine Howard, Elizabeth Barton The Nun of Kent, and our Magdalene Sunday lady. This isn’t about depressing ourselves or dwelling on horror. I actually wish to speak against that, and the vlogger who criticised a television channel for not showing a gory execution. What value is there in wallowing in such details and making the cast and crew re-enact it, and us as viewers enter their energy?

Tonight, I want us to be like Job’s comforters – at the start of that book we explored in January – just sitting quietly and being with one who is suffering and faces great trials. I want us to hold hands with, pray with, presence with. I’m not asking you to go over the details of what will happen to Anne and Jesus tomorrow. I am asking you to think on their lives, and where tomorrow’s act will send them (Heaven), and what became of their story after that. We will take that up in Sunday’s sermon.

I also want us to sit with those who are suffering, afraid, and face the end of their lives. That could be you. Do reach out to me if that’s the case (to betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk). Let us reach out – and energy knows no bounds – and hold those, pray with them, to take away fear and discomfort.

After our long silence, with short snatches of music, I will play you a full song, then have a few more words to comfort and send us out in hope

I felt Jesus, Anne and the others say: sit with us because we’d like to sit with you so you feel the loving presence of God and those that have gone before

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This song is by Katy Rose; she’s set to music Anne Boleyn’s final poem which she wrote on the eve of her death. I will speak again after briefly

O Death Rock Me Asleep (you heard flashes of the Tudor style music, seemingly anonymous (or by Jordan), published in 1611, transcribed Arnold Dolmetsch in 1898, performed by Rosemary Standley & Helstroffer’s Band, Lumina Vocal Emsemble, Anna Dennis & Voices of Music….note this version misses out several verses below.)

O Death, rock me asleep,
Bring me to quiet rest,
Let pass my weary guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast.
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

My pains who can express?
Alas, they are so strong;
My dolour will not suffer strength
My life for to prolong.
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

Alone in prison strong
I wait my destiny.
Woe worth this cruel hap that I
Should taste this misery!
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

Farewell, my pleasures past,
Welcome, my present pain!
I feel my torments so increase
That life cannot remain.
Cease now, thou passing bell;
Rung is my doleful knell;
For the sound my death doth tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy

For now I die, I die, I die. attributed to Queen Anne Boleyn d. 19^th May 1536

That poem and song ends rather starkly…‘there is no remedy’. I believe there is – he came 1500 years before Anne. I think that rather than forgetting or renouncing her faith – and for that reason I query if this poem is really Anne’s – she laments that, like Jesus, this is her chosen exit strategy. She knows that won’t change, and she may have had honest human feelings about that, as he did. This was her ‘take the cup from me’ moment. But not taking the cup away was an important part of history playing out – not submitting to unstoppable fate or an ogrous potentate’s will…but choosing a life path, focussing on a spiritual perspective. Jesus and Anne knew with Mary, Katherine, Jane and Elizabeth that their end was their beginning.

What happened to them may not happen to you: we are in new times now

We we be thinking about that on Sunday evening, 8pm my time (BST)

Thank you for joining me and I hope to see you again

Please email me by the end of tomorrow if you’d like to come live

Note in the coming music the rise and change to major key in the final chords

 

LENT 6: 30/3/23 – Falcon

My weekly Lenten reflections will be on a wife of Henry VIII each week – although not in order

These seek to not retell their stories, but to look at them with a spiritual eye

An illegal book is being held up and thrust at you. It’s yours. What do you do?

Last week’s queen was an author of controversial books. This one wasn’t penned by Anne Boleyn, but contemporary William Tyndale, exiled in Antwerp, where he was put to death the same year as her.

Four hundred and seventy years later, a woman sits in a staffroom, reading. She wafts colleagues who wish to interact away: she is not here, but in 1533…and now even more pressingly,1536! Drawn by the deep purple and gold dress on the cover, awakening nascent historic interest, I spent an intense summer with Anne whom I hitherto knew only in name. Philippa Gregory and Retha Warnicke made me wish for Anne’s end, but Vercors made me want to put flowers on her grave. It is with that French cartoonist’s view – joined by English academic Eric Ives, novelist Jean Plaidy, and historian Joanna Denny – that I have stayed…perhaps until now.

I have saved who I consider the most interesting wife until last; it through Anne Boleyn that we will view Easter this year. Instinctively I knew that the biting prose which first introduced me to Anne was not the truth and that another story was bursting to be known. I found not the ‘strumpet’ who threatened a marriage, a nation and her daughter’s right to reign through her own selfish ambition, but the champion of all the things which I admired, deliberately vilified in the time-honoured way for unusual women who threaten an ungodly fearful status quo: whore and witch.

