Period Dramas (example: “Mary & George”)

Let me ask you a question: Do you like period dramas?

Think opulent costumes, glittering jewels, gilded horse carriages and magnificent castles. Think inbred aristocrats hunting wild game, eating wild game and behaving like wild game. Think ridiculous amounts of sex with anything that moves (perhaps even the wild game). Think ketchup-level gory execution scenes with amounts of fake blood that would befit a cheap vampire splatter flick. Think people covered in powder from head to toe. Think people who look like they haven’t had a bath in years and that’s why they’re covered in powder from head to toe. Think upper lips adorned with fake beauty marks, voluptuous breasts adorned with fake beauty marks (whilst almost spilling out of some sumptuous gown or other) and well-rounded buttocks adorned with fake beauty marks. (And Heaven only knows what nobs put on their knobs in that respect.) Think majestic ballrooms and dances meticulously choreographed and rehearsed to the actors’ great dismay. Think sublime Baroque music (often the only redeeming feature for me, to be honest), but pretend-played by actors who obviously can barely hold the instrument in question, let alone play it. Think twisting cobbled streets covered in grime and excrement. Think disease-ridden butchers selling rotten meat to customers dressed in filthy rags. Think vermin pretty much winking at the camera. Think peasants with actual dirt under their fingernails, who also somehow mysteriously manage to sport the most absurd pearly white Hollywood smiles imaginable…

You get the picture, right?

Period dramas. They’re generally ridiculous, but they’re also enjoyable in that gave-you-a-buzz-but-no-hangover kind of way. They’re visual fast food. A guilty pleasure…and sometimes a ‘guilty second-hand embarrassment’. They’re entertainment, not history lessons. And above all, they’re certainly no deep intellectual masterpieces.

‘Mary & George’, the new (2024) Sky production (that is shown on Starz in the US, I believe) checks all the boxes where the ridiculous-but-enjoyable-romp category is concerned. But there might be a few clever references hidden in it, and those are, of course, the reason why we’re going to talk about it today.

So, what is ‘Mary & George’ all about?

Essentially, it’s the story of King James I of England and his, ahem, favourite, a courtier named George Villiers, who becomes his lover over the course of the show.

If you haven’t watched this miniseries (and I can promise you right here and now that I will write this entire post in such a way that it’s accessible to people who’ve never seen so much as a single scene of it, don’t worry), so if you haven’t watched it, you might be wondering now why this thing isn’t called ‘James & George’. Why ‘Mary & George’?”

Well, this title gives away the main premise of the show, I suppose: It’s the story of a very, very unhealthy mother-son relationship. Mary (played with bone-chilling aplomb and both brittle menace and surprising fragility by Julianne Moore) is George’s conniving mother – a mother who’s willing to do anything, absolutely anything to get her twenty-something handsome son into King James’s bedchamber.

You’ve probably seen your fair share of period dramas in which aristocrats were trying to effectively pimp out their daughters to the monarch of the realm, as it were, but this is surely a new one: a scheming mother doing her darndest to make sure her son becomes the King’s lover. The Villiers, or so we are to understand, are lower gentry and chronically short on cash. Mary herself is of questionable pedigree (to put it mildly); so, money, power and status is what they’re desperately after…which usually makes a good basis for a solid period drama.

In short, pretty George (played by the undeniably gorgeous Nicholas Galitzine) is the family’s only hope.

He has to bag the King, or the family is toast.

But how will Mary manage to get the King to fall for her son? How will she even get the monarch to notice him?

One of the most hilarious scenes on the show happens when one of her schemes backfires:

Since the Villiers family is considered to be minor nobility and doesn’t usually move in Court circles, handsome George has no way of getting officially introduced to the King. 

Well, Mary finds out that King James and his entourage will travel along some particular country road by carriage one day and orders George to stand by the curb for hours, in the hopes of attracting the King’s attention.

The only problem, as it turns out, is that everyone else in the county seems to have got the same memo, and there’s a whole crowd of, ahem, confirmed bachelors assembled at that exact location, all trying to catch the King’s attention…What’s a little sodomy law and the threat of execution gonna do to deter a crowd of really desperate and determined gays who wish nothing more than to climb into bed with the King for a power and status upgrade (and after all, the King himself isn’t exactly playing by the rules either; so, who cares?!).

