Mary Boleyn in Film and TV

Above: spurned mistress (left) or harlot (right)?
Mary Boleyn in film. 

The elder sister of England's famous sixteenth-century queen, Anne Boleyn, Mary Boleyn was a somewhat obscure figure until the publication of Philippa Gregory's bestselling The Other Boleyn Girl (2001). Two film adaptations were made of that novel: a 2003 BBC production starring Natascha McElhone as Mary, and a 2008 Hollywood film starring Natalie Portman as Anne and Scarlett Johansson as Mary. But Mary has been portrayed in other film and TV productions - this article considers the differing portrayals of Anne's somewhat obscure elder sister, who was, very briefly, mistress of Henry VIII sometime in the early 1520s.

In the 1969 costume drama Anne of the Thousand Days, directed by Charles Jarrott and produced by Hal B. Wallis, Valerie Gearon (above, right) depicted Mary as a bitter, heartbroken and discarded mistress of the king of England who must bear the shame of bearing his illegitimate child. She offers blunt advice to her younger, glamorous sister Anne: "Lock up your heart, Nan". She cautions her that the king will use her and ultimately "walk away". This media portrayal of Mary is interesting, for unlike modern adaptations exemplified in Gregory's novel, there is no sibling rivalry between the two sisters, nor is Mary bland, dull and soft. Anne does, however, characterise her sister as "foolish" and appears to feel she has behaved stupidly with the king. Mary herself appears sensitive and intelligent, but deeply upset and depressed because of the king's ill treatment of her. 

Other TV series and films about the Tudor period and Henry VIII's six wives, in particular, did not feature Mary, including the 1970 BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII starring Keith Michell and Dorothy Tutin. By contrast, the publication of Gregory's bestselling novel led to unprecedented public interest in Mary Boleyn. The 2003 BBC adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl portrayed Natascha McElhone as Mary and Jodhi May as her younger sister Anne. The film differed notably from the novel: Mary was elder than her sister in the film, for example. McElhone depicted Mary as sensible, alluring and loyal to her family. Ultimately, her sense and loyalty ensure that she survives. Her sister Anne, by contrast, is headstrong, giddy and foolish. Anne is extremely out of her depth as queen and publicly shames Henry at court. She decides to commit incest with George, encouraged by Mary, as a means of ensuring Anne's survival, but it ultimately fails. In contrast to both the novel and the 2008 film adaptation, the sisters' relationship with one another is not bitter, cruel or bittersweet. Instead, they appear to love one another.


Above: The Other Boleyn Girl (2003), starring Natascha McElhone as Mary (left) and Jodhi May as Anne (right).

The 2008 film adaptation, starring Natalie Portman as Anne and Scarlett Johansson as Mary, was similar in some respects to the novel but wildly differed from it in other areas. Similarly to the film, the sisters have a complex, turbulent relationship with one another: their love and closeness for one another is expressed at the beginning, when Mary confides in Anne on her wedding night; and at the end, in a highly fictional scene where Mary intercedes for Anne and visits her in prison (this never took place). As with the novel, Anne is scheming, cruel and driven by her own desires; whereas Mary is bland, unambitious, and sweet: in short, the ideal sixteenth-century woman. But the film departs from the novel's storylines in that the king falls for Anne first in the film, but rejects her when she humiliates him and seeks solace in Mary's company; Anne is banished to France in disgrace for her illicit marriage to Henry Percy (another fiction); Anne schemes to marry Henry and steal him from Mary out of revenge for her sister revealing Anne's marriage to Henry Percy (another fiction); and in short, the film is far more about Anne than it is about Mary. Mary, portrayed by Johansson, is insipid, uninspiring and, ultimately, forgettable. It is the hysterical, ambitious, unhinged Anne who lingers in our mind after the film's end. Unlike Valerie Gearon's resolute portrayal in Anne of the Thousand Days, Johansson's Mary emphasises her sexual appeal, but ultimately indicates that Mary is devoid of charisma, wit or ambition.


Above: Scarlett Johansson offered a dull, bland Mary Boleyn in 2008 film The Other Boleyn Girl.

In the BBC and Showtime TV series The Tudors (2007-10), Perdita Weeks played Mary Boleyn, the charismatic, pretty and sensual sister of Anne. In this adaptation, it is unclear which of the Boleyn sisters is older. Unlike The Other Boleyn Girl, in this adaptation the sisters enjoy a warm, cooperative and close relationship with one another. Mary's sexuality is again emphasised: she early on is negatively described as the French king's mare and she informs Henry VIII that she learned how to perform oral sex while at the French court. Soon after, she becomes Henry's mistress. Historians, such as Alison Weir, now doubt whether Mary really was the 'great and infamous whore' in France she has traditionally been depicted as. Viewers, while responding to Mary as a warm, sensual and good-hearted girl, are early on positioned to view her sister Anne as more mysterious, deeper, and ultimately more interesting than Mary. Later, when Anne is queen, Mary marries for love and visits her sister pregnant. She is banished in disgrace, and that is the last we see of her. This series focused less on the Boleyn girls' supposed rivalry with one another and more on Mary's short-livedness as Henry's mistress. In this sense, it can be seen as more historically accurate than The Other Boleyn Girl.