What I would like to look at today is that book of hers, the reading of which risked her life and that can be argued to have caused the reformation – as it can of Anne herself. Because Anne’s faith is so often missing from books and films, it is only in recent weeks that – despite writing a postgraduate dissertation on her popular depictions – I have started to realise the content of that book and its significance. Since that dissertation, I have learned new things about the reformation and the church of England. So do I still feel the same about the woman who was catalyst and initiator of these? (p132 ch 6 of Denny)

Anne’s faith was – according to Denny and Ives – her driving force. She used her position with a king otherwise not very interested in reform or critical of Rome to effect the most radical change since the Catholic church’s formation. She and her family sponsored, smuggled, and pleaded for reformist works and people. Her reaction to being caught with Tyndale’s tract was to go to the king to ask for it back and share her new reading material with him, for she realised that this tome contained the answer not only to his Great Matter (ie divorce from Katherine of Aragon) but to a new England.

It was Netflix’s Blood, Sex and Royalty – one of a new breed of sexed up documentary with talking academic heads interspersed with graphic sex – that alerted me to this book’s message. I understood that the New Learning, a fascination with which Anne’s brother and father also shared, was about emancipation for the masses by being able to read the Bible yourself. Tyndale clearly advocates the Bible in one’s mother tongue and bats away the excuses of the clergy – that it’s too hard for ordinary people to understand and that biblical languages don’t easily translate into English. He states that Hebrew and Greek ‘agreeth’ far better with English than Latin, in which the Bible was hitherto. He also expects that heads of households instruct in God’s Word – but how can they if it’s not in their language and they can’t have a copy at home? (Henry conceded one in each church).

We’ll think more about the significance of being able to read and own the Bible in July.

The New Learning was also about standing away from the ‘Church’ teaching of salvation by works. Last week I asked: saved – from what?

My understanding is that ‘by works’ means: please the ‘Church’ and pay it to obtain God’s favour, pretending to conflate the two. It means that we have to work to please God and through that alone will we attain Glory and avoid Hell. (The Parable of the Labourers in Matt 20 and much of the New Testament epistles are evidence against that). Reformed theology rightly says: grace is not earned, it is a gift from God. Grace and salvation, for me, are not the same. Were they for Anne?

Last week I also showed my concern for our relationship with God being expressed in legal terms: that of justification, which Tyndale also advocates (that too is the language of the court).

Anne loved to debate theology and did so with those around her constantly. Would we still agree?

I agree that not being ‘saved’ by works doesn’t mean that it isn’t important what you do. Anne Boleyn cared about right action: in that 2022 Netflix documentary I believe Tracy Borman said that Anne introduced charity to the court; several writers state that she had concern for her subject’s wellbeing and high standards for the conduct of her ladies, as well demonstrating her own as refusing to go to the king’s bed until they were contracted to marry and Katherine put aside.

An aspect of action that Tyndale took on in The Obedience of the Christian Man (1528) is one’s relationship with so-called authority. Much of it is conventional, as his his rendering of the New Testament: I tested his translation on the verses prohibiting women teaching (such as 1 Tim 2:12) which came up last week. He endorses violence against one’s children in the name of correction; exhorts that servants obey masters, for they are God unto you (as are parents, and most worryingly, kings). Tyndale said ‘If thou obey, though it be but carnally, either for fear, for vain glory, or profit, thy blessing shall be long life upon the earth’, thus that obedience for any reason will garner you God’s favour whereas the opposite will garner you the opposite. I am highly disturbed by that statement and heartily disagree. ‘Kings were ordained’ and ‘the sword put in their hands’, wrote Tyndale. He also said that kings are God’s vicars upon the Earth (ie stand ins) and may do as they wish. I dread to think how such sentiments fed Henry’s ego. Already believing that he had the divine right to rule and was puffed up with pride, Henry now had in writing – apparently backed up by well chosen theologians – that he should be the supreme authority in his nation. Tyndale attacks all kinds of clerics, including monks, whom he claims were ‘free and exempted from all service and obedience due unto man’ save the pope. He calls men of the cloister marked by the Beast (haven’t many of us wondered if we witness that in our time?). How might that rather unqualified and nonsensical remark have fuelled hatred of the monasteries and their destruction? (We’ll meet some cloistered people this year).

From what I’ve read and understand, I don’t think that Tyndale was as radical an author as Robert Browne later in century, who questioned civic authority more generally. Anne too was questioning only one form – albeit a very powerful one – and one that made England part of an empire: Rome’s. But was she really about making an empire of our own, about seeding a nation state? Vercors thinks so, and he saw our courage to stand alone against Hitler as being rooted in Anne Boleyn. Would she have seen it as good to stand alone from Europe? Had she forseen something deeper when she steered this Sceptred Isle from the Mitred one? I am unsure what I think of the sceptre. I don’t support empires and am ashamed of Britain’s and how far reaching it was. If this is a conscious legacy of Anne’s, it is not something which I admire.

