Globe Education Online
Resources for people passionate about learning and engaging with Shakespeare's plays
Anne Boleyn (2010)
written by Howard Brenton
A celebration of a great English heroine, Anne Boleyn dramatises the life and legacy of Henry VIII’s notorious second wife. Anne Boleyn is traditionally seen either as a pawn manipulated by an ambitious father and his friends into the King’s bed, or as a sexually licentious predator, even a witch.
But Brenton puts a very different Anne – and her ghost – on the Globe stage. Witty and confident in her sexuality, she takes on the vicious world of Tudor Court politics. She is in love with Henry but also in love with the most dangerous ideas of her day. Conspiring with the exiled William Tyndale, the great translator of the Bible who was to be burnt as a heretic, Anne plots to make England Protestant, forever.
Award-winning playwright Howard Brenton’s previous work includes In Extremis at Shakespeare's Globe (2006 and 2007).
Creative Team
Director: John Dove
Designer: Michael Taylor
Composer: William Lyons
Cast
Michael Bertenshaw - Robert Cecil
Sam Cox - Lancelot Andrews
Naomi Cranston - Lady Jane
John Cummins - Thomas Cromwell
Ben Deery - George Villiers
Mary Doherty - Lady Celia
John Dougall - Thomas Cromwell
Will Featherstone - Sloop
Peter Hamilton Dyer - William Tyndale
Anthony Howell - Henry VIII
Colin Hurley - Cardinal Wolsey / Henry Barrow
Amanda Lawrence - Lady Rochford
Miranda Raison - Anne Boleyn
Dickon Tyrrell - Dr John Reynolds