The scene is hilarious because absolutely everything goes wrong in every conceivable way: Not only is George not noticed (let alone picked up by the King); some old peasant is actually trying to hit on George, who is obviously having none of it.

Here, have a nice laugh and watch daring grandpa extraordinaire trying to put the moves on an exasperated George. The scene is just one minute long, but you will have a lot of fun watching it, I promise.

Okay. So…Did you watch it?

Yeah…I know. Hammer or anvil? Shovel or bucket? 17^th-century equivalent of Grindr right there. 

As you can probably guess from this scene alone, ‘Mary & George’ isn’t exactly a subtle example of captivating finesse and artistry. You won’t find a refined and layered subtext in it; it’s all pretty much ‘on the nose’, as it were. But hey, that’s all par for the course in this genre: With period dramas, the ridiculousness is usually baked into the cake. They tend to be patently ludicrous but a lot of fun…or grief, depending on how they turn out.

I mean, this is a show in which the very first scene features a mother (Mary) who’s just given birth to her second son (George) and who, with a half-creepy, half-mad glint in her cold eyes, orders her hapless midwives not to cut the umbilical cord just yet. We then flash forward about two decades or so, and George is already a young adult. We get a scene in which George has just…hanged himself in the woods, obviously trying to commit suicide.

He’s botched the job and instead of swiftly breaking his own neck and dying the way one does, he’s now hanging from that tree, swaying back and forth. His thoroughly unimpressed mother walks up to him and instead of doing what any normal mother would do (you know, scream in shock, cry out and try to save her kid’s life), she just heaves a sigh of exasperation with a facial expression as if she’s about to scold him for being pathetic. She walks up to him very slowly, too. And, all in all, it takes her quite a while to cut the rope he’s hanged himself with. Not the typical response of a mother who fears for her child’s life.

You realize that the subtext is anything but subtle here, of course: Two scenes. And in both of them the mother doesn’t cut the cord right away. The mother doesn’t cut the umbilical cord in the birth scene. And she doesn’t immediately cut the rope he’s tried to hang himself with as a young adult. 

Those are literally the first two scenes of the show! That script has the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the scrotum, to be honest: That rope and the umbilical cord are the same thing, we are told in this way. George is metaphorically hanging himself with his umbilical cord, with his mother’s apron strings that she has him tied to and that he is unable to sever. This umbilical cord is what’s metaphorically suffocating him and causing him so much pain he thinks he won’t be able to live a normal life. 

Theirs is a disgustingly codependent and completely unhealthy relationship. 

As I said…not exactly the subtlest of subtexts right at the start.

The show is fairly amusing, nonetheless. I’ve mentioned the proto-Grindr scene above; well, here’s another script idea that had me spitting out my Côtes du Rhône post-haste. (And no worries, with each and every scene I’m giving you here, we’re just scratching the surface. I’d classify this whole post here as ‘spoiler light’. Rest assured that I won’t spoil any of the big stuff for you. You’ll still be able to watch the show after reading this, and you won’t see its surprise twists and turns coming, I promise.)

So, here’s another knee-slapper (or perhaps forehead slapper):

Mary sends her son to France, so he may learn the ‘ways of refinement’ there. 

And yes, that roughly translates as, “Go to France, so you can learn how to be gay.”

I can absolutely confirm that this is exactly how it’s done. I mean…yeah, go to France for that. You’ll get a French Gayification Certificate with a rainbow seal and everything. It’s all very official.

I have no idea what sort of experience D.C. Moore, the screenwriter of this script, brings to the table in the Going-to-France department, but honestly, all the France scenes are so obviously absurd and dumb that I can’t take them as anything else but satire.

(I mean, you kinda get used to it, don’t you? The minute an American or English screenwriter uses the words France, Paris or French in a sentence, you already brace yourself for the worst, i.e. the most god-awful stereotypes known to man. And it’s never not hilarious. Must be very disappointing to end up in France as an American or English tourist and to then realize that people don’t actually fellate their baguettes all day long while their mistress’s mistress engages in daily orgies with the grocer, the newspaper boy and his dog on each and every available surface in the house. If you believe the film industry, monogamy isn’t a French concept. And if you believe your own brain, then you know that movies aren’t reality.)