I have so much more to say on Anne: I’ll be saying some of it next Sunday, and have blogged about her previously. For now, I wish to state my disappointment that Blood Sex and Royalty, after having Anne and the glossy lipped professors debate theology and make a point of her having Tyndale, doesn’t end with her legacy as a theologian. Her brother tells her that she’ll change the world, but neither shows nor tells how. Once again, after the axe falls, so does the curtain: the story of Anne ends with the usual coda – a ginger toddler who will become known as Gloriana. Thus Anne’s contribution to England was her genes, not her courageous work in uncoupling from a continental-wide yoke of corruption and inequality. Her downfall is shown for not bearing sons and keeping the king’s favour, not because of the swift work of her enemies. Who and why is something we’ll take up again.

I wish to leave you for now in the final Lenten reflection of this year with Anne Boleyn, not on a scaffold or in a prison (although we’ll sit with her the latter,with Jesus, next Thursday), not as a monogram hastily etched away and likenesses destroyed, but a woman who cared so much about the exciting new faith in Jesus that she was willing to spend ten years with one of the most dangerous rulers of all time to change hearts, minds, laws and history.

We’ll have Tudor themed Maundy Thursday and Easter online services, at 930pm and 8pm BST.

Both will be about 45 mins. The first will be quite and reflective. Both will feature music

Please email me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk if you’re interested in coming live by the end of Weds 5^th as I will make decisions based on that

I shall also be performing a reading of my novella The Jury In My Mind for the 111^th anniversary of the Titanic the following week. It will be online free to listen to (but not download) for a short time from weekend 14/15^th April 2023

Note the change of date for June’s service to reflect an important anniversary

Anne Boleyn – champion of free thinking

Although Anne is the mother of Elizabeth, for me – Elizabeth begat Anne.

When Elizabeth (1998) became my favourite film, I wondered who “your mother the whore” was, and gradually took a step back in time to the previous generation – and there found an equally, if not even more remarkable woman.

The first time I read about Anne Boleyn was in 2002 and I came to her almost in ignorance. I dismissed people in my lunch hour, saying I was in 1533 and not available. As I read Philippa Gregory’s novel about Anne’s sister, I suddenly remembered the rhyme about Henry’s wives and what was going to happen.

By the time Gregory’s venomous pen had done depicting this conniving, hard, brutal woman, I was willing Anne to be executed; but by the time I picked up Vercor’s book, I wanted to put flowers on her grave.

Vercors is a photographer’s pen name, whose novelised biography says that the evil, grasping concubine did not make sense; and that underneath the deliberately etched layers was a heroine – for women, for  England – but most of all, free thinking believers. And strangely, it took a Frenchman trying to make sense of our independence from Hitler in the second world war to see it.

Just as Joan of Arc was resurrected at a time of resurgent nationalism in France, it seems Anne Boleyn is ripe for a similar rediscovery on many levels – yet she has not really been used.

The harsh view of Anne prevailed over four centuries, but there seemed to be a concurrent re-imagining in the 1980s. Professor Eric Ives, historic fiction writer Jean Plaidy, and Vercors all published in around the same year. Theirs was a different Anne to what had gone before – a maligned woman of sympathy, talent, though complex and potentially with a hard streak. And except for Philippa Gregory, books all have followed this portrayal since – whether they be fiction or academic – but not yet on the screen. Howard Brenton’s recent play is all about the debt that King James  and his Bible owed to the supposed strumpet a hundred years earlier.

Joanna Denny’s focus is summed up by her idea that Anne was a neo-Esther, something Anne herself propagated by having her chaplain preach on this in front of the royal court. Likening Anne to Esther recalls not wicked grasping Jezebel but another Old Testament queen, chosen by the king, which gave her an opportunity to save her minority group of endangered religious people. Denny emphasises Anne’s controversial new beliefs and her daring work to use her position to promote them when such beliefs were persecuted. Denny sees Anne as wooed against her wishes and morals, and argues that the portrait (quite literally) was deliberately obscured by her enemies. The dark features, mole and sixth finger are traits attributed in the 16^th C to diabolism which were invented to destroy the memory of this powerful woman.

Professor Ives and Joanna Denny write about her faith extensively, the latter making it Anne’s principle driving force.

I’ve read in fiction and academic sources of Anne’s forbidden religious book (The Obedience of a Christian Man by William Tyndale) being stolen by Wolsey and given to Henry. Anne uses this opportunity to discuss the book’s radical ‘New Learning’ contents with Henry, and so influence him with protestant beliefs.

Henry was not interested in reforming the church. After Luther pinned his 95 points on that church door, Henry wrote an impassioned, I think quite immature letter to defend the catholic church. It was his advisor Thomas Cromwell who is understood to have used Henry’s marriage and pope dilemma to allow divergence of belief to come openly and safely into England, and I believe that Anne and Cromwell initially worked together on this.

