Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: RSC Stage Adaptation - Revised Edition

WOLF HALL

and BRING UP THE BODIES

Adapted for the stage by

Mike Poulton

From the novels by

Hilary Mantel

With an introduction by Mike Poultonand character notes by Hilary Mantel

NICK HERN BOOKS

HarperCollinsPublishers

www.nickhernbooks.co.ukwww.4thestate.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Introduction by Mike Poulton

Notes on Characters by Hilary Mantel

Characters

Dedication

Wolf Hall

Bring Up the Bodies

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

These adaptations of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were originally commissioned by Playful Productions and were first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 11 December 2013. The productions transferred to the Aldwych Theatre, London, on 1 May 2014, presented by Matthew Byam Shaw, Nia Janis and Nick Salmon for Playful Productions and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Bartner/Tulchin Productions and Georgia Gatti for Playful Productions. The cast was as follows:

Adapting Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

Mike Poulton

Over three years ago I was asked if it might be possible to adapt Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall for the stage. At the time of asking, Bring Up the Bodies did not exist. I’d read Wolf Hall and been gripped by it – from the first page to the last – page 653. It’s an extraordinary read. To call it a historical novel diminishes it – for me it’s a deeply serious piece of literature that happens to be set in and around the Court of Henry VIII. I can think of no other contemporary work of period fiction that comes near it. It’s that rare thing – a novel that richly deserved its fame and the accolades and prizes heaped upon it. I knew that Hilary was at work on a sequel and I was counting the days. I read Wolf Hall again. I said that I thought it could be made into a play if the right adapter could be found. ‘Might you be the right adapter?’ I was asked.

I had never worked with a living author. Earlier collaborators, Schiller, Chekhov, Turgenev, Chaucer, Malory, were all long dead. Hilary is very much alive, and I knew that for the project to work she and I would have to get on together, and agree about how best to engineer the transformation. I imagined it would be like taking apart a Rolls-Royce and reassembling the parts as a light aircraft. After three years together I can say that our collaboration has proved to be, for me at any rate, the most rewarding part of the experience. I have learned so much. Hilary has been generous and committed in every way with advice, with time, with invention, with challenges – all coming out of a deep knowledge of her subject, and easy familiarity with the complex minds of the characters she has created. Fortunately, she also has a love and instinctive understanding of the workings of theatre. Above all it’s been fun – a lot of fun. Her attitude from the first was that she had brought Cromwell and company to life, and I was free, within the limits of the story and the requirements of historical accuracy, to move them about on the stage as I saw fit. Though on many occasions she has had to pull me out of holes into which I’ve dug myself. I’ve never had that sort of help from Friedrich von Schiller.

So what were the problems we faced at the outset? I felt that, in terms of staging – in order to create a workable dramatic framework – we had to get to the death of Anne Boleyn. If we could do that, we’d have a strong tragic arc – the ascendancy of Anne followed by her rapid decline. If Thomas Cromwell’s rise from obscurity was to be the story of the play, the Court of Henry VIII must be the stage upon which he acts, and the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn the engine that drives the action. I knew Hilary was working on a sequel to