Now, this play and the previous one marked another new experience for me: marathon play watching. Bring Up The Bodies is a continuation of Wolf Hall and adds up altogether to six hours of theater in one day. It’s surprisingly exhausting to sit in a theater all day, and yet, I’m glad we saw both, because one is incomplete without the other. Yes, it was a lot of history thrown at us at once, but it was a complicated period of time, and it beats reading the textbook. I think what separates Bring Up the Bodies from Wolf Hall was the darkness of it. From the opening scene of the play, seeing the ghosts of the dead roaming around and King Henry VIII (Nathanial Parker) shooting his arrow after the just-disappeared Anne Boleyn (Lydia Leonard), we know this play is going to be about hunting and death. I was expecting Anne’s downfall, but what I didn’t see coming was the many that would fall with her. This shows in part a gruesome period in history, but also about the personal struggle of one man, Thomas Cromwell (Ben Miles). His path takes a darker turn even from the difficult events of the first play. Still, I don’t see this as Cromwell becoming bad or evil, or even particularly corrupted in a political sense, but him giving into a desire for revenge. Anne was gotten rid of by other means, but Cromwell made sure that the men who disgraced the Cardinal’s memory would suffer, by naming them the Queen’s lovers. That point is the climactic point that Cromwell uses his position of power for his own means, even if it is for the memory of a beloved friend.
In most cases, though, Cromwell is surprisingly restrained in his use of his unprecedented power, especially in a time when political corruption was so abundant. He had the ear of the king of England and could sway him in any direction he wanted, but aside from the glaring exception of his leading the execution of the four men, he tried to do right by the country and the people. He promised to protect the princess Mary, he encouraged the building of city roads and the creation of jobs, and he gave pensions to the displaced monks and nuns, among other things. I’m not saying Cromwell was a hero, that his good deeds nullify his bad ones. But I do think he acted with conscience.
An American Student in London 