What Anne’s beliefs were and how to term them might need some clarification. She has been called evangelical. The term ‘Evangelical’ – not quite as we understand it –  was less radical than the Lollards, and not really heretical. It was not the same as being Protestant. The key features of evangelicalism, as today, were reading the Bible for oneself; accessing God direct and not through a priest; being against superstition; and one’s personal relationship with God. Anne is said to have exposed the fake miracle at Hailes abbey of Christ’s flowing blood (actually provided thought a duck’s blood dispensing machine). Anne has been spoken of as Lutheran, yet Karen Lindsey and Eric Ives claim that Anne’s faith was not wholly opposed to the established church, and that she had a confessor and took mass, and did not denounce transubstantiation – only its trappings.

It might occur to some that if Anne had a reformed faith, that scheming involving adultery, wealth and power are incompatible with it. Ives says that 16th C didn’t see God’s and personal glory as incompatible, just as some people today feel wealth is part of their spirituality.

Something which is not readily emphasised about Anne is her moral household –  and her generosity to the poor which went beyond the usual royal favour.  She expected her ladies to sew for the poor, and was likely to be behind a Poor Reform Bill of 1536. She was also a patron of schools and universities, and rallied for her patronees. Being a reluctant focus of passion and harassment is very different to pursuing Henry purposely – and she did refuse to be his mistress.

Belief is a choice, and is ultimately, I believe what appeals rather than on argument and proof alone (that subject is another article). So I choose to see Anne as an Esther, a renaissance woman of power, taste and intellect, and I take particular interest in her reformed faith. Anne’s faith was of intellect and heart with practical outworking. And it allowed divergence into non conformism.

I therefore with others think that it was not Henry, and not really William Tyndale that caused the English reformation – but Queen Anne Boleyn of England, the Moost Happy [sic], who was crowned (depending on which calendar you use) this week, 480 years ago.

Anne Boleyn at the Globe

I am having a summer of Tudors. I have had many such summers as I have studied these over a period of 11 years, but I even when I spent a year academically researching their popular depictions, I have never seen so many plays on Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn in a few months as in these past ones.

I have just seen the production at the neo-Elizabethan Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, on its opening weekend – a new play which sold out last year, as was the performance to which I went.

In his introduction to his script, playwright Howard Brenton quotes the views of historians David Starkey and Antonia Fraser, reflecting the likely opinion of the public. He does not mention Prof Eric Ives and Joanna Denny whose prominent books depict a very much more positive Anne. Joanna especially – as does Karen Lindsey – writes of the systematic demonisation of Anne’s character. All three remind that our few historical contemporary sources are chiefly Anne’s enemies, none of whom featured in Brenton’s play. Books – both novels and academic – have been ahead by 30 years in showing Anne as a national heroine, but stage and screen still cast Anne as the ambitious, hard siren. Philippa Gregory’s 2002 novel and ensuing film adaptations have done much to reverse this positive literary view, which has become in vogue again with most recent publications.

Brenton’s 2010 play promised a view closer to the one I adopted: the Reformist queen: ‘Esther not Jezebel’ – the title pf my 2006 dissertation. (I had attributed it to Joanna Denny, but I think it is my own). American author Robin Maxwell had Queen Elizabeth I reading her mother’s words in her novel The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn; Howard Brenton has King Authorised Bible James reading Anne’s annotated Christian book and realising his connection to the fallen queen of two generations ago who suffered the same fate as his mother. (I never use the phrase that the blurb does – his debt. As you’ll see from my Justice in Banking blog on this site, I have strong views against debt culture). Note too that being executed does not denote failure, but rather a brutal signal of mission accomplished.

I was interested that a play was picking up the religious theme, as often theology is seen as too heavy and dull for entertainment, particularly when we are a multi and often no faith society. But the themes of tolerance and violence and faith recur, and spirituality is again popular though not always in established, orthodox ways. And this 16/17th C period is a seminal one in our history in which the burgeoning of new beliefs is central.

I was drawn to the play because it was written by a man who evidently could see Anne’s merits – significant as I felt Anne appealed most to women. But it was Eric Ives in 1986 who said that Anne was an appropriate vehicle for feminism – though few have picked up that gauntlet – and it’s women who have written many of the works which fuel popular imagination that recast her as Jezebel.

It may seem obvious given its performance setting, but I didn’t expect Howard’s play to feel so Shakespearean, in the rowdy audience, bawdy and earthy kind of way. The experience of the Globe merits a few lines – booking fees, standing without umbrella or stick for £5 or, of if you pay £15-37 for a seat, there’s charges for cushions (and the wooden seats have lips which I think are designed to make you need one – but I managed without); and a foreign group behind me who whispered throughout (translating to a child who was too young to be there) and put their feet on the seats. The atmosphere was closer to comedy than serious theatre, though there were both elements in the play. King James romps in a dress with ‘interesting stains’ with a male courtier whom he kisses; it starts with the ghost of Anne bringing her severed head out in a bag; and it ends with an all cast jig.

