Jane Lindskold's Blog, page 141

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Persephone Under the Tree

From me and Jim.

From Kwahe’e, Ogapoge, Keladry, and Persephone.  (Cats)

And from Lilybett, Silver, Usagi, Serenity, and Snowdrop.  (Guinea Pigs)

The fish don’t have names… but they join us all in wishing you a celebration of lightness and brightness, whatever religious denomination to which you belong – including none at all.

The days will hold more sunlight.  May you share that sunlight with those whose lives you touch.

TT: More Lust! More Marriage! More Music!

Looking for the Wednesday Wandering?  Page back one to where I take a look at the often painful subject of Writer’s Block.  Then join me and Alan as we finish our journey through the lives and wives of Henry VIII.

JANE: Guess what?  I came across another reference to the “I’m Henry the VIII” song the other day – and this time it actually has an impact on the actual king.  I think this is a pretty good trick, given that the song wasn’t written until 1910 and Henry VIII died in 1547.

Henry VIII and Some Screen Selves

ALAN: Since I’m a science fiction fan, I’m guessing that time travel is involved here. Am I right?

JANE: Not quite… According to George MacDonald Fraser’s excellent book The Hollywood History of the World: “It is said that Alexander Korda [director of The Private Life of Henry VIII] conceived the film after hearing a cockney taxi-driver singing: “I’m ‘Enery the Eighth I am.”

(Note, the title of the song is given in a different version than I’ve encountered elsewhere, but one does not monkey with a direct quote!)

In this film, Henry was played by Charles Laughton, who presented the king as, to quote Fraser: “a deplorable caricature… a childish, selfish, posturing buffoon, a vain, ranting thing without intelligence or stature…. [a] gross, belching creature who strutted and postured and threw chicken-bones over his shoulder.”

Despite evidence to the contrary, this is the version that has stuck in the modern imagination.  Not long ago, Jim and I were unwinding to an episode of The Muppett Show and there was Zero Mostel, costumed after Henry VIII in the famous Hans Holbein portrait, doing yet another variation on the theme.

My understanding is that Henry VIII was actually an imposing and handsome man, at least in his youth.

ALAN: In his youth, Henry was a big, strong man, well over six feet tall and appropriately proportioned. He was often described as extremely handsome. He was very athletic and he excelled at hunting and jousting. In 1536, a jousting accident left him unconscious for two hours. After that his athletic activities tapered off and he began to put on weight. Late in life, he became grossly obese and required the aid of mechanical devices to move around. He was covered with pus-filled boils. An old jousting wound in his leg re-opened and proved impossible to treat, becoming severely ulcerated. He must have been in a lot of pain.

JANE: Oh, gross…  But you’re right, he must have hurt all the time.

ALAN: It is reported that Henry’s diet consisted largely of roast meat, and modern analysis of his symptoms suggests that he was suffering from scurvy and probably Type II diabetes as well since he almost never ate any fruit or vegetables.

JANE: That’s an interesting insight.  Probably explained his inability to heal as well.

Now, having disposed of movie-inspired myth, let’s get back to lust and marriage.

Henry rushed into marriages one, two, three, and four (or null, as the count may go).  I suppose he rushed into number five (or four) as well.

ALAN: Actually, not.  For a time, it seemed that Henry had given up on marriage. But three years later, when he was 49 years old, he married Catherine Howard who had been one of Anne Boleyn’s ladies-in-waiting.

JANE: Wait a minute.  This makes for his second Catherine.  We’ve already had two Annes.  Now we have two Catherines.  I’m beginning to feel much better about my chronic confusion regarding which wife was which and fit in where.

So how did Henry feel about Catherine II?

ALAN: Henry was delighted with his new wife and showered her with gifts of land and jewellery. However, Catherine was less than delighted with her new husband and soon embarked on an adulterous affair with a courtier called Thomas Culpeper. She also appointed an old lover called Francis Dereham as her secretary.

JANE: Well, given the condition you relate Henry being in, I can’t say I blame her.

I was right to anticipate lust and marriage.  At last, Henry VIII was getting some well-deserved payback at last.  This is starting to sound like a soap opera!

ALAN: Rumours of Catherine’s pre-marital affair reached the ear of Thomas Cranmer. Dereham was arrested and, under torture, admitted the affair. However, he denied having relations with the queen after her marriage, claiming that he had been supplanted in her affections by Culpeper.  Culpeper and the queen herself were arrested and interrogated.

JANE: How did Henry react to this?

ALAN: He flew into a rage and then went hunting. Culpeper, Dereham and Catherine were all executed.

JANE: While Henry was hunting?

ALAN: No – the hunt didn’t last that long! There was still the formality of a trial to be gone through, and these things take time. But the result was never in doubt.

JANE: Do you know whether they were beheaded or hanged and drawn and quartered?  The method seems to be some indication of Henry’s mood.

ALAN: Dereham and Culpeper were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Catherine was sentenced to be beheaded. Both men pleaded for mercy. Culpeper, who had been a close friend of Henry’s in his youth, had his sentence commuted to a simple beheading. Dereham’s sentence was not commuted and was carried out in full.

JANE: Ah, that regal mercy…

Okay.  Who’s the next victim?  I mean wife!

ALAN: In 1543, at the age of 52, Henry married his last wife, Catherine Parr.

JANE (with a cry of anguish): Not another Catherine!

ALAN: I fear so – we can’t argue with the facts of history.

By all accounts, they were happy together. Catherine was very close to all three of Henry’s children and personally helped with the education of Edward, Henry’s son by Jane Seymour, and Elizabeth, his daughter by Anne Boleyn. She persuaded Henry to pass an Act of Succession in 1543 which clearly set out the status of the children, bringing both Elizabeth and Mary (his daughter by Catherine of Aragon) legally into the line of succession to the throne. Edward, Mary and Elizabeth were first, second and third in the line of succession.

JANE: Very neat and tidy.  I guess Catherine was pretty certain she wasn’t going to supply any children.  Henry had a son by this point, so he didn’t need to worry…

Well, actually he did need to worry.  First though, let’s resolve the current generation.  What happened to the generous-spirited Catherine?  Did she survive her husband?

ALAN: She survived him by a year. After Henry died, she married an old flame, Sir Thomas Seymour. He was  actually the brother of Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife. Small world, isn’t it?

Anyway, she soon became pregnant, but died in childbirth in 1548. She was only 35 years old…

JANE: So if Catherine strongly suspected that she wouldn’t have children with Henry (as her part in setting up the succession seems to indicate), it must have been because of Henry.  I wonder if he was beyond sexual intercourse by that time.