Anyway…so, once you get over whatever this screenwriter’s weird French obsession is all about, you’re off to the actual fun part: Mary trying to get the King to notice her son (who has now returned to England, properly educated in the arts of male-on-male lovemaking and everything; because, you see, for that you just need to mutter, “Un corps c’est un corps,” with some emphasis and give your interlocutor a significant look. Magic formula. Works on guys all the time, don’t you know).

Okay, tvmicroscope. Pull yourself together. Deep breath. Wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes. Here we go…

So, there’s the proto-Grindr scene by the side of the road which I’ve already shown you above. And obviously there’s a lot more intrigue and skulduggery going on in order to manoeuvre George into King James’s bed. I’ll spare you all those shady backroom dealings because, honestly, go watch the thing yourself; I’m not out to spoil it all for you; I actually set out to talk about something else today.

Before we get to that, though, I’d like to shine a light on a scene that shows you that the script isn’t as superficial as it might seem at first glance (and that the writer isn’t as thoroughly lobotomized as those France scenes seem to suggest):

When I first read the reviews of this show before watching it, I stumbled across some reviewer describing a scene in which George (by now, properly introduced to the Court, but not yet a part of the inner circle of the King’s favourite playthings) is forced to play the cello while the King is partaking in an orgy in the very same room.

Now, I wish I could recall where I read this asinine description of the scene, so I could throw some shade on this hapless reviewer, but I can’t. In any case, as I watched this scene, my suspicions were confirmed…

And before you ask: Yes, the ‘orgy scene’ is really in there. And yes, George is really playing music while King James is getting his rocks off with a whole group of men.

You see, the King’s current lover, the very jealous Earl of Somerset, who is doing everything in his power to keep the younger and prettier George as far away from King James as humanly possible and to humiliate his potential rival in the process, this possessive and jealous Earl has organized an orgy for the King’s pleasure: a whole group of men are going down on the blindfolded King, sucking and stroking His Majesty’s majestic appendage (I suppose) while George isn’t allowed to join in on the fun.

All of these male bodies are just props, we are meant to understand. They’re not threatening. The Earl has bought them for the King’s pleasure, and they will immediately disappear again after his climax. The King won’t even catch a glimpse of these strangers, seeing as he is blindfolded.

The true threat is George. He is the real competition. The threat.

So, as a humiliation ritual that the Earl of Somerset has specifically set up for him, George has to provide the soundtrack for this orgy and make music throughout the whole proceedings, all while listening to the King’s moaning and groaning and the Earl’s insidiously stage-whispered declarations of undying love for King James right afterwards.

Well, what can I tell you?

No sooner had I started watching this scene than I cried out, “That…is not a cello!” – nearly throwing the remote at my TV screen in consternation.

And in case your eyes are rolling back in your head right now and you’re loudly groaning, “Seriously, tvmicroscope?! There are about half a dozen naked men having sex on screen, and you’re interested in some musical instrument?! Like…what the actual f…?!” In case you’re shaking your head at me now, let me assure you that…yes, hello! This is actually me! In case you’re new to this little blog, you probably won’t know this, but yes, I’m actually more interested in the fact that this blithering idiot of a reviewer called this a ‘cello’ (harrumph!) than in whatever multiplex copulation was going on in the same scene.

It’s not a cello, okay? That’s important! 

Who the hell cares about the blow-by-blow of that scene (pun very much intended) when those blows look the same in any given historical time period?!

You know what doesn’t always look the same? Musical instruments! 

And the one George is playing in that ‘orgy scene’ is not a cello at all. 

(Okay, okay, dear reader, you’ve had your laugh at the expense of the nerd, i.e. me, now. Moving on…)

So, what is this instrument that George is playing while the King’s, uhm, ‘instrument’ is being played by half a chamber orchestra of enthusiasts blowing and stroking their way to the King’s grand finale?

Why, it’s a viola da gamba, of course. (Cello! Seriously! I wish I could remember who wrote that to pour some well-deserved scorn on that review.)

So, why is it important that it’s a viola da gamba exactly?