James (Garnon/Stuart) perhaps was the most charismatic character on the stage, his strong Scots accent mixed with a tick, his camp manner helped by his shoes and beard. While we’re on accents: I am infuriated that the country folk once again got that generic West Country which is insulting and ignorant. There are many Eastern and southern counties accents, all quite distinct, and they sounded no more convincing than The Worzel’s Combine Harvester song, which was at least meant to be comedic. It’s like getting all North American or Celtic accents muddled. Actors and dialect coaches, take note!

I was not pleased at Anne’s physical appearance. She is famous for being dark, though Joanna Denny believes this is part of the demonisaton programme as ‘swarthy’ skin was seen as a sign of diabolism – appalling as that notion is. Denny believes that Anne was dark auburn, as per the most likely genuine contemporary portrait of Anne – but nowhere have I heard of her as blonde. Couldn’t Miranda Raison have dyed her hair or worn a wig? And couldn’t Henry be red haired? And why did Cardinal Wolsey have a beard?

I did not like the gore lust of the opening but I did like that Anne begins by assuming the knowledge of her death – which we never see – and by establishing a rapport with the audience. I liked the originality and pertinence of linking her and King James and the amount of material covered in an engaging way. Anthony Howell made a positive King Henry, kind instead of raging over the birth of a girl; but the man who had so many butchered in his name is relieved of too much of his violent, cruel and inhuman side. My favourite Henry remains Ray Winstone, whose complex depiction was the first to show me a man whom I could weep for as well as despise. Sometimes in Howard’s version, earthy comments – such as what Henry really wishes to say in his letters to Anne – mar the real point: the vulnerability of Henry’s enduring, consuming passion which must extend further than his tights to have raged so long and moved so much to be with her.

The audience was too quick to laugh at anything. The person who called out ‘ah’ in sympathy with broken Cardinal Wolsey was more correct that those who giggled, but either response turned this into a panto rather than the moment of pathos. When an important theological tenet dawns on Henry – that he could be king and head of the church without need of the pope and thus have his new wife – again, there was laughter. But it wasn’t essentially about being funny, it was the turning point of the play and British history. We spent too much of the play in Caliban mentality rather than the Prospero and Ferdinand.

My gripe had been til this weekend that no-one has explained Anne’s swift demise satisfactorily. Brenton shows something I have not found in my research or other books – I hope to discover where he found it. (I wrote and he told me: Eric Ives). But if it is true, it does account for the scheme to scaffold that in 3 weeks had the most powerful woman in the kingdom’s head in a basket. If Anne knew that Cromwell was embezzling ex monastic funds meant for charity, she had the key in which to bring about his downfall as Wolsey and More. (No temperate, cuddly Mr Northam here; this [absent] More is a torturer). Cromwell would take his advice to Anne earlier in the play, and strike before struck. The charges of multiple adultery and incest – treason in themselves – seem ridiculous, but perhaps an insecure king who could love and hate in equal measure could be persuaded in a very intense period to sign the death warrant.

But the frustration is that Brenton potentially closes one mystery but leaves something else unsatisfactory. The villain we focus on, particularly after Wolsey leaves, is Thomas Cromwell. The slippery faced multi officed politician always features heavily in Tudor plots, and he is usually credited as being the man who brought Anne’s death about. Here he is portrayed as a fellow in faith, aiding illicit Reformist texts and their author’s passage out of the country. Yet his secret Protestant beliefs clash with his vile practices of threats and spying. They also don’t prevent Cromwell’s clandestine bond with Anne turning sour very suddenly and without enough explanation. One moment, they are sharing a prayer; suddenly he’s arresting her, banning her from speaking to or seeing her husband, and making up charges against her. The play – as with many other stories – does not say that Cromwell is executed during Henry’s reign, rather less efficiently than Anne’s French swordsman.

The jaunty dance at the end ruined the power of the ending. It should have ended with the ghost of Anne taking James’ hand – a quiet, poignant gesture. Instead the 150 minutes is augmented by cheering stamping dances that aren’t even fitting, and those final moments are quickly forgotten in their wake.

Ultimately, I am a little disappointed, but that is because it didn’t show my Anne; but that is good, because it leaves the way open for me to do so myself.

Wallis and Edward

It is strange how history parallels itself. Since the Royal Wedding, I have researched our current royal family, about whom I truly knew little. It became like the story of Elizabeth I: I kept hearing about the previous generation and how their actions had a clear impact on the current. In the Tudor story and film Elizabeth, I found that I must know who ‘the whore Anne Boleyn’ really was to understand why Elizabeth’s claim to the throne was arguably tenuous. Understanding Anne actually told me far more than that and introduced me to a woman every bit as fascinating and remarkable.

Reading about today’s royal family is exciting because it is the same kind of epic history, but still unfolding, with the possibility to interact with it. We don’t know the end of the story. I like to read stories where I don’t know the end; it is a shame that classics and history are half known to the general public so that there is rarely the pleasure of complete discovery for the first time. We know the Titanic sinks and that Mr Rochester does marry Jane Eyre. We know that Elizabeth I doesn’t marry and that Anne Boleyn is executed. Those events are best discovered like a film that starts with the end and you have to learn why that end is arrived at.

