Lady Jane Grey, the "Nine Days' Wonder", is a controversial figure in English history, one of a small group of English "monarchs" whose right to that title is accepted by some historians and denied by others. (Others include Queen Matilda, King Louis and King Philip, the husband of Jane's nemesis Queen Mary I). To some, mostly Protestants, she is Queen Jane, the rightful Queen of England for the nine days between 10th and 19th July 1553. To others, mostly Catholics, Mary was rightfully Queen from the death of her half-brother Edward VI and Jane a mere usurper.
Legally, in fact, the position was complicated. Mary, like her sister Elizabeth, had been declared a bastard by their father Henry VIII. Towards the end of his life, however, Henry had passed the Third Succession Act, which restored his daughters to the line of succession without formally legitimising them. Edward, as he lay dying, had executed a will excluding Mary and Elizabeth from the succession and naming his cousin Jane as his successor, although, because this will had not yet been ratified by Parliament at the time of his death, Mary's supporters argued that it carried less weight than Henry's Act. Jane was proclaimed Queen by the Privy Council, who then promptly abandoned her when they realised that Mary enjoyed more popular support and that attempts to prevent her accession were doomed to failure.
"Lady Jane" was the third British film about Jane's life after a silent version from the 1920s and "Tudor Rose" from 1936, neither of which I have seen. It was made in 1986, during the "Thatcher Years", to a script by the well-known left-wing playwright David Edgar, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it is essentially Tudor history rewritten to suit the Guardian-reading classes of the 1980s. It is a curious mixture of costume drama and political tract, of fact and fiction. It follows the essential outlines of Lady Jane's story but contains two major divergences from historical fact.
The first of these concerns the relationship between Jane and her husband Lord Guilford Dudley. At first Edgar paints them as they are portrayed in most history books- Jane as intellectually precocious, scholarly and devoutly religious, Guilford as a debauched young man more interested in frequenting taverns and whorehouses than in reading Plato. Both are initially reluctant to marry and have to be coerced by their parents, who see the match as politically and financially advantageous. In the film, however, Jane and Guilford quickly fall deeply in love, although the historical evidence suggests that they disliked one another intensely throughout their marriage.
Edgar's second major divergence from history is his attempt to introduce twentieth-century politics into the period. During their brief reign Jane and Guilford are so shocked by the poverty of their subjects that they introduce a reformist political agenda- distribution of land among the peasantry, state-funded relief of poverty, universal free education based upon progressive principles and the abolition of corporal punishment. At times I thought I was watching an alternate history fantasy about how England, under the enlightened rule of Queen Jane the Good, became the world's first socialist welfare state nearly four centuries before such ideas caught on in the rest of the world. In the film it is this reformist agenda, as much as any popular support for Mary, which causes Jane's Council to abandon her cause, her Councillors all being wealthy Establishment figures with much to lose from such socio-economic reforms. Also, Mary's determination to marry Philip of Spain was due more to political considerations than to romantic love, and Thomas Wyatt's rebellion did not aim to restore Jane to the throne. (By 1554 England's Protestants had turned to Elizabeth as their champion).
And yet, despite Edgar's tendentious distortion of history, this was a film which I enjoyed in many ways. The love story of Jane and Guilford, however ahistorical it might be, was touchingly handled. Helena Bonham Carter, in her second major film role, was not as good as she had been in "A Room with a View" the previous year, making Jane perhaps rather too priggish. Cary Elwes, however, is good, playing as Guilford as that familiar figure from coming-of-age dramas, the truculent, rebellious teenager who matures into a sensitive, caring young man when he finds true love. Jane Lapotaire is also good as Queen Mary, making her more sympathetic than one would expect given her popular reputation as the tyrannical "Bloody Mary". It is a far more subtle portrayal of the Queen than Kathy Burke's demented fishwife in "Elizabeth". Other good performances come from Patrick Stewart and Sara Kestelman as Jane's overbearing parents, John Wood as her devious, scheming father-in-law the Duke of Northumberland, Warren Saire as the tormented King Edward and Michael Hordern as Doctor Feckenham, the elderly Catholic theologian who vainly tries to convert Jane to his faith. (Despite Edgar's modernising agenda, he does not try to hide the religious controversies of the period, with Jane's fervent Protestantism and Mary's equally fervent Catholicism much to the fore).
The film was directed by Trevor Nunn, best-known as a stage and television director. It is one of only three feature films he has made, the others being adaptations of Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" and Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night". Yet on the basis of this film and "Twelfth Night" (I have never seen "Hedda") it seems a pity that he has not worked more in the cinema. Here he handles his material well, the story moves fluently and there are a number of memorable scenes. I was particularly struck by the one where Jane and Guilford announce their wishes for the country, with each wish smashing a wine-glass with the exclamation "Then it is done!" Even though it might tell us more about the 1980s than the 1550s, "Lady Jane" is still a very watchable historical romance-drama. 7/10