Well, because this instrument comes with some very well-known erotic symbolism, ladies and gentlemen. And in case you’re wondering, yes, this instrument was already known for that in the 1600s. I mean, Shakespeare knew about it, for crying out loud. (Fellow 'Twelfth Night’ fans punch the air now, please! Pleasure to meet you all. Isn’t it just the most delightful play? “If music be the food of love, play on,” I say and wiggle my eyebrows at you suggestively. And don’t even get me started on Duke Orsino falling for what he must at that point still think is a dude – because, of course, he doesn’t know anything about the cross-dressing in progress…Ah, but I digress.)

So, how is it that the viola da gamba (often anglicized as ‘viol’, by the way) became such a popular erotic symbol?

Well, for one, there’s literally the word gamba in it: Italian for ‘leg’. (We have already discussed the sexual symbolism of legs on this blog, so I won’t go into this here again.)

But even more importantly: The instrument is literally held between the legs (hence the name!) – a position which, of course, invites all sorts of innuendo. And people in the 1600s were absolutely aware of the fact that gambists inviting an instrument between their thighs (like one would a lover) didn’t exactly look all that innocent.

Want an example? Here you go:

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This is Vermeer’s masterpiece ‘The Music Lesson’ (c.1662-65), and, trust me, reproductions simply don’t do it justice. Up close and in person, this painting is stunning.

Let’s first note that the title ‘The Music Lesson’ isn’t originally by Vermeer himself; it’s a 19^th-century addition and most likely a misinterpretation.

It might not be immediately obvious to us, modern-day observers, but the clothes on the male subject aren’t at all what you’d expect a music teacher to wear. What’s more, he’s come armed with his sword worn on a sash (only gentlemen were allowed to carry weapons at that time; also, who the hell brings a weapon to a music lesson, anyway?). In other words, this is no music teacher; this is a gentleman!

Then there’s the fact that he shouldn’t even be alone with an unchaperoned young woman like this…

Did you notice that the man has his mouth open as though he’s singing along to whatever she is playing. (Yes, music…metaphorical ‘music’...‘If music be the food of love’ and all that.)

There’s a fascinating little detail about this painting: When you look at the mirror on the wall, you realize that the girl’s mirror image doesn’t match the position of her head where she’s sitting in front of her instrument. In reality, she’s sitting there, looking at the keys (i.e. the music), but in the mirror (!) she’s looking at him, the man she is probably in love with. 

Now, here’s something you might know if you’re into Baroque music (and you are all into Baroque music, aren’t you…I’m just going to pretend that you are): Anyway…the small harpsichord-type instrument this young woman is playing is called a ‘virginal’.

Yes, really.

And then there’s, of course, the viol lying behind her on the floor. That huge viol.

The empty chair is standing next to the viol as if waiting for someone to sit down and start to play the viol. Note how much visual emphasis the painter puts on that chair; its colour is so different from everything else in the room. It really stands out. It’s important. This painting simply breathes anticipation and silent excitement for something that’s about to happen, and that empty chair is the negative space for its narrative.

So, what is Vermeer trying to tell us here? 

Some art historians think this is a very, very mysterious painting with an utterly undecipherable,  enigmatic message. Others write long convoluted papers in which they admit (with a lot of hemming and hawing) that…something, something…music=love, so…oh, Gosh, there might be something indecent being implied here.

Well, and yours truly will just go out on a limb and state it for the record: Yes, I think this painting tells us that this young woman is a virgin. And the insinuation of her allowing someone to take up the space between her thighs is right there in the same room; that’s the viol. All while her prospective lover is already, ahem, making metaphorical ‘music’ with her…

Do I need to mention the sword again? Yes. A sword is a weapon that, uhm, penetrates (phallic symbolism and all that), a weapon that’s literally worn on the hip, in other words, pretty close to the pelvic area in general. Do we think that’s a coincidence?

More than a quarter of Vermeer’s paintings feature musical instruments, some of them are just pretty decoration, there to provide a nice detail to feast your eyes on. But not in this painting. The message here seems to be as clear as day to me.