Reading about Prince Charles – whose story is still being made and whose ending is not known – I kept coming up against warnings about being like Uncle David, whose regnant name was Edward. This seemed to be the ultimate threat, the most dreaded comparison. The shadow of Edward VIII’s abdication was and perhaps is still looming in the memory of the royal family, though many of them were born after that event and even after his lifetime. I previously knew only that Edward abdicated to marry; I knew nothing of to whom, except her name and that she was divorced. However – any books, films and perhaps people are quick to fill in my blank that this was a feckless, selfish couple; she, a crude, loud American siren. And brave old Bertie conquered his stammer and stepped into his shameful brothers’ shoes and gave us the current royal lineage, with the strong Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at his side, known to us today as the late Queen Mum.

This year, I have seen three films about that era: The King’s Speech, Bertie and Elizabeth, and Any Human Heart. They all add to what the biographies say. David/Edward says little in the films, and neither does Wallis Simpson, but their small parts are almost caricatured in not being flattering. Only in 2001’s Bertie and Elizabeth was there a hint that he carried on with his duties, despite being exiled and stripped of his title, and still had popularity when he met people.

Yesterday, I watched the 2005 film for television, Wallis and Edward. I wanted to hear their side of the story. My instinct had been to wonder if Edward and Wallis were really so dreadful and to feel sorry for Edward. Who else but royalty cannot reject the work our family lines up for us? You can refuse to be a doctor as your parents hoped or to carry on the family business, but this is one firm you cannot leave. I find his abdication speech very moving. He says he can’t be king and do the best for his people without the woman loves. I understand that. Who else has ministers and laws telling you whom you should marry? Why is the anti-Catholic law still in place? The prime minister has no such scrutiny, yet PM Stanley Baldwin felt that he could manipulate his Sovereign on that matter. Easy to deal the duty card to someone else when it’s not your companion that’s being dictated.

Jean Brodie says “…Stanley Baldwin who got in as prime minister and out again ere long”. This has stuck with me – that it’s the headmistress, Miss Mackay, who admires Baldwin and has the slogan near his picture, ‘safety first’. The complex antiheroine loves truth, beauty, art, and esteemed Axis European leaders whose getting in and getting out caused immeasurable suffering. I think that regarding the Windsors, Stanley Baldwin can also be charged with causing suffering – not with the mass torture and execution of fascist dictators, but his prejudice fuelled pressure had an effect on the nation and his government as well as ripples of hurt and stress for the whole the royal family, Edward and Wallis especially.

I wish that Wallis and Edward had ended not with the end notes that they were ostracized for the rest of their lives and that Wallis died a recluse, but that Baldwin resigned and the sympathetic friend Churchill became our famous, perhaps iconic prime minister, and that Wallis and Edward’s lives and duties carried on beyond their wedding day.

Wallis and Edward is well written and the DVD’s interview with writer Sarah Williams is very illuminating. It’s her first made script, inspired by coming across a book on Wallis in America that perhaps indicated another light was possible on the woman so hated and decried over here. In Sarah’s telling, the Queen Mother comes across as scheming and controlling. King George V is not portrayed well in any of the films, always been bombastic and cold and autocratic, a negative force on both brothers. David/Edward is neither hero nor villain, but complicated. Wallis is not grasping at the English throne, but would rather see her love alone on it and lose him than cause constitutional crisis. She is always the one with caution, showing sadness and fear when things escalate. Rather than Wallis leaving yet another husband callously, it’s he who leaves her. She is willing to put her second husband before the king, but it is Ernest Simpson who asks for the divorce. There’s none of the crude, brash presumption in this Wallis, played by Joely Richardson. Joely’s an actress who plays sympathetic protagonist roles and so this casting makes us willing to warm to her and suggests that’s what we are supposed to do.

It’s easy to see Anne Boleyn/Henry VIII parallels in that a man falls in love so passionately that he is prepared to go against his ministers and shake the constitution to do so. Henry, like many kings, took lovers of married women, and this was accepted. Edward VIII was advised to do the same, without marrying her, but this film has Edward refuse to take such a double standard. Wallis, like Anne, is not aristocracy and her husband, like the men of Tudor paramours, angles their women towards the king to reap the benefits for themselves. Ernest Simpson is a nice partner who bravely confronts the King with his intentions – he does not want to leave Wallis unless she is well looked after.

