'Wolf Hall' Costume Notes: "Mirror" & "Light" Dress Henry Up & Cromwell Down

Wolf Hall has concluded, long live Wolf Hall in all its iterations! The final two episodes of the miniseries present viewers with a steep downward slope for our equally flawed and compelling protagonist as one thing after another goes wrong for him. Anna of Cleves’s arrival and all too brief marriage to Henry VIII are a nearly unmitigated disaster and weaken Cromwell at a perfect moment for the loathsome Stephen Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk to team up and bring him down.

As Cromwell’s sphere of influence and chances of survival shrink and dwindle to nothing, his king and queens carry on largely as they always have, in luxurious fabrics and colors forbidden to others.

I dislike Henry VIII as much as anyone who isn’t one of his wives. However, it is undeniably sad that a born actor was prevented from pursuing a life on the stage and instead was unleashed on the world as a self-obsessed and increasingly cruel monarch. As we saw in the ball where he performs anonymously (or so he thinks) as a Turkish dancer, for Henry, to be in motion was to be happy. Losing the famed athletic vigor of his youth so precipitously, leaving him in chronic pain with an injury that could not heal, must have been a terrible blow.