Mary Boleyn has not featured extensively in film and TV, unlike her tragic sister, but the few portrayals we do have of her are fascinating in indicating contemporary attitudes to women's sexuality: Mary's sexuality is her defining quality. After brief success in becoming the king's mistress, it humiliates and ultimately undoes her in Anne of the Thousand Days. In both adaptations of The Other Boleyn Girl, Mary's sexuality is bland and dull: it is safe, and ensures her survival. Anne's sexuality, by contrast, is fatally tied to her destructive ambition: it ultimately consumes and destroys her. In The Tudors, Mary's sexuality is neither dull nor bland, but instead depicted as an inherent aspect of her nature and encouraged at the licentious French court. Weeks' portrayal is ultimately more interesting, and more sympathetic, than that offered in The Other Boleyn Girl.

The Lady Jane Grey Construct

Above: Paul Delaroche's The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833).

I recently finished reading Professor Eric Ives' Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (2011), and in the final chapter Ives describes the cultural presentation of England's thirteen-day queen in literature, film, art, and plays since her untimely death in 1554. As Ives notes, Lady Jane Grey ceased to exist as a person, but instead became a construct, to be manipulated and utilised by individuals to suit their own ends, reflecting the political, social and cultural contexts in which they lived. As a result, the portrayal of Jane in the Elizabethan period differed greatly to that offered by the Victorians, which in turn differs to how she is represented today.

A brief history of Lady Jane's life: Jane was the eldest daughter of Henry Grey, marquis of Dorset (1517-1554), and his wife Frances Brandon (1517-1559), who in turn was the eldest daughter of Mary Tudor, younger sister of Henry VIII. As such, Jane was the grand-niece of Henry VIII. She was likely born in the spring of 1537 at Bradgate in Leicestershire, and she had two younger sisters, Katherine (born 1540) and Mary (born 1545). Her education was, famously, renowned; she was a talented linguist, a cultivated humanist and, above all, a devout Protestant. Her childhood was spent in the household of the queen dowager Katherine Parr, last consort of Henry VIII, where she was educated alongside Princess Elizabeth Tudor. Jane, despite her prominent position as a descendant of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, was quite obscure, and it was only in the summer of 1553, aged sixteen, that she became well-known in the kingdom at large.

Edward VI, aware that he was dying in 1553, masterminded the 'deuise for the succession' in which he barred both his half-sisters Mary (daughter of Katherine of Aragon) and Elizabeth (daughter of Anne Boleyn) from inheriting the English crown, by virtue of their status as bastards. As such, he designated the crown to pass to the heirs of Henry's younger sister Mary Tudor, meaning Lady Jane Grey and any sons she bore with her husband Guildford Dudley. When the king died in July 1553, Jane was proclaimed queen of England. However, she was defeated by Mary Tudor, the dead king's eldest half-sister. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, Jane was tried and found guilty of high treason alongside her husband, her father-in-law, her brothers-in-law and Archbishop Cranmer of Canterbury. In February 1554, following the failure of Wyatt's Rebellion, she was executed on Tower Green, some months shy of her seventeenth birthday.

From the moment of her death, Jane became an enigma, to be manipulated and represented in a manner of ways by artists, writers, playwrights and film-makers. The late sixteenth century celebrated her as a Protestant martyr, who had died for her faith in the cruelty of the Catholic Mary Tudor's reign. A continuing theme which developed in the Victorian age saw the celebration of Jane's virtues, and she was viewed as the embodiment of goodness and godliness, an example to Christian children in both Britain and the USA.




Jane the scholar was a prominent theme in many works. Again, she was used as an example to the young to work hard at their studies. Jane's formidable academic achievements were continually highlighted and celebrated, viewed as something to look up to and work towards.

Above all however, perhaps, the portrayal of Jane Grey which most people understand is that of Jane the victim. Beheaded at only sixteen, in the flower of her youth, Delaroche's 1833 painting (at the top, above) conveys a sense of a youthful girl, mercilessly killed for crimes she has not committed, an 'innocent traitor' (the title of Alison Weir's 2006 novel). Again, she stood in contrast to the cruelty and brutality of Mary Tudor, their different faiths meaning that they stood poles apart. Jane was viewed as a victim of corrupt and scheming men, including members of her family, who ruthlessly desired to attain greater power for themselves. Although Delaroche's painting was inaccurate in many respects (the costume, the setting, for example), it is an extremely famous portrayal of the thirteen-days queen and the brutality of her death.



Above: Helena Bonham Carter as Jane in the 1985 film Lady Jane.

If early modernists celebrated Jane as a Protestant martyr, and the Victorians viewed her as a manipulated and bullied child who, nonetheless, was the epitome of virtue, then it seems credible to suggest that Jane has been represented as a defiant, opinionated and stubborn young woman in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. The 1985 film Lady Jane, starring Helena Bonham Carter, emphasised Jane's commitment to Protestantism but also portrayed her in a more sensual manner through focusing on her marriage to Guildford Dudley. Historians, however, have been quick to point out Jane's stubborn and determined qualities - in Ives' view she was a woman of 'fierce personal integrity'.

Because of her young age at death, and because of the obscurity of much of her life, we know very little about Lady Jane Grey as a person. She is an enigma. Consequently, when discussing her, we focus on Lady Jane the construct, what she embodies for us, how she is represented in our own times - and before. It might be worth considering how she will be represented and manipulated in different mediums in the future.