The parallels with the current royal family are also powerful. Charles and Camilla’s wedding was announced during the filming of this drama. Had that happened earlier – or when Charles becomes king – a similar crisis could have emerged. I also recently saw the Channel 4 docudrama series, The Queen. It covers Charles and Diana’s break up and a parallel in living memory with Princess Margaret. Margaret wanted to marry a senior employee, Peter Townsend, but eventually gave him up for duty. I wonder how much of ‘Uncle David’ would have been behind that decision and the Queen’s views on both her sister and her son’s marriages. Being the daughter of the other brother, the one thrown into the limelight by the decision of the abdicator, one can surmise at how that affected Queen Elizabeth’s beliefs. A girl at the time, it may be that her parents influenced her ideas about it as she perhaps can remember little herself; I don’t think she had much contact with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as David/Edward and Wallis became.

I would like to do further research on Wallis and Edward, and am open to the more sympathetic view. Like Anne Boleyn, it seems she has been demonised, but it is better that she does not remain so for centuries if it not deserved.

Fallen In Love

A review of a new production on ‘Anne Boleyn’s secret heart’

I was very excited to see this new play by Ipswich based theatre company Red Rose Chain, who say they had people crossing the Atlantic to see it and reviewers from all the national papers. They quote historical biographer Alison Weir’s positive comments, although she is thanked in the acknowledgements as being a key part of the research.

I have been passionate about Anne for several years and she formed a major part of my research degree. I was interested in how popular contemporary sources portray her, and how things have entered the canon of knowledge -ie what is seen to be true at any one time.

The canon regarding Anne has changed since the 1980s. Her enemies’ vilification programme was successful for 4 centuries, until several independent researchers of different backgrounds realised that there was another Anne than the Jezebel-esque ruthless upstart. Film has been slower to catch up, still portraying her broadly this way, and Philippa Gregory’s novel and now movie have tipped popular perception for the initiated back towards negative.

This summer, I’ll see two new plays on Anne, hoping that they might offer more of the fresh perspective that sees her as a heroine as Jean Plaidy, Vercors, Joanna Denny and Eric Ives have done.

Fallen in Love was disappointing for its portrayal and its execution – and no, not the one at the end of the play.

It wasn’t that I could detect historical inaccuracy, but that the portrayal fitted the conventional old style view – Anne as perhaps complicated, perhaps with a sympathetic motive, but not even as Prof Ives said – someone one admires but not likes. Naive Anne suddenly becomes hard, and we miss that trajectory out due to a major shift in time. The naiveté is shown through silly voices and exaggerated running about and frivolity.

I confess that I have never warmed to George Boleyn, and it is a shame that he is such a part of this play. Writer and director Joanna Carrick gives him the best lines – making out that it is he (not Anne) who is the religious reformer, the one who hates corruption but can also see genuine faith in some of the monks who are being so horribly butchered. She even lets George say the wonderful alleged final speech that Anne wrote to Henry about being raised from Commoner in stages to the highest honour of all – martyr.

A story about Anne that does not feature Henry feels odd. Small casts are tricky, and this duo didn’t hold the necessary interest for me. I didn’t know that it would just be Anne and her brother, and when this became apparent, my enthusiasm sagged. I also didn’t like the casting of Anne – again, a personal matter, but she didn’t act in a way that made you understand why the most powerful monarch of the western world was so smitten with her that he took such great steps to be with her. And – why this woman was deemed so dangerous that she was killed swiftly and then demonised.

That last part is something I have never found to be satisfactorily explained.

Fallen in Love is not the strongest title, suggesting a chick lit appraisal of one of Europe’s great moments of history. I had expected, therefore, a love story – and presumed this would be one of the few that would show Anne in love with Henry: often the affair is portrayed as onesided. I believe one intended interpretation of the play’s title is, as Gregory and Warnicke alone suggest, that Anne’s incest charge was actually accurate, with which I and most other scholars vehemently disagree.

I have particular tastes in theatre, leaning towards physical theatre and cross media as ways to best use the stage as a way of telling a story powerfully. This was a very traditional talk continuously play with too little room to act physically; the set is designed round a bed which also holds up the tee pee. The epic story doesn’t work in a small tent with not much of set. The post death scene with feathers and dancing was the best -for theatricality and innovation, and a welcome break from over egged young thespian voices.

Practically, there were also problems. Passing trains and football in the park didn’t help the authenticity. The tickets are expensive for what they are – £15 to sit an a marquee on uncomfy chairs with poor toilets, and a simple kiosk for refreshments. They have 2 evening shows back to back, meaning you can’t get in the carpark until the previous show has gone. This contradicted the ticket’s advice of arriving at least 15 minutes early. It wasn’t clear from the crude map that the Hall is not accessible from Gypeswick park, although it seems logical to assume it is. Retracing steps, having found the prohibitive high fence, wastes several minutes.

