Yeah -- though that's complicated really, as you'll see in the portrayal of Katherine.
George Cavendish was gentleman-usher to Wolsey, and his biography of Wolsey was written to defend his old boss against the rather bad reputation he'd gotten (it was a Marian text, which is why he could do this; some very late editions apparently have a "now that Elizabeth is going to be queen we're totally boned" coda, but I've never seen it). It's fascinating, because there is this huge focus on all of the people and all of the stuff surrounding Wolsey -- very much a retainer's-eye view of history, and that has interesting historiographical implications. (Also we learn all about the contents of Wolsey's chamberpot during his final illness. The paper I wrote on this text, which also discussed More's Richard III, took as its jumping-off point the fact that both of these texts have privy scenes at key points in the narrative.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-05-19 05:51 am (UTC)George Cavendish was gentleman-usher to Wolsey, and his biography of Wolsey was written to defend his old boss against the rather bad reputation he'd gotten (it was a Marian text, which is why he could do this; some very late editions apparently have a "now that Elizabeth is going to be queen we're totally boned" coda, but I've never seen it). It's fascinating, because there is this huge focus on all of the people and all of the stuff surrounding Wolsey -- very much a retainer's-eye view of history, and that has interesting historiographical implications. (Also we learn all about the contents of Wolsey's chamberpot during his final illness. The paper I wrote on this text, which also discussed More's Richard III, took as its jumping-off point the fact that both of these texts have privy scenes at key points in the narrative.)