In the foreground we get a blindingly white pitcher, by the way. This could be just a visual gimmick, and I’m perfectly fine with anyone claiming that it’s just there for decorative purposes, but something inside of me keeps wondering if this perfect, white vessel doesn’t represent her virginity that’s about to be taken, ‘broken’, so to speak. I mean, that thing stands precariously close to the edge of the table, don’t you think? One pull on that tapestry, and it will come crashing down. (And if you’re messing around with a viola da gamba of this size right next to that table, you could easily dislodge that tapestry, just saying…)

The pitcher stands on an ornate silver platter. That thing was clearly very expensive. Is it perhaps there to tell us that virginity is a precious, precious thing? This wouldn’t be the first time that a painting by Vermeer has a moralistic message; the danger inherent in ladies of good standing besmirching their honour and name due to some sexual impropriety is something he hints at in his other paintings from time to time, too. So, maybe I’m right. Who knows…

In any case, the seemingly innocuous tableau presented to us here is certainly not a music lesson, but a romantic, perhaps even erotic scene.

I like the general composition of the young woman standing between the two different musical instruments: the virginal and the viola da gamba. Between one state of being and the other. And we’re getting two different views of her, too: from behind and (in the mirror) from the front, looking at her lover.

It’s not that often that you get to see a subject from behind and from the front at the same time in a picture; usually, it’s one or the other. So, this is clearly very important. There are literally two states being revealed to us here: one is basically…the way she always used to be (i.e. in the past that lies almost behind her now; that’s her as a virgin)….and one is the state that’s about to come, the one where she locks eyes with her lover. (Red underskirt, anyone? The colour red…Think of that what you will…)

(This is all I’m going to say about this painting here because, honestly…I could go on and on and on about the masterful treatment of the tapestry on the table in the foreground or the fact that there aren’t two square inches on that ‘white’ wall behind them that are actually the same colour because of the way the light strikes the wall; Vermeer’s treatment of light is, of course, legendary, as everyone knows. I mean, just look at the way you can see the stone jamb outside through the windowpane of the window at the back. And did you notice the little glass panes of the window at the front? Every single one of those tiny panes is different. And how about the edge of that mirror? Did you notice that it’s bevelled? You can see it very well at the bottom of the mirror; the mirror image is slightly distorted at that edge. How about the fact that there’s an easel in the mirror? Yes, really. There is no easel in the scene that we’re seeing play out in front of the mirror, but there is one in the mirror. Spooky, right? Vermeer included himself – the painter – in the painting in this way: He sneakily inserted an easel into the mirror image. Well, and we certainly have no time to address the inscription on the virginal or the painting behind the man. The paintings inside Vermeer’s paintings would deserve a whole lecture of their own; the same goes for the geometry and composition of this painting. We simply haven’t got the time for any of this here…In short, it’s one of those paintings you can spend a jolly hour in front of and still discover something new in, each time the clock strikes again. This painting might be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it’s nonetheless simply stunning.)

So, the viol is quite the mischievous instrument, yes? You got that, right?

It’s a very erotic instrument. An instrument that you keep between your knees while, ahem, making music is no innocent thing, that’s for sure. And people back then would have known this.

So, while the Earl of Somerset is organizing orgies for King James and trying to humiliate George by forcing him to provide the soundtrack for them, this whole ‘orgy scene’ in ‘Mary & George’ is actually a tiny bit cleverer than you might think at first glance: The viol hints at that. George is the threat here. The threat to the Earl’s position. And by the end of the episode, George will have replaced him in the King’s bed (not telling you how; I said ‘spoiler light’ and I’m sticking to that).

You see, there’s a painting this show keeps pretty much shoving in our faces in every single episode. It’s not a Vermeer; it’s Artemisia Gentileschi’s famous ‘Judith slaying Holofernes’ (the Uffizi Gallery version from 1620):

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

Every time you see this show’s opening titles, it’s there, and at a rather prominent point, at that: at the very end of the opening credits, right before you’re flashed the title of each individual episode.

Now, here’s the thing: The episode that incorporates this Gentileschi painting into the actual story (not just the opening credits) is the one with the orgy!

It’s actually at the beginning of that very ‘orgy scene’ that we’re shown this painting, i.e. the King, the Earl of Somerset and his merry men are having sex right underneath this picture in which Judith is cutting off the head of Holofernes – all while George is playing the viol in the same room. (A slight anachronism, actually, seeing as Gentileschi only painted it in 1620, and the year that flashes across our TV screen – funnily enough, at the exact moment the painting is shown to us – is 1616. But who cares…)

I have to admit that I wasn’t too enthused by the use of this painting on this show – largely because paintings depicting the ‘Judith and Holofernes’ topos are usually used to convey a different subtextual message; they usually denote the idea of righteous resistance to an oppressive regime or an invading power whenever they’re used somewhere in a film or TV show. But…oh, well, what can you do…On this show, it’s clearly tied to the idea of a powerful woman ‘decapitating’ a man who thought he was in control of the situation but actually wasn’t. Not very subtle. 

Well, and throughout the episode, George’s mother will pull out all the stops to make sure the Earl of Somerset is removed from the King’s bedchamber and replaced by her son. Mary is Judith. Somerset is Holofernes here. The message isn’t exactly subtle, I can assure you.

It’s in this context that you get George already playing the instrument of love! And that painting is literally hanging there on the wall in that ‘orgy scene’, foreshadowing the Earl’s downfall at the hands of George’s mother.

So, while the Earl might think he’s humiliating George, while he thinks he is in control, the clock is already ticking.

The King might make a few acerbic remarks about George’s music at the beginning of the ‘orgy scene’ (he doesn’t want George and his music there; he doesn’t like an audience whilst having sex, don’t you know). The Earl tells the King to ignore George, even tells him that George is nothing, a nobody.

But afterwards is a different matter; there is trouble in paradise already: The post-coital cuddle goes sideways pretty quickly when the King tries to assure the Earl of Somerset that he wants only him, yet the Earl, who seems to be wrestling with self-doubt and fear, asks, “You sure? There isn’t another you want even more?”

It’s at that exact moment, when the Earl asks that question, that the viol starts up again in the background. Translation: That other man that the Earl fears so much is already in the room, his ‘music’ is already playing, nagging at the Earl, never leaving him alone. And no matter how much the Earl tries to humiliate George, no matter how many men he pays to satisfy the King’s needs, the self-doubt is eating away at him already: The viola da gamba, the instrument of love and eroticism, is already playing in the King’s ear…The King might have been blindfolded during that orgy, but that just prevented him from seeing the Earl; he could hear George’s ‘music’ throughout…

The humiliation of George, this ‘win’ for the Earl is a pyrrhic victory. George will win this war of seduction. The Earl will lose it, just like the painting foretells. Because George has the ‘music’ on his side, the ‘music’ of the viola da gamba.

The fact that music is, indeed, a metaphor on this show is made abundantly clear once we get a scene (later on in the same episode) in which the King and the Earl of Somerset pretend-fence with two viol bows. You do understand the inherent phallic symbolism of fencing, don’t you? But fencing is more than that; it’s dangerous, too. I don’t want to spoil everything, but the Earl’s wife actually gets a big laugh out of everyone by pretending to decapitate the King with a viol bow, too. (Another woman decapitating a man here, you see.) Music is love, but love can also be dangerous, deadly in fact. Love is like a sword fight. It can snuff out someone’s life in a heartbeat.

Well, and then, once Mary and George have managed to ‘dethrone’ the Earl of Somerset, George is reintroduced to the King, this time with the clear goal of making him the King’s lover. It’s at this point that George offers to play the viol for the King! And seriously, this scene has to be watched to be believed because, trust me, you’ll spit out your wine, too, once you see it.

The King literally tells George in an undertone, “Be in my chamber. I need you…to…”

And at that moment, George offers to play the viol for the King by saying, “May I perform for you, your Majesty?”

That’s the point where you should spit out whatever beverage you’re enjoying, because, I mean…seriously?

Oh, yes…Perform he will. I’m sure George will perform splendidly for the King. And not just the music; he’ll perform in the King’s bedchamber, too. (And at this point, the show has already pretty much spelled it out for us that the King is not a ‘hammer’ but an ‘anvil’ if you know what I mean. So, what we get on this show is a social climber originally from the lower gentry who, through the machinations of his cunning mother, manages to, uhm, enter more than just the King’s boudoir, let’s put it that way.)

To make this groan-inducing double entendre even more obvious, the ensuing scene is actually crosscut with another scene: We get George playing the viol, and George and the King undressing in front of a mirror. George’s musical performance is crosscut with his other (cough) ‘performance’, so to speak. (And the mirror does some heavy subtextual lifting here.)

It would be remiss of me not to mention that this is all crosscut with a third scene: the Somersets devastating downfall (but I promised I wouldn’t spoil the details on that one). In short, the Earl of Somerset getting replaced is what this whole episode is all about.