There was a free short aftershow by a community theatre. As much as I wish to encourage people to find their artistic feet, I have to say that this was a painful experience. What jarred most was not poor acting quality, but the incessant swearing. Dramatically, to swear constantly means you have played your trump card until it has no meaning. There are no more organ stops to pull out when the tension rises. The director warned it may offend ‘sensitive’ people, but sensitivity and a dislike of foul language are not connected. The action and dialogue were lost under the cursing. Group penned Guiltless Ghost is a play about transposing Henry, Anne, George and Jane Parker to a group of four friends on a modern housing estate, all on mobile phones and in chav gear. It forgets the high born grandeur, religion and politics at the heart of the Tudor story, and that Anne Boleyn does not lend herself to a kind of Gavin and Stacey directed by Shane Meadows or Peter Mullan. The bit that made me scoff into my hands was the closing voiceover quote that gave the piece its name. Halting, with a very Ips-witch rising accent, it made what might have been an interesting idea into a farce.

The Royal Wedding

When I left my home to watch the nuptials at my local cinema, the city was quiet – much like any bank holiday. But I was surprised to see decorators and Big Issue sellers at work as normal. After the event, I stepped outside, hoping to hear local church bells ringing;  I strained to hear a little chime distantly. Most shops were closed, but while the majority took the advantage of another bank holiday’s rest, few displayed anything in their windows about the event. One restaurant said it was closing due to ‘the wedding’ – the monarchical aspect was dropped. Others had triangular flags on strings but avoided the national tricolours. From one window dangled a Chelsea football flag – not even a local team – for the next day’s match.

I am among those who are proud of our monarchy and heritage. But I did note that the service used words which made me shudder – about the very negative church view of why we have marriage – to stop fornication and to have children. I noted with pleasure the lack of ‘obey’ in Kate (now Duchess)’s vows. The Guardian points out that the music was very imperial, although most of the unfamilar pieces didn’t stick out, especially not the new piece composed by John Rutter. The choir descants spoiled favourite hymns as usual. And there was a heavy military feel to the day, which I struggled with as a pacifist.

I am bored by the silly media commentary and bitch comments about the attire of people I often have no interest in.

What does interest me is a parallel between the new princess (why does she have to have her husband’s first name?) and the one of the women I most admire in History. Although also not royal or aristocratic, Anne Boleyn did keep her first name when she became queen. Her wedding to Henry VIII was a private and secret affair – its date is not known – but her coronation is easier to compare to yesterday’s wedding. Anne Boleyn is a much maligned woman, whose enemies’ vilification programme has been successful for 400 years. She was not the grasping bitch whose reign was cut short by beheading; she was the real star of the Reformation who set up the kingdom ready for the successes that her daughter Elizabeth reaped. She was a woman who also knew that her costumes of public occasions spoke symbolically as statements, and used them well. Allegedly also dark (although Joanna Denny disagrees) and slim, Anne had to wait a similar time to Kate (possibly longer) before finally marrying into royalty. In contrast to choosing an established military uniform, Henry’s bridegroom outfits would have been as interesting to see as his wives’. I believe that Jonathan Rhys Myers commented on playing Henry in the Tudors TV series that this was the best dressed male in history. The costume designers for the show got a unique opportunity to make such splendid clothes for a male.

I wonder what the metropolitan police would have done to control the crowds who allegedly booed Anne and threw things on her two mile ride through the capital.

Which brings me on to the bitter aftertaste of yesterday’s affair. In reading the papers, what’s stuck in my mind was the heavy handed response of police. I chose contrasting papers; the more local and conservative one only briefly mentioned the arrests as a low number, instead quoting the police on the nice atmosphere in Westminster. The self aggrandised left wing one spent much time on the feelings of suppressed republicans who feel their right to an anti royalist view was curtailed by pre-emptive police. On the same page that OK magazine had its huge Royal Wedding special advert, this paper reported on Bristol anti Tesco protests being escalated by riot police – who then got what they dressed for. Also this month, I read of another recent time when British police had stepped in aggressively citing ‘breach of the peace’ before any had been caused. Rightly, complaints are being made at all these incidents. It’s the same month that I watched Stuart: A Life Backwards about two real men that met over protesting that managers of a shelter where drugs were dealt were arrested in a raid and then imprisoned.

Whilst some are angry at the public expenses of yesterday’s ceremony, the real bill comes from security. We didn’t  pay for the Abbey or the reception or the dress; the uniting families met those costs. What the recession and cut weary nation did pay for was a multi-million police bill, involving stop and search on all those near the abbey as well as heavy handedness at republican parties. Security now spoils any large event, which are often full of peace, fun and neighbourliness to strangers. We’ve become obsessed with searching people and it really should not be tolerated. Yes, if we’re innocent we mind particularly. And this same police force, who we regularly pay our taxes towards, is rough handling other peaceful demonstrations against important matters and undermining our right to be a free country.

Vintage wartime posters are available to buy, and felt all the more appropriate with their crowned slogans in the light of our internationally followed royal wedding. The one that is most appropriate is ‘Your freedom is in peril – fight with all your might’. That doesn’t mean taking up arms – but it does mean the right to publish, speak publicly and privately,  and hold up placards should never be curtailed.