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

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Thomas Cromwell. Son of a blacksmith, political genius, briber, charmer, bully. A man with a deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Mike Poulton's two-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel's acclaimed novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies is a thrilling and utterly convincing portrait of a brilliant man embroiled in the lethal, high-stakes politics of the Court of Henry VIII. Wolf Hall begins in England in 1527. Henry has been King for almost twenty years and is desperate for a male heir; but Cardinal Wolsey cannot deliver the divorce he craves. Yet for a man with the right talents this crisis could be an opportunity. Thomas Cromwell is a commoner who has risen in Wolsey's household - and he will stop at nothing to secure the King's desires and advance his own ambitions. In Bring Up the Bodies, the volatile Anne Boleyn is now Queen, her career seemingly entwined with that of Cromwell. But when the King begins to fall in love with Jane Seymour, the ever-pragmatic Cromwell must negotiate within an increasingly perilous Court to satisfy Henry, defend the nation and, above all, to secure his own rise in the world. Hilary Mantel's novels are the most formidable literary achievements of recent times, both recipients of the Man Booker Prize. Adapted by Mike Poulton and directed by Jeremy Herrin, the plays were premiered to great acclaim by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2013, before transferring to the Aldwych Theatre in London's West End in May 2014. This volume contains both plays and a substantial set of notes by Hilary Mantel on each of the principal characters, offering a unique insight into the plays and an invaluable resource to any theatre companies wishing to stage them. 'The greatest modern English prose writer working today' Sir Peter Stothard, Chairman of the Man Booker Prize, on Hilary Mantel 'enthralling... splendidly entertaining and at times deeply touching' - Telegraph 'brings the intrigues and political machinations to the stage with clarity, wit and plenty of very welcome humour... a real gem of a script for audience and actors alike' - WhatsOnStage 'gripping yet darkly funny... a bold, unforgettable lesson in history and politics' - The Times 'a triumph of clarity... riveting... [these] are plays, not merely staged novels' - The Stage 'superb... the mother of all costume dramas' - Daily Mail 'a gripping piece of narrative theatre... this is history made manifest' - Guardian 'brilliant... [full of] exhilarating stage-craft and masterly narrative compression' - Independent

Hilary Mantel is the author of fourteen novels, two books of short fiction, a memoir and a book of essays, Mantel Pieces. She has been appointed DBE and a Companion of Literature, and her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She is the first woman and the first British author to win the Booker Prize twice. Her novels about the Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell (Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light) have also earned the Costa Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and (twice) the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Mike Poulton is an award-winning dramatist whose many adaptations and translations for the stage include: Robert Harris's Imperium (Royal Shakespeare Company); The York Mystery Plays (directed by Philip Breen at York Minster); Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (directed by Jeremy Herrin for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (directed by James Dacre at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton); Fortune's Fool (directed by Lucy Bailey at the Old Vic, London); Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (directed by Lucy Bailey at The Print Room, London); Schiller's Luise Miller (directed by Michael Grandage for the Donmar Warehouse, London); Anjin: The English Samurai (directed by Gregory Doran for Horipro in Tokyo); Malory's Morte d'Arthur (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Schiller's Wallenstein (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester Festival Theatre); Schiller's Mary Stuart (directed by Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea (directed by Lucy Bailey at Birmingham Repertory Theatre); Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (directed by Philip Franks at Chichester Festival Theatre, and Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen's Rosmersholm (directed by Anthony Page at the Almeida Theatre, London); Strindberg's The Father (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester); Myrmidons (directed by Simon Coury at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin); and a two-part adaptation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performed at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in the West End, and on tour of the US and Spain). His acclaimed version of Schiller's Don Carlos premiered at the Sheffield Crucible in a production directed by Michael Grandage with Derek Jacobi as King Philip II of Spain. It has since been widely performed, including by Rough Magic Theatre Company in Dublin (directed by Lynne Parker), and at the Go teborgs Stadsteater (directed by Eva Bergman). Other productions include Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Liverpool Playhouse); Turgenev's Fortune's Fool (directed by Arthur Penn at the Music Box Theater, Broadway; nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play, and winner of seven major awards including the Tony Awards for Best Actor for Alan Bates and Best Featured Actor for Frank Langella); Uncle Vanya (directed by Michael Mayer at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, Broadway; with Derek Jacobi, Roger Rees and Laura Linney); Three Sisters (directed by Bill Bryden at the Birmingham Rep; with Charles Dance); Ghosts (Theatre Royal Plymouth); The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Dance of Death and an adaptation of Euripides' Ion (all directed by David Hunt at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester). He was made an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2017.

'One hesitates to use the phrase "a marriage made in heaven" in the vicinity of Henry VIII but that would be a fair way of describing this brilliant union between the RSC and Hilary Mantel ... Such is the dramatic skill of the adaptation by Mike Poulton (with whom Mantel has worked closely) ... that, if the final instalment of the trilogy had been completed and turned into a play, I would gladly have stayed up all night' Paul Taylor, Independent 'A triumph ... gripping yet darkly funny ... a rollicking yarn that gives an eye-level idea of life at the Tudor court ... a bold, unforgettable lesson in history and politics' The Times 'Mike Poulton has done an outstanding job ... a gripping piece of narrative theatre ... characters have a three-dimensional richness ... This is history made manifest ... These plays are about class, passion, conscience, religious freedom and the danger of living in a society where power goes unchecked ... they show that novels can sometimes be made into very good plays.' Michael Billington, Guardian 'The mother of all costume dramas: a six-hour Tudor epic ... a groaning banquet of political shenanigans and deadly intrigue ... Poulton pulls off a remarkable act' Daily Mail 'Dark and gripping ... splendidly entertaining and at times deeply touching' Telegraph 'Event theatre of the highest brow ... nail-bitingly tense ... Historical drama of the highest calibre' Daily Express 'Poulton's adaptation ... triumphantly compresses almost 1,100 dense but deliciously written pages into nearly six hours of enthralling traffic on the stage.' Georgina Brown, Mail on Sunday