Wolf Hall

Theater, the most popular form of mass entertainment, is a common motif in Wolf Hall. Theater is used to satirize or explain, while characters such as Chapuys and Wriothesley are frequently referred to as actors. Describing the characters as actors merely playing a role gives the reader insight into their motives and inner thoughts, even if they keep them hidden. Thomas, for example, compares Thomas More’s refusal to swear the Oath of Supremacy to a play More is forcing them all to act in. Doing so gives More power over a situation in which he is actually powerless. Thomas complains, “And what I hate most of all is that Master More sits in the audience and sniggers when I trip over my lines, for he has written all the parts” (523). In a similar way, Thomas Cromwell becomes something of a director, orchestrating the actions of the rest of the court.

The novel’s epigraph describes the types of drama (tragedy, comedy, and satire) according to Vitruvius in De Architectura, and a cast of allegorical characters in John Skelton’s Magnificence: An Interlude. Mantel gives a complete list of Wolf Hall’s characters and their roles in the

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