And these three scenes are intertwined and connected by the music George is playing on the viol, the music underscoring all three of them.

At the end Artemisia’s painting is shown to be demonstratively carried out of the room. (How unsubtle! It is done. The job is finished. Holofernes is decapitated. The Earl is gone.)

Do I need to say anything else about this whole viola da gamba business? Well, I could be nasty and mention that Nicholas Galitzine looks supremely uncomfortable playing it. The bowing looks okay-ish, I guess, but they didn’t even bother to match the movement of his fingers on the strings to the music, but…oh, well…with looks like these, he could pretty much chew on those strings with his teeth, and I wouldn’t care. (Also, have we mentioned the fact that Galitzine’s got a great speaking voice? I mean, if I hadn’t been laughing so hard at the line, “May I perform for you, your Majesty?” I might have marvelled at his voice at that moment. No really. He’s got a great voice. What a blessing for an actor.) 

Would have been nice if they hadn’t made George’s viol playing look so fake, though, but then this show isn’t particularly strong on the whole musical side of things, I suspect. The composer of the original score wasn’t that ‘original’ either: In the very same episode, he clearly steals a tune from Vivaldi (if my ear didn’t deceive me that was the ‘Cum Dederit’ from Vivaldi’s ‘Nisi Dominus’). You can hear it at the beginning of the episode (right after the ‘orgy scene’ and the opening credits). There are two crosscut scenes: Mary attending a palmistry session, and Mary getting her face painted. And Heaven only knows why the composer decided to bastardize Vivaldi’s ‘Nisi Dominus’ at that particular point; the scene hasn’t got anything to do with Psalm 127. There really is no subtextual connection I can think of. So…the show probably isn’t all that interested in the musical side of things, is my guess.

So, that’s that. That’s the little tidbit about the viola da gamba. 

And now repeat after me: This is not a cello! Shout it to the Heavens: This is a viol! A viol. A viola da gamba! The Baroque instrument of erotic insinuation and seduction. A viol, not a cello!

Well, and now you know that yours truly finds a fully clothed man playing the viola da gamba immeasurably more erotic than half a dozen completely naked, writhing male bodies performing virtually every thinkable and unthinkable sex act on another male body. (But you probably knew that already.)

So, get out the old Purcell and…Strike the viol! (You know…touch…touch…inspire the, ahem, flute, I say as I wiggle my eyebrows suggestively.) Oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about?

Is this a good enough excuse to indulge in my little celebrity crush for a bit? I think it is. You see, while Purcell wrote ‘Strike the viol’ as a part of an Ode for the Birthday of Queen Mary, Jakub Józef Orliński sings it in a notably mischievous way and with such delightful glee that I can’t help but think he knows about the symbolism of the viol:

Here you go. Strike the viol.

Touch…touch…touch…touch the lute…inspire the flute…

And for those philistines amongst you who, horribile dictu, like the pop genre more than classical music, Orliński does a modernized version of ‘Strike the viol’, too: Here you go.

By the way, did you catch the moment the King told George, “You shall have more titles, land, compensation,” in the same breath as telling him, “Be in my chamber. I need you…to…”

You see, shortly after that, George, the second son of an impoverished family of the lower nobility, is catapulted into stratospheric heights: He is made a duke.

George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham.

If that name makes something tingle at the back of your skull, then you’re absolutely correct, of course: Yes, you do know that name from a book that is considered world literature. And if, as a kid, you were just as obsessed with virtually each and every single work of Alexandre Dumas’ œuvre as yours truly, then you know exactly which one I’m talking about:

‘The Three Musketeers’, of course.

The Duke of Buckingham plays an important role in that one (as anyone who has ever madly devoured all of these novels can tell you, ahem). 

Our George on the show is that Duke of Buckingham. Although Alexandre Dumas actually made him straight and in love with Queen Anne of France (also called Anne d’Autriche). Oooh, the intrigue and excitement of reading about how the swashbuckling d’Artagnan travels to England to get back the diamond jewellery Queen Anne gave to the Duke of Buckingham as a keepsake. All those adventures d’Artagnan undergoes, all the threats and dangers from the bloodthirsty Milady he faces, just in order to restore Queen Anne’s honour.

