In Praise of Period Pieces

What I learned from "The Shadow of the Tower"

Ernest Board The Departure of John and Sebastian Cabot on Their First Voyage of Discovery, 1497 (1906)

My lifelong fascination with British history owes much the costume dramas of the sixties and seventies of the last century. Thus, Anne of a Thousand Days started the lad that used to be me on the reign of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots on the Elizabethan Age, and Cromwell on the life and times of Charles I, King and Martyr.

Needless to say, I now realize that the folks who made these marvelous films took many liberties with things as they actually were. (The real Henry VIII, it seems, bore little resemblance to the once-and-future husband of Elizabeth Taylor.) What such movies did do, however, was bring both people and period to life, therefore providing my mind with lively background for whatever reading, or listening, I would later do.

Proof of the power of this cognitive Velcro can be found in the gaps in my knowledge of the great events that shaped the islands whence my mother’s people came. Thus, while I know a bit about the Hundred Years War (which ended in 1453) and a good deal about the era that begin with the crowning of Henry VIII (in 1509), I can tell you little about the years between. Indeed, the most powerful image in my mind that dates from that half-century is a picture of Henry VII standing on a dock, bidding buon viaggio to John Cabot, the finder of Newfoundland.

Recently, I took advantage of a long flight to watch The Shadow of the Tower, a made-for-the-telly series about the aforementioned Henry Tudor. Though it dated from the days of the big-screen period pieces I loved so well, this programme lacked the stunning visuals of its full-bosomed contemporaries. (If it weren’t for double entendre, I’d have no entendre at all.) There were, moreover, no larger-than-life characters to compare with those portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Harris, or Alec Guinness.

Thus, I suspect that my ten-year old self would have been bored with a long parade of scenes in which “show” played second-fiddle to “tell,” the writing took precedence over the cinematography, and the chief task at hand was the slow, and subtle, development of the multi-faceted character of a protagonist who won his greatest victories in the counting house, the council chamber, and the realm of ecclesiastical politics. (At this point, I will confess that, when I started watching the series, I did not know that it would focus on Henry VII. Rather, like many of the television license holders who tuned in more than five decades ago, I thought it would have more to do with the well-known London landmark than the work, ways, and worries of a rarely mentioned monarch.)

As grown-up entertainment, The Shadow of the Tower leaves little to be desired. With the notable exception of the actor who plays an Irish prelate as a music hall paddy (imagine Barry Fitzgerald, but without his warmth or sense of irony), the stagecraft on display can only be described as superb. Better yet, the script helps viewers appreciate the many tensions and inconsistencies at work at a time no longer medieval, but as yet not fully modern. Thus, viewers get to know a character who is, at once, worldly and devout, ruthless and forgiving, generous of spirit and parsimonious of purse.

At the same time, The Shadow of the Tower provides an excellent prequel to the many splendid episodes that David Crowther has devoted to the Wars of the Roses and the quarter-century of (what I imagine to be) peace and prosperity that followed. These include both the overview provided by episodes from his free-to-all History of England feed and his members-only biography of Margaret Beaufort, which weighs in at six or so hours. (Princess Margaret was, among many other things, the mother of Henry VII.)