One more question.  Early on, you said that Henry had either six wives or four.  The marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled.  Who was the other unlucky wife?

ALAN: That depends…

Henry married six women. That is incontrovertible. But whether or not they were all his wives is quite a different question.

If you are Catholic, then Henry had four legal marriages: Catherine of Aragon, Jane Seymour, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. If you are a Protestant, he also had four legal marriages: Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr.

As you noted, the marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled. An annulment is not a divorce – it means that, legally speaking, the marriage simply never happened. Henry actually annulled his marriages to Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard prior to their executions, so it can also be argued that, from his point of view, he really only had two wives: Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr!

And I’m sure a legal / theological brain could come up with other equally valid uxorial combinations…

JANE: Wait…  Wouldn’t he still have viewed his marriage to Catherine of Aragon as valid?  I’m not sure how even the Protestants could have ruled this one out.

ALAN: No, not at all. Remember, it was Henry’s attempt to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled that triggered his break with Rome in the first place.  The pope refused his request, so the Catholics continued to consider the marriage to be legal. But in order to be able to marry Anne Boleyn, Henry had the marriage declared null and void by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. So as far as the Protestants were concerned, his marriage to Catherine of Aragon never actually happened at all!

JANE: Well that certainly straightens that out!  What an incredibly twisted tale.  It doesn’t end with the Henries, of course.  In fact, despite all the care he took, the succession of Henry VIII is worth looking at…   Oh…  And we never did get to those monasteries.  But it’s the holiday season.  They may need to wait.

Writer’s Block

A few weeks ago, I invited readers of these Wanderings to let me know if there was anything they’d like to hear me wander on about.  Several people sent suggestions. Oddly, all were sent to my e-mail, rather than to the blog site.  Feel free to write me at jane2@janelindskold.com if you have something you’d like me to write about, but you’re too shy to post it here.

One of the topics I was asked about was Writer’s Block.  That particular issue caught my attention this week because, while I haven’t been blocked, I’ve had so many competing demands on my time that I found it hard to get back into my current novel (the sequel to Artemis Awakening) after I finished the short story I mentioned a couple weeks ago.  I finally gave myself permission to get the packages out, do the Christmas cards, plan holiday menus, and, basically, clear the decks so I could be a writer again.

My Salvation

So…  Here’ s the question.  “You always hear about ‘writer’s block.’  What do you do when you get ‘stuck’ creatively?    Does taking a break get you back on track?  How often does it happen?  What’s the worst you’ve ever experienced?”

Okay.  Let’s start with defining writer’s block, because there are a lot of misunderstandings about what it is.  Writer’s block is completely different from being “stuck” – that is, uncertain about where to take a story or how to resolve a problem in the plot or how to develop a character.  Pauses in the development of a story are something that every writer faces.  I talked some about how I deal with these hitches in the writing process in “Walking Away From It” (WW 8-11-10).

Writer’s block is completely different.  Writer’s block is a crippling inability to write.  I’m a disciplined and determined writer.  If I hadn’t encountered writer’s block personally, I think I’d be inclined to believe that it’s just an excuse not to write.  However, I’ve had it.  I know it’s real.  And really terrible.

Here’s what happened…  Many years ago, when I was teaching at Lynchburg College in Virginia, I also was working hard on getting established as a fiction writer.  Every day, no matter how demanding my day job, I’d make time to write.  When I finished a story and polished it, I’d send it out to one of the SF/F magazines.  Then I’d put it out of my mind and start something new.  When a story came back with a rejection, I’d go over it, then send it out again.  (This was in the late 1980s or early 1990s, so neither disposable manuscripts nor electronic submissions and correspondence had become routine.)

There came a day when I had five short stories out.   I was feeling hopeful that one of them would get published.  I came home from work, unlocked the tiny mailbox in my apartment house entryway, and found every single story I’d sent out smashed into the box.  Each had a form rejection.  I’m not sure that anyone had even looked at them.

My gut lurched, but I didn’t realize how hard that torrent of rejection had hit me until I sat down that evening to write.  I’d been working on a story.  I curled up with my pen and clipboard (I always wrote rough drafts long-hand) and my hand began to shake.  I couldn’t write a single word.   The story had vanished.  All I could envision was more rejection.  Maybe the couple of stories I’d already sold had been flukes.  Maybe I didn’t have what it took.

I gave myself that night off and graded papers instead.  The next night, I sat down to write.  Again, I started shaking.  Night after night, this went on.   It was horrible.  I could write letters.  I could write material for my classes.  I could write non-fiction.  But writing a story was impossible.

(I’ve got to pause here.  My heart’s racing with remembered fear and pain.)

What saved me was that my desire to tell a story was stronger than my fear that no one but me would ever read it.  I was teaching a course on mythology and one of my students asked, “Dr. Lindskold, I just don’t get this Orpheus guy.  What is it he does?”  I considered, then I said, “Well, Shannon, did you ever hear the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin when you were a kid?  Orpheus was like that, except that it wasn’t just children or rats that were charmed by his music, it was everything,.  Even rocks or trees would try to get closer to him when he began to sing.”

And as the discussion continued, as we moved on to the eventual tragedy of Orpheus’s life, a small part of my brain that had been too long dormant came alive.  “What if,” it said, “Orpheus didn’t die?  What if he escaped the maenads?  What if he somehow lived to become the Pied Piper?”

That night, I took out pen and paper for the first time in forever.  I wasn’t writing, I assured myself.  I was just making a few notes.  Every page I filled, I slid to the back of my clipboard unread, unreviewed.  After all, I wasn’t writing.  Eventually, I had more than the clip could hold.  I put these in a folder and stuffed the folder on a shelf.  I kept writing until I had the longest thing I’d ever written.  Somewhere along the way, the block was beaten.

If this were a movie, I would then sell the novel immediately, win awards, and thumb my nose at those who had rejected me.  What happened in reality was that, even though this was a long piece, it wasn’t long enough.  When I sent it out, it got rejected.  However, eventually I expanded it, adding a second part to the story.  It would come out many years later as my third published novel, The Pipes of Orpheus.

I hope that answers the questions.  To me, writer’s block is different than simply getting “stuck.”  Since it has its roots in something more complex, simply taking a break won’t be enough to fix the problem.  It’s called “writer’s block,” not “writer’s stuck” for a reason, and being blocked is hell for a writer.  To answer the one remaining question, it’s only happened once to me.  I hope and pray it never happens again.

Have any of you been blocked?  How did you deal with it?  How do you deal with being stuck?  I’m sure we’d all enjoy hearing how you get back into sync with your Muse.

