The Tudors: A Review

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I’ll admit this right from the get-go: I am a huge fan of The Tudors. When Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) flashes his eyes at someone who has displeased him, I quake for that person. Lady Mary (Sarah Bolger) is perfectly cast as the deeply-religious, Catholic-girl-with-the-potential-to-Go-Wild, and the way Thomas Culpepper (Torrance Coombs) throws smoldering looks at the dippy Catherine Howard (Tamzin Merchant) makes my heart thump with horror, knowing they’re going to be found out and chopped into pieces.

I finished the last episode just before the holidays–it’s the perfect show to watch while addressing Christmas cards.

I am sure there’s a significant portion of the cyber-universe dedicated to all the historical inaccuracies of the series but I don’t care. I loved it anyway. Yes, I wish there had been a bit more squalor and filth. In the entire series I saw just one brief moment where a servant plucked something—presumably a louse—out of Henry’s hair (Henry batted him away in irritation), and had one quick glimpse of a castle privy, but only because that’s where Catherine Howard seemed to prefer her meetings—cough—with Thomas Culpepper. So be it. They chose not to dwell. Not how I would have directed it, but maybe that’s why I wasn’t asked to direct it.

But I do feel compelled to lodge two complaints. The first is, there’s altogether too much healthy food on the groaning banquet boards. Henry (Jonathan R-M) is forever plucking an apple from a pile of fruit on the table and taking a moody bite. Clearly the showmakers decided not to try to age and fatten Henry, which I’m fine with (sort of), but the ulcerous leg sore that afflicted the real Henry throughout his adult life was probably severely exacerbated by scurvy. English aristocracy reviled fruits and vegetables (peasant food) and subsisted on a very meat-intensive diet. So it would have been more realistic to have shown Jonathan Rhys-Meyers taking a moody bite from a nearby leg of lamb. Whatever.

And second—the bodice ripping was altogether too . . . easily accomplished. This is a G-rated blog, so let’s just say, if one were to want to help another out of her dress in 16th-century England, it can’t have happened the way the show depicted it: to whit, a Fonzie-like flick of the wrist and whoosh—the dress tumbled to the floor. It would have taken a great deal more effort than that.

Sixteenth-century farthingales were effectively like wearing a barrel around the waist. The dress was draped down over the sides and had to be pinned, laboriously, around the edges of the drum and then down to the hemline. The process took hours, and required dozens of pins. Tudor court women were basically walking pincushions. It’s why women curtsy by dropping straight down (whereas men bow forward at the waist). You’re less likely to be stabbed in multiple places if you simply crumple, rather than try to bend. (And we’re not even going to address the boned bodices–not yet called corsets but basically corsets–that prevented bending over of any sort.) They also had the sleeves to contend with—sleeves could be mixed and matched according to the chosen bodice and skirt; your maid either sewed or pinned your sleeves on you every day. Sleeves didn’t cascade down pearly shoulders the way they so readily do on the show.

Ann of Denmark by JohnJohn de Critz the Elder via Wikimedia Commons

Shakespeare’s audience knew about the pins. When Desdemona bids her maid Emilia: “Come, unpin me,” she’s telling her to get psyched for a longish evening of girl-talk about Othello.

Théodore Chassériau "Desdemona" via Wikimedia Commons

Well, so, what of it. The producers of The Tudors no doubt felt it might drag down the scene to show the beautifully-dressed ladies with heaving bosoms get painstakingly unpinned from their dresses and sleeves. But I felt it merited mention.

Pin, the Tale

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The safety pin was invented in 1849 by Walter Hunt. He sold the patent for fifteen dollars.

Crime Did Pay

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vinaigrette

Back in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and even nineteenth centuries, wealthy Europeans carried around small silver boxes called “vinaigrettes,” which were used to store sponges soaked in vinegar. They held these vinaigrettes—some of which had perforated lids—under their noses to mask the smells of garbage and sewage when they passed through the often-filthy streets.

Vinegar—and wine—have long been believed to do more than mask smells. From the time of ancient Greece, people have drunk wine to ward off infectious diseases. “Four Thieves Vinegar” (or vinaigre des quatre voleurs), has long been believed to have special disease-preventing powers. You can still find it in France. According to this article in the British Medical Journal, the garlicky vinegar originated back in 1721, when four condemned criminals were released from prison during an epidemic of plague in Marseilles. They were enlisted to dig graves for the highly infectious corpses. According to the story, while so many gravediggers succumbed to plague, the four thieves managed to remain healthy, despite prolonged exposure to the dead and dying. In exchange for their release, they agreed to reveal their secret: they drank a daily concoction of garlic mashed into vinegar.

It’s interesting to speculate what might have saved them. The garlic could have repelled the fleas that vectored the plague. But the vinegar may also have helped kill off the plague bacillus.

