6 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK: Gunpowder, Treason, & Plot (2004), Part 2

  1. I suspect the key fault of this episode was that it’s too much RICHARD III, too little I, CLAUDIUS (The latter of which does a much better job of evoking a monarch who managed to die old, honoured, still reigning and reasonably comfortable despite being, in some ways, a silly little man surrounded by human sharks).

      1. On the other hand, it also had an equally-mistrustful attitude towards the fairer sex (It’s just that Livia Augusta was much better at her job – now there’s a though, Livia Vs John Knox!).

  2. The sad thing is that somewhere, some dopey person is going to believe that because this was on television, this was exactly how it happened. I had a roommate like that. Ugh.

  3. It’s just possible they got the idea for Mary practising for her execution from contemporary accounts that Queen Catherine Howard asked for the block to be brought to her apartment in the Tower on the night before her execution so she could practise laying her head on it and not disgrace herself in public by clumsiness or hesitancy. And while it’s not reported that Mary did the same, it wouldn’t be at all out of character for her. Eyewitness accounts of her actual execution make clear how ostentatiously dignified she was about it.

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