TT: Maligned Anne, Sickening Jane, Enter Another Anne

Looking for the Wednesday Wandering?  Page back one for news about interviews, audio books, and deep insights into the behind the scenes discussions of editors and authors.  Then come back and join me and Alan as we wend deeper into the maze of the life and wives of Henry VIII.

JANE: We left Shakespeare’s play without discussing the climax. However, so the play doesn’t provide a spoiler for history, why don’t you go first?

The Play’s Not Quite the Thing

ALAN: Anne Boleyn bore Henry a daughter, Elizabeth, but she failed to provide him with a son. She miscarried at least one male child and Henry, who was desperate for a son and heir, became increasingly distant from her. He took a mistress, Jane Seymour.

Then, probably in close collaboration with his Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell, he had five men, including Anne’s own brother, arrested and accused of treasonable adultery by having sexual relations with Anne. She too was arrested and tried on charges of adultery and incest. The evidence was thin and unconvincing. Nevertheless all were found guilty, all were sentenced to death and all were executed.

JANE: That’s incredibly ugly.  It’s also probably one of the reasons that Shakespeare chose to end his play where he did, with the christening of the infant princess, Elizabeth, and a few grandiloquent speeches.

Anne’s fall would have made great drama (and has, in fact, made for great movies in modern times), but there’s no way that Shakespeare could have dealt with the material without impugning either King Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn – the parents of the late and much revered Queen Elizabeth I.  Once again, Shakespeare stayed on the safe side of the political line.

So, how did Anne die?

ALAN: Anne was sentenced “to be burned alive or beheaded, at the king’s pleasure”. Henry’s pleasure was that she should be decapitated. Normally this would be carried out with an axe, but for some reason Henry declared that she should be beheaded by sword. None of the English executioners knew how to do that and so a hasty search was mounted to find a suitably qualified man in Europe. A man called Rombaud, from Calais, was appointed to the task.

JANE: Ah…  Enter the suspicious Frenchman.

ALAN: Anne was escorted to the scaffold by two hundred Yeomen of the Guard and numerous councillors, aldermen and officials. She was blindfolded with a linen handkerchief and then Rombaud withdrew his sword from beneath the straw where he had hidden it to avoid upsetting Anne with the sight of it. He severed her head with one stroke.

JANE: Shakespeare the dramatist (rather than the man careful for his head) probably would have loved to do that scene.   One could do a lot with the kindness of a French executioner and the cruelty of an English king.

ALAN: There’s a music hall song about the ghost of Anne Boleyn:

With her head tucked

Underneath her arm

She w-a-a-a-lks

The Bloody Tower…

JANE:  Lovely!  British music halls clearly benefited from the depredations of Henry VIII. So, did Henry VIII wait a respectable amount of time before taking Wife Number Three?

ALAN: Not in the least. One day after Anne’s execution, Henry announced his engagement to Jane Seymour. Ten days later they were married. A year later, Jane gave birth to a son, but she caught an infection and died a few days after the birth. Henry again found himself in need of a wife…

JANE: Well, he didn’t divorce or execute her.  I suppose that’s good.  Who was next?  Oh…  And for context, how old was Henry at this time?

ALAN: Henry was 46 years old when Jane died. Time was not on his side. Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister, suggested that an alliance with the largely Lutheran Low Countries of Germany and Holland would be politically advantageous in the event of a Catholic attack on England. The Duke of Cleves, though nominally Catholic, had many Protestant sympathies.  He had a daughter called Anne. Perhaps she would make an ideal wife…

JANE: So, did Anne of Cleves make an ideal wife, as Cromwell had promised Henry?

ALAN: Not really. Henry had never met Anne and he was anxious to ensure that she would be attractive enough to make a good queen. The painter Hans Holbein was sent to paint her portrait and, on the basis of the picture, and the advice of his courtiers, Henry agreed to the marriage.

JANE: Attractiveness as the basis for a good queen?  When he wanted sons?  That’s twisted.  I hope he got what he deserved.

ALAN: Oh indeed he did! When Anne arrived in England, Henry was somewhat shocked to find that her appearance did not really match the flattering portrait that Holbein had brought back. Indeed, it is said that Henry referred to her as “a fat Flanders mare.”

Despite Henry’s misgivings, the marriage went ahead. But the wedding night was not a success. Henry confessed to Cromwell that he found Anne so unattractive that he completely failed to consummate the marriage.

JANE: Well…  That would be a problem, since he wanted another son.  Still, I think our Henry is sounding increasingly shallow.

ALAN: He was obviously thinking with his other brain, the one that most men think with. It wasn’t giving him good advice, and Henry quickly reconsidered the advisability of his marriage. Anne was commanded to leave the court after a few short months, and Henry sought an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation. Anne quite happily corroborated Henry’s account – doubtless she was just as anxious as Henry to remove herself from a marriage that was now completely untenable.

JANE: And that might have gotten her murdered, given that Henry might have had Katherine poisoned, definitely had Anne Boleyn executed, and had executed his once close friend Thomas More.  I’d want out, too.

What happened to Anne afterwards?

ALAN: Henry was anxious to appear generous. After all, he didn’t want to upset his allies too much! He gave Anne a very generous settlement which included Hever Castle, the former home of the Boleyns. Anne and Henry actually became very good friends, and she was referred to as the king’s beloved sister. She often appeared at court, and Henry decreed that she must be given precedence over all the women of England except for his own wife and daughters.

She died aged 41 in 1557, probably of cancer, having outlived Henry himself and all of his other wives.

JANE: She definitely came off better than any of his wives to that point.  Earlier you mentioned that Henry’s wives can be counted as either six or four.  I’m guessing that Anne of Cleves is one of the ones who can be left off the count because of the annulment.  Is that right?

ALAN: Yes, that’s right. Legally speaking, an annulment means that the marriage never took place at all!

JANE: So we have a middle-aged king with a son and heir, but no “spare,” only a couple of problematic daughters.  (Problematic because of how the marriages to their mothers ended.)  Things are looking uncomfortable.

ALAN: Ah…  But it’s not over yet! Henry VIII still had two more wives to marry and some monasteries to dissolve. How about we talk about that next time?

Hear Me, See Me

Be reassured!  My ego isn’t going nuts.  Jim and I were listening to the album Tommy, by The Who, this weekend.  When I sat down to write about a couple of neat new things going on related to my work, but outside of the realm of print, I couldn’t resist the echo.