 

top photo: By Nathaniel Mills & Sons, silversmiths, Birmingham (http://www.leopardantiques.com) via Wikimedia Commons
bottom photo: By Olybrius (Own work) www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Blood Simple

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To slake their thirst during times when water was scarce, nomadic horsemen in Central Asia slit open a vein on their horse’s neck and drank its blood.

 

Bones of Contention

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As many as 30,000 forced laborers died from malaria, dysentery, and exhaustion while building St. Petersburg, which became the Russian capital in 1712. It became known as “the city built upon human bones.”

Reel Bugs: Swarmed

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Today’s insect horror film review: Swarmed (Reel One, 2005), not to be confused with The Swarm (Warner Brothers, 1978) which I reviewed here.

I  found this movie to be a real guilty pleasure. I’m pretty scared of yellow jackets, so I also thought it was kind of scary.

The premise is pretty standard–residents of a small town find themselves menaced by a swarm of hyper-aggressive, mutant killer yellow jackets, which were genetically altered in an experiment-gone-wrong. The scientist whose experiment went wrong (played by an embarrassed-looking Michael Shanks) realizes he has caused some sort of a genetic mutation, making the wasps much more venomous and aggressive. Then a janitor–ethnically ambiguous but vaguely-Latino-looking–is dumb enough to knock his coffee over and release the killer wasps. So therefore, according to B-movie logic, he deserves to get stung to death. Then the swarm gathers more and more members and forms a cloud of killer wasps and descends on the town, inexplicably attacking and killing anyone who happens to be barbecueing.

In true genre fashion, people try all kinds of dumb and ineffectual ways to kill the wasps. The swarm gets shot at with shotguns (??), blasted with flame-guns, and pouffed with deadly clouds of pesticide, but nothing works until someone finally blows up the, um, entire swarm. Sorry if I spoiled that for you, but don’t worry, the ending has a twist.

Swarmed has its share of stock characters– a corrupt mayor, a corrupt businessman, a corrupt Chief of Police, and a hot female entomologist (Carol Alt). She keeps taking off her glasses and shaking her mane of glossy brown hair, and then delivering ludicrously nonsensical scientist-speak. There’s a jive-turkey-talking black exterminator who manages to get stung multiple times and survive (even though other characters die quite dramatically after being stung only once), and then ends up saving the day, sort of, at the end. The extras get to do a lot of running and falling down.

One of my favorite characters is the heads-up cop, Officer Heydon, who puts two-and-two together after three people have been stung to death in 24 hours and demands answers from the scientists at the lab. Of course, he tries to warn his corrupt Chief of Police that the town is about to be attacked by a swarm of killer wasps, but does the corrupt Chief listen to him? No—so he deserves to die, of course. Officer Heydon has amazing Elvis hair, but he kind of disappears halfway through the movie and we’re not sure what becomes of him. I hope he didn’t get stung.

 

Wiggle and Squirm

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One of Darwin’s experiments was to play the piano to worms. He was studying the effects on them of sound and vibration.

Royal Treatment

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King Henry VIII used a close stool for his toilet. He had a special groom whose job it was to wipe the royal butt.

Back from Barcelona!

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I just returned from Barcelona, where I spent four fabulous days with my 16-year-old daughter, Cassie. Cassie is spending the school year studying in Spain. We are extremely compatible travelling companions; we both love to walk, and we both love to eat and to try new foods, and we both like visiting museums and churches, for short stints anyway.  I don’t speak Spanish, and Cassie very much does, so I basically followed her around like a bleating sheep.

Some highlights of the trip were this huge Nativity scene in Sant Jaume Square: It’s a Catalan tradition, dating back to the eighteenth century, to put a “caganer” (loosely translated as “a pooper”) somewhere in the scene. He’s usually tucked away somewhere, far enough away from the Baby Jesus so as not to be disrespectful, but somewhere:

 I know. It’s a little bizarre, but it’s a tradition, not only in Catalonia, but also parts of France and Italy. Caganers symbolize fertilization, hope, and prosperity for the coming year.

Cassie tolerated her mother’s odd interests, posing for the many beautiful and still-functional water stand-pipes throughout the city:

 

She also patiently translated my questions to various museum guards. We visited the amazing “Casa Milla,” one of Gaudi’s apartment buildings:

It has an actual 1904-era apartment you can walk through, and as we were traipsing through she gamely approached a guard, blushing prettily, and said, “She wants to know where the toilet is. No, not the public restroom—the original toilet.” This wasn’t on the main tourist circuit, but it’s a beautiful example of an early flush toilet. That undulating pipe is so . . . Gaudiesque, isn’t it? 

As you may know, they eat dinner late in Spain. We waited as long as we could stand it, and still were the first people in the restaurant each night. Here’s proof (note the time on the clock):

Most of the places where we ate were full by the time we were having dessert.

Small World

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According to entomologist John Maunder, the move towards low-temperature detergents means more bugs can proliferate. Says Maunder, “If you wash lousy clothing at low temperatures, all you get is cleaner lice.”

 

Source: Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything