Mary Arden: A Tudor Life

Whilst Wolf Hall, Bring Up The Bodies, The Tudors and The Boleyn Girls present the glittering – though at times terrifying – world of the Tudor court on TV and in literature, a new BBC Four film looks at what life was like for ordinary Tudor people. In particular, this film tells the story of a woman touched by new opportunities in society, work and education in a century that saw the birth of England’s cultural and economic greatness. In his latest film, Michael Wood pieces together the life of Mary Arden, the daughter of a 100-acre farmer in a small village in Warwickshire. Mary had eight children, three of whom died young, and went through many family disasters and tragedies. But what makes Mary’s life especially fascinating is that one of her sons was William Shakespeare. Using local documents and government archives, peasants wills and prisoners diaries; teasing out clues in landscapes from the Cotswolds to the Tower of London, Michael Wood uncovers the fascinating tale of a life which spanned one of most dramatic periods of change in our history: her childhood during the last years of Henry VIII; her youth under Mary Tudor, in the last days of Catholic England, and her married life through the reign of Elizabeth, to her death under James I - by which time her son William was a well-off royal servant and the most famous poet of the age. Mary Arden: A Tudor Life asks what role a Tudor woman had, working on the farm with her father, and then in business with her husband; whether she could read and write; how she brought up her children; the stories she told, and the beliefs she passed down in an age of religious persecution; and how the political battles of the Elizabethan state could touch even an ordinary family.