Small Rodents aka Guinea Pigs

The first “hear me, see me” is to announce that the rest of the Snack Reads You Tube interviews with Josh Gentry are now available.   Josh is the fellow who brought out my short story, “Hamlet Revisited,” as well as my collaboration with Fred Saberhagen, “Servant of Death.”

You can find them at http://www.snackreads.com/category/interviews/jane-lindskold/

The second “hear me” is a new development I’m really excited about.   Artemis Awakening will be produced as an audio book from Audible.  This is the first time one of my novels has been done as an audio book.  As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m a serious audio-book junkie, so this is nearly as neat as having my first book come out.

Right now I’m listening to a biography of Winston Churchill’s early life.  Before that I listened to David McGinnis Gill’s excellent, if very odd, Soul Enchilada.  Each of these productions has featured a certain amount of interpretation on the part of the reader.  The Churchill reader does an imitation of Churchill’s distinctive accent when reading quotations from Churchill’s letters or speeches.  The reader for Soul Enchilada does a phenomenal job of providing the widely varied accents of not only the El Paso, Texas, teenagers who are the main characters, but also of various devils, one of whom speaks (sometimes) with a British accent.

Now that I’m going to have the chance to hear one of my own novels read by a professional, I find myself wondering what it’s going to sound like.  At this year’s Bubonicon, GOH’s Brent Weeks and Tim Powers were asked how they felt about the audio productions of their works.  Tim Powers said he never listened to his stories read because he didn’t want to hear them interpreted.  (Of course, he also admitted he doesn’t do readings because going to readings bores him.)

Brent Weeks told a very funny story about how one of his tough guy characters was given a “surfer dude” accent – something that drove those familiar with the series crazy.  Ironically, when the audio book company responded to protests and changed the reader, listeners familiar with the first interpretation started complaining.

I’ve never listened to someone read one of my stories.  A good friend gave me the audio book production of  the anthology In Fire Forged, which includes my novella, “Ruthless.”  I haven’t screwed up my courage to listen to it yet, but I probably should.  I wasn’t asked anything about pronunciations of names and some of the space ships are named for my cats, who have very odd names indeed.

(I named the ships after the cats as placeholders, in case David Weber needed to put in the proper nomenclature for the Honorverse.  Turns out there wasn’t a set nomenclature, so now the Honorverse has ships named after my cats.  I wonder what the reader made of names like Kwahe’e, Ogapoge, and Pryderi?)

I’ve heard good things about Audible productions, so maybe someone will get in touch if they have any questions for me about Artemis Awakening.  Really, though, as long as the reading is clear, easy on the ear, and not too insane in interpretation, I think I’ll be happy.

What else?  I had an experience this weekend that I found oddly amusing.  My agent, Kay McCauley, was in the area and threw a large literary party to which she invited not only her clients (myself, George R.R. Martin, Melinda Snodgrass, Ian Tregillis, Vic Milan, and others), but also some luminaries of the publishing world who were in town.  These included editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books.

I’ve worked with Patrick on and off for years.  (His wife, Teresa, was my editor for the Firekeeper series, Child of a Rainless Year, and The Buried Pyramid.)  However, for various reasons, we hadn’t met in person for many years.   As a literature student, I’d often read about high profile writers’ groups, such as the Inklings (which included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien) or the Algonquin Round Table (aka “The Vicious Circle).  I wondered what sorts of topics were discussed.

Well, now I can let you in on the secret.  Take a high level editor and a prolific author.  Put them together and they’ll discuss…  small rodents.  Seriously.  Patrick and I had a lovely time talking about guinea pigs and hamsters, the variations in their personalities, and surprising intelligence.  He even showed me videos of his and Teresa’s current co-resident, the hamster, Sophie.

Oh…  We discussed other things, too, even literary things, but I think we had the most fun with rodents.  And fun’s important.   In fact, Tom Doherty of Tor Books, who was also at the party, summed it up best over dinner: “I have the best job in the world.  I get to read for a living.”

I’ll agree with Tom.  I get to read too… and write!

TT: Global Fire, Fortunate Beer, and (T.) More

Looking for the Wednesday Wandering?  Page back one and take a closer look at the chaos that is a professional writer’s life.  Then join me and Alan as we delve into sex, scandal, fire, and saints.

JANE: Last time I got so caught up in our discussion of historical realities that I didn’t get to mention that this early period of Henry’s marriages is what Shakespeare focused on for his play.  It isn’t his best play, but it’s worth at least mentioning.

Fire Extinguishers

ALAN: And why not? Everybody loves stories involving sex and scandal. The formula continues to be popular even today!

JANE: Sadly, Shakespeare didn’t do a great job, even with such fine material.  The play is so weak that to this day there is argument as to whether or not Shakespeare even wrote The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth.  However, there are a few things that aren’t in doubt at all – one is when the play was written.  Often there is a considerable amount of wiggle room but this is the play that was being performed when a historical catastrophe took place.  Want to make a guess on which one?

ALAN: Well it can’t be the Spanish Armada since that had long been destroyed by that time. So I’m at a bit of a loss. What was it?

JANE: It was the burning down of the Globe Theatre, which occurred on June 29, 1613.  The fire was directly tied to the singular spectacle with which this play was put on.  We tend to think of special effects as a modern obsession, but they’re as old as stagecraft.  In this particular case, a short cannon was fired off as one of the effects.  Apparently, one of the wads of paper with which the cannon was loaded landed in the theater’s thatch.  The smoke was ignored as “but an idle smoke” (to quote eyewitness Sir Henry Wotton) and, by the time anyone realized that there was a fire, it had spread “consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very grounds.”

ALAN: Given the way people crowded into theatres in those days, that must have been quite terrifying. Was anyone hurt?

JANE: I’m glad you asked.  Wotton touches on this specifically, noting: “only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with a bottle of ale.”

ALAN: Beer! Such a versatile fluid.

JANE: Returning to a more serious look at the play (well, as serious as I care to get), the date can also be fixed by the likelihood that the play was written to be performed to commemorate the wedding of King James I’s daughter, Elizabeth, to the Elector Palatine, a leader of the continental Protestants.  This would explain the play’s focus on the rise of Protestantism, the importance of the character of Archbishop Cranmer (who as you noted last time had Lutheran sympathies), and the grand finale, the christening of a certain…

ALAN: Wait!  Before we get to that, there’s someone really important we shouldn’t forget.

JANE: Go for it.

ALAN: You mentioned him a week or so ago, the famous SF writer and Catholic saint, Sir Thomas More.

More was a friend of Henry and a skilled theologian who had helped Henry prepare the arguments supporting his divorce from Catherine. But as Henry moved further and further away from Rome’s authority, More found himself less and less able to support the king’s position.

More was appointed Chancellor in 1529, and he used his position to campaign actively against the progress of the Reformation which he increasingly came to regard as heretical. He spied on suspected Protestants, paying particular attention to publishers who might be printing Lutheran books. He arrested many people who were found possessing, transporting or selling the books of the Reformation. Six people were burned at the stake for heresy during More’s time as Chancellor.

JANE: I’ve always thought it really weird – and completely confusing – that two of the king Henries had close friends called Thomas who initially helped them with their quarrels with the church, then later actively campaigned against them.  The other one is I’m thinking of Henry II with his Thomas Becket.

ALAN: You wouldn’t believe it if you read it in a novel!

Things came to a head when More refused to take an oath rejecting the pope’s jurisdiction over the church in favour of the King’s. His power and reputation, as well as his long friendship with Henry kept him safe from prosecution, for the time being, but the writing was on the wall and eventually he resigned the Chancellorship.

He continued to campaign against Henry’s Reformation statutes and refused again to take the Oath of Supremacy when it became law in 1534. Not even Henry could save him this time, and perhaps he didn’t want to, for by now it was clear that More’s opinions could do the king nothing but harm.

In 1535, Sir Thomas More was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. As an act of mercy for his old friend, Henry commuted this sentence to decapitation.

JANE: Some mercy!

Moving back to Shakespeare for a moment, it’s interesting to note that, although there is evidence that the subtitle of Shakespeare’s play may have been “All is True,” this play takes the most liberties with the flow of historical events of any of the Bard’s English history plays.  The action covers events that happened over twenty years, but compresses them and sometimes even shifts the sequence.

ALAN: Just like the modern movies that claim to be “based on a true story.”  There’s really nothing new under the sun, is there?

JANE: You are so right!

The final spectacle of a play filled with spectacles (not eyeglasses, special effects) is the christening of Henry’s infant daughter with his new queen, Anne Bullen… but I am letting drama get ahead of history.  Let’s move on to this lady – better known by another spelling of her name – next time.

Chaos: aka, the Professional Writer’s Life

On the night of November 24th, I had a dream that provided the seed for a short story.  This was good.  The deadline for the project was the end of November.

Taking Care of Business

No.  I hadn’t been procrastinating.  Far from it.  I’d been trying to come up with an idea for this story for quite a while.  Problem was, I was also deeply immersed in writing the sequel to Artemis Awakening.  That was moving along so well, I was reluctant to stop.

I’ve heard of writers who can work on more than one project at the same time but, that’s not me – at least not in the formative writing stage.  I have managed to, for example, review the copy-edited manuscript for one project while writing new material for another.  However, most of the time, I’ve found that I work most effectively one project at a time.  If something time-sensitive comes up, I need to put aside what I’m working on and shift over completely.

So, since AA2 was moving along very well, the last thing I wanted to do was stop.  That’s probably why the Muse kept withholding inspiration for the short story.  I’d touch base with the project’s editor, promise I wasn’t going to bow out at the last minute, and then say to myself, “But I have a few more weeks and the novel is going so well…”

Then,  on November 22nd, everything went haywire.  I’d given my talk on “The Mythic Impulse” at UNM the night before and felt great.  The next morning,  I woke up with a nasty sore throat that mutated into a raging cold within a few hours.  I dosed myself with cough stuff and lozenges, then got back to work.

Demands on my attention were already attenuating my intentions.  On the 19th, I’d received (with plenty of lead time for once) the page proofs for Artemis Awakening.  They weren’t due until December 13th, so I figured I’d have time to write the short story, then get to the proofs.  However, I couldn’t come up with a short story idea.

That’s when the Muse stepped in.  As I’ve said before, I’m an intuitive plotter.  From the dream I had, I only remember one image and one bit of information.  I was (and was watching) a dark-haired man who was kneeling in front of a large chest in a somewhat crowded room.  He was pulling out various things, holding them to the light, and inspecting them.  I remember specifically a strand of rough gemstone beads – amber, I think.  I knew without any explanation that this man was going through the belongings of a recently deceased wizard, looking for dangerous items.

When I woke up, I knew I had my story.  But I also knew I was going to need to shift my priorities around.  AA2 was going to need to be slid to the back burner.  Frustrating, since I was so close to the end I could almost see it, but probably a good idea, because if I rushed it, I was going to do a lousy job.  I’d already dipped into the page proofs for Artemis Awakening when I’d started getting sick, since I could focus in and review while sipping tea.  Now I put those aside as well.

Monday afternoon, I typed an opening paragraph or so for the short story, beginning with the line: “The worst thing about taking out sorcerers is the clean-up afterwards.”  Tuesday and Wednesday, I wrote during every available moment.  This is not as easy as it sounds, since Thursday was Thanksgiving, and Jim and I were expecting people over.  This meant trips to the store and making sure I had bread dried for stuffing and…

By Wednesday night, I had a rough draft.  Thursday (Thanksgiving) morning, I went over the draft again, filling in and polishing.  Friday, I read the draft out loud to Jim, catching an astonishing number of typos.  Overall, I felt pretty good about the story.  After adding my changes, I e-mailed a draft off to my friend, Paul, who often does me the kindness of proofreading.   Then I went to work again on the page proofs for Artemis Awakening.

Paul sent me back the file over the weekend.  When I looked at his notes on Monday, I realized he’d found an astonishing number of typos and missing commas and suchlike – proving once again that a writer is the worst person to review her or his own stuff, especially when the story is fresh and time is tight.

Monday is my busiest day of the week for a lot of reasons so, much as I wanted to, I couldn’t address Paul’s notes right off.  Still, I had every reason to believe I’d be able to get the story in by deadline.

Ah, hah!  The careful ones among you will already have noticed that I had missed that end of November deadline.  What I didn’t mention was that during my correspondence with the project’s editor, he had told me I could have to the end of the year if I needed.  I chose not to delay.  The page proofs for Artemis Awakening were going to pull me out of my work on AA2 anyhow.  I had the inspiration for my story.  Time to get both done.

So that story and page proofs are what I’m up to this week.  Next week, maybe I’ll be able to merge myself back into AA2.  Of course, Christmas is coming.  I’m having guests…  But I have two deadlines in March and February is a short month…  Looks as if chaos won’t be going away any time soon.

TT: Henry VIII — Radio Hero

Happy Thanksgiving!  Looking for something to do while you digest that enormous meal?  If so, the first of the interviews I did with Josh Gentry of Snack Reads is up on YouTube.   Snack Reads has published two of my shorts stories: the humorous “Hamlet Revisited” and the action adventure “Servant of Death” (co-written with Fred Saberhagen).  You can find the interview at http://youtu.be/yJUddPrC0-s.  You can find the stories at www.snackreads.com.

