How do you portray a character so well known as Anne Boleyn? Well, for a start, have her already dead. Let her walk on stage mentioning two things: what she is most famous for (being married to Henry VIII and having her head chopped off) and what the play is about (a copy she kept of William Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man).
Then move forward to the court of King James I, where the monarch is trying to mediate between the Puritans and Anglicans as regards which translation of the Bible is correct. He stumbles on Obedience and is surprised that Anne was a champion of Tyndale, the radical Bible translator.
This would also probably be a surprise also to viewers of the television drama The Tudors, where Anne’s ideology does not extend beyond keeping the king out of her bed before a promise of marriage. And it might surprise readers of Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall, who know this good-time girl as a stickler for protocol, taking offence at any perceived slight to her dignity.
Howard Brenton uses the story of how Boleyn possessed a copy of Tyndale’s text to argue otherwise. The book was confiscated from a maid, found its way to Cardinal Wolsey and was returned to Anne only after she successfully appealed to Henry – much to the annoyance of the prelate. The source for this is questionable. The story originated from John Foxe, who desired to view Henry and Anne’s marriage as a principled break with Rome. However, Anne’s education meant she might easily have developed an independent mind, so it is plausible.
Her encounter with Tyndale is the playwright’s invention. Nonetheless, it can be argued for on dramatic grounds – much like the fictional meeting between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots in Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart. Tyndale and his followers in the woods are obviously the good guys and Anne’s risk in making contact with the reformers enhances her reputation.
Less successful is Brenton’s view that Thomas Cromwell was central to Anne’s downfall. He has their religious alliance broken because Anne realises that the chief minister is creaming off the proceeds from the dissolution of the monasteries. My interpretation is that Henry tired of her and Cromwell, usually so in control, could do nothing about it – an outcome that would not only have brought a more mature conclusion to their relationship, but also would have made more sense thematically.
In an otherwise excellent play, my one concern was this lack of a unifying theme. It might be how radical ideas get watered down (the Tyndale Bible), how radicals are their own worst enemies (Tyndale’s rejection of Anne’s marriage to Henry) or a more nebulous comment on the power of words and how easily they can be repudiated.
Yet I was very impressed by the weaving in of background information without a loss in momentum. By focusing on religion, Brenton avoids the story being dominated by standard historical fare (Henry’s need of a divorce from Catherine). Instead, he can switch to ideological battles – including an epic confrontation between Anglicans and Puritans. He even succeeds in dramatising the quibbling over a difference in meaning of words in the Bible. Top it all with great acting (particularly from Miranda Raison in the title role), superb costumes and clever use of the theatre space and you have a memorable night. I saw Brenton’s In Extremis four years ago at the Globe and liked it – but Anne Boleyn is better.
