The New Yorker:

In the culmination of the Hilary Mantel adaptation, Mark Rylance’s Thomas Cromwell becomes a more poignant figure, weighed down by regrets.

By Inkoo Kang

In the first season of the Tudor-era drama “Wolf Hall,” Anne Boleyn’s brief queendom was undone by rumors. Just three years after she became the second of Henry VIII’s six wives, in 1533, Anne (played by Claire Foy) landed in the Tower of London following accusations of adulterous dalliances, including with her own brother. Her beheading was a ghastly sight, shocking even to the man who had done much to bring it about—the King’s adviser Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), who used threats of ruin and torture to drum up witnesses against Anne. Now, in the show’s second season, Cromwell becomes the subject of outlandish gossip himself. There’s practically nothing that his Catholic foes, still smarting at the Church of England’s rejection of papal authority, won’t believe about the man who helped engineer the schism so that Henry (Damian Lewis) could divorce his first wife as part of his ongoing quest to beget a male heir. Some say Cromwell has ensorcelled the sovereign.

Maybe the King is dead, and has been for some time: one commoner claims that the adviser has secretly taken the throne and intends to “melt all the crucifixes for cannons to fire on the poor folk.” In the North, where a rebel army prepares to march on London, the statesman has become a monster with which to scare children. Mind yourself, the little ones learn, or “he’ll jump down your throat and bite your liver.”

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