Another way to work off all the food is to join me and Alan as we bop our way into the history of the last of the Henries…  Henry VIII he am!

Now Playing: Henry VIII

JANE: As we’ve worked our way through the Henries, a pop song has been jingling in the back of my mind.  In broad Cockney accents (at least I think it’s Cockney), a man happily sings “I’m Henry VIII I am, I am…”

Such is the fate of one of England’s most famous kings in the ears of Americans.

The song in question is, of course, the 1965 release by Herman’s Hermits of “I’m Henry VIII I Am.”

ALAN: And the song reverses the actual historical situation. In the song Henry, the singer, explains that he has just married the widow next door. She’s had seven previous husbands, all of whom were called Henry. So he is Henry VIII!

JANE: Before we move onto the actual king, I found a cool piece of trivia about the song.  I’d always thought it was original to 1965, but it was actually written in 1910 by R.P. Weston and Fred Murray.  Nor did it languish in obscurity.  It was the signature tune of the music hall star, Henry Champion.

Isn’t that cool?

ALAN: Absolutely it is! In the early 1950s, in England, there was a radio programme called The Billy Cotton Band Show. The band used to perform all the old music hall songs (particularly the Cockney ones, for they were themselves Cockneys). That was where I first heard the Henry VIII song. I was somewhat bemused when, a few years later, a Rock and Roll group of the time (Joe Brown and the Bruvvers) recorded it. I’d never thought of it as a rock song. Mind you, Joe Brown was also a Cockney.

The later recording by Herman’s Hermits was even more weird because Peter Noone, the lead singer, was a northern lad from Manchester (damn! Another Lancastrian) with no Cockney connections whatsoever.

But be that as it may, in real life, of course, it was Henry VIII who married multiple times. And he only had six wives (or, perhaps, four wives since two of his marriages were arguably illegal).

JANE: And those marriages, legal and illegal, were the basis for a good part of Henry VIII’s fame – or notoriety.  Before we get to that, I’d like to fit this Henry into the puzzle of Henries.  He was the son of Henry VII, but wasn’t his father’s original heir, if I remember correctly.  That would have been his older brother, Arthur.

ALAN: Indeed so – Arthur was the first born son of Henry VII and was the heir to the throne. In order to cement a political alliance with Spain, Henry VII arranged a marriage for Arthur with Catherine of Aragon. Shortly after their marriage both Arthur and Catherine fell ill with a respiratory infection. Catherine recovered from the illness, but Arthur died.

Arthur’s death placed Henry under an obligation to return the very large dowry that had been paid and also threatened the Spanish alliance. He solved both these problems by hurriedly betrothing Catherine to his second son (also called Henry), though the marriage did not actually take place until after Henry VII died. Henry VIII succeeded his father and, declaring that the marriage had been his father’s dying wish, married Catherine in June 1509, two months after becoming king.

JANE: Several completely flippant thoughts here…  One, obviously the Divine Forces thought it was a bad idea for England to have a modern King Arthur.  The other is that the same Forces wanted another King Henry for us to write about, so they got rid of the competition…

And, sadly now, my image of the courting of Arthur and Catherine now includes a pile of handkerchiefs and lots of sneezing…

And, by the by, Shakespeare spells it “Katherine.”  He is obviously not to be trusted where spelling is concerned.

Please, continue the tale and save me from myself.

ALAN: For a time all seemed well. But Henry became increasingly annoyed that Catherine could not give him a son. She had several children, including two sons, but except for one daughter, who she called Mary, none of them lived for more than a few hours.

JANE: That’s very sad. Even in an age when infant mortality was much higher, the strain had to have been terrible.

ALAN: Very much so – and Catherine would have felt it more than most because it was her duty to provide the king with an heir.

Meanwhile, Henry had fallen in lust with Anne Boleyn, a stunningly beautiful lady in the Queen’s entourage. Anne point blank refused to become Henry’s mistress, so he desperately needed to get rid of Catherine in order to entice Anne legitimately into his bed. He petitioned the pope for an annulment claiming that in marrying his brother’s wife he had acted contrary to the instructions in Leviticus 20;21:

And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.

JANE: Interestingly, this is a similar logic to that which makes Prince Hamlet so horribly upset that his mother has married her husband’s brother.  Of course, children weren’t a part of the equation for Claudius and Gertrude, but they would have been very important to Henry VIII and Catherine.  Did the pope agree?

ALAN: No, the pope wasn’t having any of this and Henry began the process that would eventually separate the Church of England from the Church of Rome.  This was the start of the reformation.

JANE: Of course, religious reform – or at least bucking the authority of Rome – was in the air all over Europe at this time.  Henry was following in a trend that already had supporters in his own nation.  How did he work it in his own land?

ALAN: Ever since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517, there had been growing dissatisfaction with the power and influence of Rome. There was no doubt that change was coming. The Catholic Church responded viciously, and the delightfully named Diet of Worms declared Luther a heretic and outlaw. Nevertheless, Lutheran ideas continued to spread rapidly and many churches began holding Lutheran services rather than the more traditional Catholic services.

Henry was actually a very devout Catholic at the time. He published a spirited defence of Catholicism and Pope Leo X appointed him Defender of the Faith, a title that is still awarded to the monarch today (though Pope Paul III later rescinded it).

JANE: All this makes it harder to understand why Henry VIII broke away from Rome – although also more clear as to why Rome wanted a choke chain on Henry.  You can’t have a Defender of the Faith who keeps getting divorced.

ALAN: It’s difficult to say exactly what caused Henry finally to break with Rome. It was a gradual process. A series of statutes began to redefine the relationship between the King and the Pope with serious penalties up to and including death for accepting papal authority over the authority of the king. These statutes culminated in 1534 with an act that appointed the king to be the supreme head of the Church of England. An Oath of Supremacy was introduced that acknowledged this, and a refusal to take the oath was deemed to be an act of high treason. The separation from Rome was complete.

But certainly it all started with the Pope’s refusal to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine which made Henry question the doctrine of papal infallibility. Once that comes into question, everything else follows logically.

JANE: I agree.  So what happened after the break?

ALAN: Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer, who had Lutheran sympathies, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Anne and Henry married in a secret ceremony. Anne fell pregnant almost immediately and a second, more public wedding took place.  Cranmer declared Henry’s marriage to Catherine null and void and recognised the validity of his marriage to Anne. Catherine was stripped of all her titles and was exiled from the court. Two years later she died (there were rumours that she was poisoned). Henry did not attend her funeral.

JANE: So the arrival of the great Protestant Reformation in England and everything that came after was really due to Henry’s mid-life crisis?

ALAN: There are probably more sophisticated theological and political arguments that can be brought to bear, but they smack somewhat of casuistry. When you strip it down to its essentials, the Church of England was just a cunning plan that finally allowed Henry to have his wicked way with Anne.

JANE: I suspect you are being a bit flippant, but this is often the popular view.  Very good.  I notice we’ve only gotten through two of Henry’s six (or four) wives.  There are still some very interesting developments that happened related to the events of this time – including a failure of special effects and the prominence of a science fiction writer whose works remain influential in the genre to this day.  Shall we pick up with these next time?

The Great Beeswax Experiment

Before I start, cool news. The first of the interviews I did with Josh Gentry of Snack Reads is up on YouTube.   Snack Reads has published two of my shorts stories: the humorous “Hamlet Revisited” and the action adventure “Servant of Death” (co-written with Fred Saberhagen).  You can find the interview at http://youtu.be/yJUddPrC0-s.  You can find the stories at www.snackreads.com.

Let me know what you think!  And, now, let’s wander into sweet territory.

Tools for the Experiment

One of the queries I received a few weeks asked: “I’d like to know more about the kinds of research you do – the depth of the research and where you start.  I think a lot of people feel that since it’s Fantasy or SF, that you ‘just make it up.’”

I’ve certainly touched on how I research before, but it has been a while.  (“Find Out What You Know” WW 3-07-12; “Facts or Fiction?” WW 6-27-12).  In any case, this week I have something pretty neat to talk about that touches on a type of research that has nothing to do with books or on-line sources.  It’s my adventures performing The Great Beeswax Experiments.

I’m currently writing the sequel to Artemis Awakening.  There comes a point where my characters need a material that is flexible, firm, easily molded, and not likely to become brittle or dry out.  The level of technology is relatively low, so the synthetic putties and caulks we take for granted aren’t available.

Adding to the challenge, my characters are camping out in the wilderness.  Visiting a store or shop is not an option.  The characters would not have been likely to pack anything like this along.  This world has some very odd elements, but magic is not one of them, so conjuring what they need out of thin air isn’t an option.

Clay becomes brittle when it dries out.  Since flexibility is needed, baking the clay won’t help.  Fabric, even packed tightly wouldn’t do the job.  Resin (as is naturally extruded by many evergreens) is too sticky.  After some consideration, I decided the beeswax might serve my needs.  I’d even established earlier that my characters had gathered some honey.  Tah-dah!

Or maybe not, “tah-dah.”   I started wondering how one worked with something so completely and utterly sticky.

I consulted my friend Rowan Derrick, whose family keeps bees, and asked her how honey was typically separated from the comb.  She gave me a nicely detailed briefing, including mentioning that honeybees produce more than one type of wax.  Propolis wax is used as a sort of glue for sealing the hive.  It is darker in color and harder than the regular wax.

The wax we typically think of as “beeswax” is from the comb proper.  The walls of the cells are very light and thin.  Rowan explained that there are two ways of separating the wax from the honey.  The better method uses draining buckets equipped with a series of sieves.  The sieves filter the honey, eliminating “waxy bits,” parts of bees, and leaving the honey more free of pollen.

The faster, not-so-good method is to warm the honey slightly so that the honey and wax separate.  The wax then floats to the top and hardens as it cools.  This, of course, leaves in bee parts and other residue in the wax and honey (depending on what floats and what doesn’t).

Well, as I mentioned above, my characters are camping.  I didn’t figure they would have brought buckets and sieves with them so, despite the drawbacks, if they were separating the honey from the comb, they’d use the warming method.  Rowan very kindly offered to give me some wax that had been heated and molded, but that otherwise wasn’t overly filtered or processed.  The piece she brought me was about two and a half inches by two inches by about an inch thick.  It was also very, very hard.

No  problem, thought I.  Body heat will warm it.  I put the block of wax into a plastic bag and sat on it.  I sat on it for a long while.  It got warmer, but it didn’t get appreciably softer.

Not so good, thought I.  Maybe body heat isn’t enough.  Maybe if I set it near something warm, it will soften without melting.  (Melted wax would not be good for my needs.)

I was cooking a very large kettle of soup.  I put the block of wax on the metal top of the stove, about a finger’s width from the kettle.  When I went back later, I dreaded finding a puddle of wax.  What I did not expect was to find the wax was as hard as ever.

I spoke about this with Rowan and she commented that the heating process does tend to make the wax harder when it cools.  However, wax right from the comb remains soft.  The problem is getting rid of the honey.  I went off to the grocery store and found a brand of honey sold with a piece of honeycomb inside.  I happily purchased it.

At home, I fished out the bit of honeycomb and dropped it into a small bowl so any loose honey could run off.  I did this several times, getting deliciously sticky in the process.  When I felt I had gotten rid of as much honey as possible this way, I considered what to try next.  Since the individual cells of the honeycomb are designed to keep out water, just dropping the whole thing in a bowl of water to rinse wouldn’t work.

Mashing the lot with a fork, then rinsing might work, but it might also cause the wax to harden, especially if the water was very hot.  Eventually, I decided on a very primitive technological separation method.  From eating honeycomb, I knew that the temperature of a human mouth is not enough to cause the wax to harden.  With the edge of a fork, I cut off a piece of honey comb and stuck it in my mouth.  Even with much of the honey drained off, it was very sweet.

Gently and patiently, I chewed until I had extracted the honey from the wax and was left with a small wad of wax.  I repeated this until I had finished the comb, ending up with a chunk of wax about the size of a marble.  I let it cool, then tried working it.  Cold, the wax was almost as hard as a rock, but body heat was enough to warm it to a workable texture very quickly.   At first the wax was a bit grainy and inclined to break, but eventually (probably as I worked the last of the impurities out), it became flexible and able to be shaped.

I then experimented with shaping what I needed.  (No.  I’m not going to tell you what that was.  It could be a major spoiler for a thoughtful reader!)  Making what I wanted wasn’t quite as simple as I had envisioned, but after some trial and error I thought I could justify my characters’ actions.

Thus endeth the Great Beeswax Experiments.   Could I have just made it up?  Possibly, but I think care regarding little details makes for a much more real-seeming book.  As I’ve said before, when you’re asking your readers to accept the wildly unlikely (like telepathy or faster than light travel), it’s only fair to make sure that other elements are solidly grounded in reality.

And I do think it was one of my more tasty bits of research!

TT: Henry VII, Worth Skipping?

Looking for the Wednesday Wandering?  Page back one for a few thoughts on how to gear up to write convincing villains.  Then join me and Alan as we take a look not only at King Henry VII, but also why one writer (me!) thinks Shakespeare may have considered this particular Henry not good material for a play.

Also, I’d like to invite you to join me tonight at UNM for a talk on “The Mythic Impulse: Why Fantasy Speaks to Our Souls.”  Details are available on my Facebook page and under Appearances on my website.

Now…  Back to the Henries!

JANE: We’re back to a king Shakespeare chose to skip. After everything we discussed regarding how Henry VII came to the throne – up to and including possibly sanctioning child murder – I find myself wondering if Shakespeare chose to skip Henry VII because he didn’t like him.

Weighing the Options

ALAN: There are some things about Henry VII that would lend themselves well to drama, so I’m mildly surprised that Shakespeare ignored him.

JANE:  Me, too, although for another reason.  Henry VII was the founder of the dynasty which was reigning in England at the time the Bard was writing, so I’d think Shakespeare would have enjoyed writing a play about him.  Such a play would be certain to please his patrons. Is it possible that once Henry VII got on the throne he was simply boring?

ALAN: Well, he wasn’t hugely exciting in himself. But on the other hand…

JANE: Go on…You provide the events.  I’ll provide the possibilities for drama.

ALAN: Henry took the throne by defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. He was the last person to take the English throne by force of arms (and, interestingly, Richard III was the last English king to die on the battlefield).

Henry’s claim to the throne was rather tenuous – he was vaguely related to the Plantagenets through his mother, who was illegitimately descended from John of Gaunt. But there’s no arguing with success, and Henry had the biggest army.

JANE: That seems more than “rather” tenuous. Can you remind me who John of Gaunt was?

ALAN: John of Gaunt was the first Duke of Lancaster. Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI were all descended (legitimately) from him, so Henry VII was keen to claim the same relationship. However, because Henry’s descent was illegitimate, and also because it was through the female line, his claim was regarded as dubious, and was much frowned upon.

JANE: Also, I’ve encountered material that claims that, although Henry VII claimed to be Welsh, he was actually French. Is there any grounding for that?

ALAN: No – I don’t think that holds water. Henry was part of a long established family on the Isle of Anglesey who claimed descent from the Welsh hero Cadwallader, a legendary Welsh (and possibly also British) king in the seventh century. Henry displayed Cadwallader’s standard, a red dragon, on his victory parade through London after the battle of Bosworth.

JANE: That must have been both lovely and dramatic.

ALAN: One of the first things Henry did was to strengthen his claim to the throne by marrying Elizabeth of York who was (here we go again) the daughter of Edward IV and niece of Richard III. The marriage united the houses of Lancaster and York, and therefore Henry symbolised it by adopting a family emblem known as the Tudor Rose. It depicts a red rose with a white rose at its centre.

JANE: Okay…  This is very good stuff.  Unfortunately for the Bard, Shakespeare had already used much of it at the end of his play about Richard III.  The groundlings would have been certain to throw rotting vegetables.

Was Henry and Elizabeth’s marriage just a cynical marriage of convenience?  Maybe we could get a play out of that…

ALAN: I don’t think so. When his wife died, many years later, Henry VII was devastated by grief and was quite inconsolable. A contemporary report says that he “privily departed to a solitary place, and would that no man should resort unto him.”

JANE: Hmm…  This might make an element in a drama, especially if Henry’s courtiers were trying to force him to remarry.  Any possibilities?  Did Henry VII have an heir and a spare?

ALAN: Indeed he did. Henry had four children with Elizabeth. Their first son Arthur unfortunately died from some kind of respiratory infection in his mid-teens. But the second son, also called Henry, would go on to become probably the most famous king that England ever had…

They also had two daughters, Margaret and Mary.

JANE: Darn!  That ruins possibilities for the stage.

Did Henry VII do anything with more dramatic potential?

ALAN: The country was almost bankrupt and Henry desperately needed to increase his tax take, so as to bring the exchequer back into the black. He appointed Archbishop John Morton to the post of chancellor and charged him with this responsibility. Morton came up with a uniquely clever mechanism for collecting taxes. Any man living modestly within his means must obviously be saving money and could therefore afford to pay more tax. Additionally, any man living extravagantly must equally obviously be rich and could therefore afford to pay more tax. This reasoning was known as Morton’s Fork and was, not surprisingly, very controversial. Nevertheless it was applied ruthlessly. Nobody escaped the taxman and the treasury grew.

JANE: Nice Catch 22 situation for the Crown, but lousy material for a dramatist.  Neither Queen Elizabeth I nor King James I would have liked a play that reminded all levels of the audience that the founder of the Tudor dynasty was responsible for very creative tax increases.

If I were Shakespeare, I’d be getting desperate.  Please!  Give me something to work with…

ALAN: The princes in the tower continued to haunt Henry. There were two Yorkist rebellions against him and both of them used figureheads to legitimise their claims.

JANE (rubbing hands together): Ah!  This has potential.  Go on!

ALAN: The first figurehead, Lambert Simnel, was originally intended to be presented as the younger of the two princes. However, the rather amateurish and inept conspirators later changed their minds and instead presented him as the Earl of Warwick, a cousin of the two princes. Henry defeated the rebels and Simnel himself was pardoned. Henry gave him a job as a spit turner in the royal kitchens.

JANE: Hmm…  Good on some levels, but dicey on others.  Any reminder that not only Richard III but also Henry VII would have benefited from the deaths of the Princes in the Tower would have undermined all of Thomas More’s careful character assassination – as well as gutting the theme of one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays.  Still, the mercy angle is good…  Tell me about the second rebellion.

ALAN: That was a much more serious affair. Perkin Warbeck claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the two vanished princes, and raised an army on the basis of that claim. Again, Henry defeated the conspirators, but he was less merciful this time and Perkin Warbeck was hanged.

JANE: Shoot!  That would undo the mercy angle which would make Henry’s handling of the prior rebellion sympathetic.  I’m beginning to understand why Shakespeare avoided writing a play about Henry VII.  It’s also worth noting that, as his career progressed, Shakespeare did move away from historical dramas, focusing more on the tragedies and comedies and the later romances.

Shakespeare never entirely gave up on historical dramas.  Late in life, he may or may not have returned to British history with a King Henry that even an average American knows something about: Henry VIII of the many wives, Church of England, pop music, and…

Wait!  Let’s save that for next time!