’Wolf Hall’--PBS Tonight at 10

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Jim Dwyer, Thomas Cromwell, A Man for All Centuries; A right-hand man, well versed in political skulduggery. New York Times, Apr 4, 2015.
www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/sunda ... -all-centuries.html

Note:
(a) "On Sunday, PBS’s 'Masterpiece' begins its broadcast of 'Wolf Hall,' a six-episode series on Cromwell, the chief minister under Henry VIII."

Wolf Hall. Masterpiece, PBS, Apr 4, 2015, starting 10 pm EDT
www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/programs/wolf-hall/
("A historical drama for a modern audience, Wolf Hall tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance (Twelfth Night)—a blacksmith’s son who rises from the ashes of personal disaster, and deftly picks his way through a court where ‘man is wolf to man.’ Damian Lewis (Homeland) is King Henry VIII, haunted by his brother’s premature death and obsessed with protecting the Tudor dynasty by securing his succession with a male heir to the throne")
(i) Homo homini lupus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_homini_lupus
(Homo homini lupus est; First attested in Plautus' Asinaria [qv] ((195 BC, "lupus est homo homini"))

Latin English dictionary
* homo (noun masculine; table: "hominī" is the dative [qv] case): "a human being, a man (in the sense of human being)"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homo
* lupus (noun masculine; plural: lupī): "a wolf"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lupus
* est (v; third-person singular present active indicative of sum): "is"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/est
(ii) Henry VIII's eldest brother was Arthur, Prince of Wales
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur,_Prince_of_Wales
(1486-1592)

Quote:

"Soon after his marriage to Catherine [of Aragon; daughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon] in 1501, the couple took up residence at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, where Arthur died six months later of an unknown ailment. Catherine would later firmly state that the marriage had not been consummated.

"On March 1502, Arthur and Catherine were [in Wales] afflicted by an unknown illness, 'a malign vapour which proceeded from the air.'  While Catherine recovered, Arthur died on Apr 2, 1502 at Ludlow[, England], six months short of his sixteenth birthday.

* When Arthur died, the future Henry VIII was ten years old--and Catherine, 15 and three months.

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(b) "Hilary Mantel’s brilliant novels 'Wolf Hall' and 'Bring up the Bodies.'"
(i) Hilary Mantel (1952- ; English)
(ii) Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall. London: Fourth Estate (an imprint of HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corp), 2009.
(iii) Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies. Fourth Estate/ Henry Holt, 2012.  

(This is a sequel to Wolf Hall. The bodies are those of Anne Boleyn, her brother and a few others.)

(c) "Thomas Cromwell strode the same historical landscape as Thomas More, the hero of 'A Man for All Seasons,' who would not yield his conscience for the king and stood on principle at the cost of his life. 'I die His Majesty’s good servant, but God’s first,' declares More, as rendered by Robert Bolt, author of the drama and screenplay."
(i) The verb "strode" is past tense of "stride."
(ii) A Man for All Seasons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons
(a play by Robert Bolt [1924--1995; English]; first performed in London on July 1, 1960; section 1 Title)
(iii) "'I die His Majesty’s good servant, but God’s first." Playwright Bolt wrote that. It is not found in history. For the context, see

A Man for All Seasons (1966); Quotes. IMDB, undated
www.imdb.com/title/tt0060665/quotes

Read the section under the heading--[last lines]--, which were the last several lines of the 1966 film of the same title.

(c) "Thomas Cromwell strode the same historical landscape as Thomas More, the hero of 'A Man for All Seasons,' who would not yield his conscience for the king and stood on principle at the cost of his life. 'I die His Majesty’s good servant, but God’s first,' declares More, as rendered by Robert Bolt, author of the drama and screenplay."
(i) The verb "strode" is past tense of "stride."
(ii) A Man for All Seasons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons
(a play by Robert Bolt [1924--1995; English]; first performed in London on July 1, 1960; section 1 Title)
(iii) "'I die His Majesty’s good servant, but God’s first." Playwright Bolt wrote that. It is not found in history. For the context, see

A Man for All Seasons (1966); Quotes. IMDB, undated
www.imdb.com/title/tt0060665/quotes

Read the section under the heading--[last lines]--which were the last several lines of the 1966 film of the same title.

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(d) “As Ms Mantel draws it, Cromwell, with a soldier’s aversion to war, seeks equilibrium for England, and the zealotry of the hairshirt-wearing More threatens the common weal.”
(i) For hairshirt, see cilice
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilice
(section 1 Etymology)
(ii)
(A) commonweal (n): "archaic :  commonwealth [qv]"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commonweal
(B) weal (n; akin to Old English wel well)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weal

(e) "Dirty things done dirty, clean things done dirty — people who get stuff done, somehow or other"

somehow or other--also
somehow or another. The Thesaurus, undated
www.thesaurus.com/browse/somehow+or+another
(also "come what may; one way or another")
(f) "Says Henry: 'I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents.' ”

Dwyer the reviewer is quoting the 2009 fiction Wolf Hall, not history books.

(g) “On the day of one important vote, Cromwell instructs those in favor of a new act to stand on the right side of the chamber, and those against it on the left. When the opponents realize that Cromwell has exposed them with this maneuver, they shuffle across the aisle to join the backers of Henry, who is watching and ‘gives his councillor a grim nod of approval,’ Ms Mantel writes. * * * Cromwell gets a law passed that says the king, not the pope, is head of the church in England, and Henry therefore can essentially auto-annul his marriage to Wife 1.0 (Catherine of Aragon).”
(i) First Succession Act
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Succession_Act

was passed on Mar 23, 1534.
(ii) Probably the parting in the parliament is also a fiction. I fail to find it (parting) in the Web. And transcript of the proceeding, recorded in Statutes of the Realm, iii. 471, did not mention the parting.

(h)
(i) “Cromwell advises a dinner guest: ‘It is not the stars that make us, Dr Butts, it is circumstance and necessità, the choices we make under pressure’”

Italian English dictionary
* necessità (noun feminine): "necessity, need"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/necessità
(ii) “Cromwell gins up a case of adultery and incest against Wife 2.0 (Anne Boleyn)”

gin
* (n; from Anglo-French, short for engin--more at engine): "any of various tools or mechanical devices: as
a :  a snare or trap for game
b :  cotton gin"
* (vt): "snare"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gin
(iii) Among others, Paul Scofield, Charlton Heston and Frank Langella have portrayed More in ‘A Man for All Seasons’ since 1960.”

The three (Scofield et al) were/ are actors (Langella is alive).