Thomas Wolsey - Fictional Portrayals

Fictional Portrayals

• Wolsey plays a major role in the early stages of the Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George.
• Wolsey is the primary antagonist of William Shakespeare's Henry VIII, which depicts him as an arrogant power-grabber. Henry Irving, Walter Hampden and John Gielgud were well known for their stage performances of the role, and Timothy West played him in the 1979 BBC Television Shakespeare production of that play. Henry Irving's reading of Wolsey's Farewell survives on a rare wax cylinder recording.
• Wolsey is a minor but important character in Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons; he was played in the two film versions of the play by Orson Welles (1966) and John Gielgud (1988), respectively.
• Wolsey was portrayed somewhat more sympathetically in the film Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)—a performance which earned Anthony Quayle an Academy Award nomination.
• Wolsey was played by John Baskcomb in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and by John Bryans when this series was made into the film Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972).
• David Suchet plays him in Henry VIII with Ray Winstone.
• Terry Scott portrayed a rather comical Wolsey in Carry On Henry (1970).
• William Griffis played Wolsey in the Broadway musical Rex which starred Nicol Williamson as King Henry. (1976)
• In the Showtime series The Tudors (2007), he is portrayed by Sam Neill. The TV production interprets his death as suicide by cutthroat, covered up by the King and his chief minister Thomas Cromwell out of residual affection for him.
• He is one of the main characters in Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall (2009).