What, you didn’t read those as a kid? No, seriously, you have to. (And no worries, some of Alexandre Dumas’ work is actually still readable for adults. Take ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’: It explores some interesting philosophical questions about the meaning of life and suffering and the moral complexities of revenge.)

Here’s a thought (and mind you, it’s just a thought; I can’t be sure if I’m right on this one): It’s possible that the creators of ‘Mary & George’ subtly referenced Dumas. 

You see, Alexandre Dumas was what Americans like to call ‘non-white’ or perhaps ‘a person of colour’, whereas Europeans usually just mumble something vague à la ‘mixed ethnicity’ or ‘partially of non-European ancestry’ (even though these concepts have become more Americanized over here in recent years). His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was a Creole man, whose mother was a Caribbean slave and whose father was of European ancestry (a French aristocrat), and if you’ve never heard of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a.k.a. Alexandre Dumas’ dad, then do yourself a favour and read up on that guy because that story just has to be read to be believed (born to an enslaved woman of African descent in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, later: a military commander in the Napoleonic army, shipwrecked on his way back from Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, imprisoned, freed…in short, his life reads like an adventure novel in its own right).

Well, so Thomas-Alexandre Dumas’ son became the world-renowned French novelist and creator of the three Musketeers et al. (and came up with the fictional version of the Duke of Buckingham in that book).

And here’s the deal: I can’t tell you this for sure, but I think the show might perhaps be taking a teensy-tiny bow here, slyly referencing Alexandre Dumas:

When George goes to France to attend his How-to-Gay-successfully-in-five-simple-steps class (these ridiculous maison de plaisance scenes that aren’t even filmed in France, you know), so, when George goes to France, he is instructed and, uhm, taught in the ways of love by a young man named Jean.

Jean is played by the criminally underused Khalil Gharbia, who really should have got more lines and more to do on this show because, boy, this is an actor of a different acting calibre. No, really! If you know Gharbia from his other projects, you’ll know just how brilliant he is, and, dare I say it, the talent differential between him and Nicholas Galitzine is kinda steep, to be honest. (Not knocking Nicholas Galitzine. I suspect some of you might like him. I found him okay in ‘Mary & George’, but not brilliant. Perhaps I’m wrong.) Anyway, so, Gharbia is the real deal. I mean, if you haven’t watched ‘Le Paradis’ yet, do so immediately. The subtext of that movie is pretty clunky and nothing to write home about. (And despite the fact that its director Zeno Graton and I share a few biographical details, I’m not even sure I like the film’s general message.) But boy, is Gharbia a revelation in this film. What an actor! (Fancy a peek?)

Too bad he was just cast to play a walking-talking French stereotype on ‘Mary & George’: Jean, the man who introduces George to the art of lovemaking between men.

Now, unfortunately, the writers didn’t name this character Alexandre; they gave him the name Jean. If it had been Alexandre, we could’ve been sure that this was definitely meant as a reference to Dumas. But with Jean, we can’t say anything for certain.

Khalil Gharbia hasn’t got Alexandre Dumas’ ethnic background, but he still could be a younger incarnation of the great author if you squint. The famous Nadar portrait photograph of Alexandre Dumas shows him as a middle-aged, portly man, of course, but you can almost imagine what he must have looked like when he was younger: those alert, clever eyes, that astute gaze, that wry barely-there smile, the great head of hair…You can see why someone would cast Gharbia if they had a younger incarnation of Alexandre Dumas in mind.

Because, you see, Alexandre Dumas is the literary ‘father’ of the three musketeers and, hence, also the literary ‘father’ of that fictional version of the Duke of Buckingham in his world-renowned bestseller. Dumas is, in a sense, the one who created this Duke of Buckingham for us. He made the Duke of Buckingham into that straight man who’s madly in love with the French Queen in his book.

Jean (played by Khalil Gharbia) is also a creator. He ‘creates’ this other version of the future Duke of Buckingham for us. He is the one who makes George Villiers into what he is (and between the sheets at that); he makes him a lover of both men and women.

I would love to tell you that I’m 100 % sure on this reading and that the creators of this show did, indeed, cast Gharbia in order to include a sly reference to Alexandre Dumas in their story (with a deep bow, a wink and a smile, so to speak), but I am, in fact, not 100 % sure; I don’t know.

It would make sense to think this, but I don’t know the filmmakers’ minds, so I can’t tell you. It’s certainly what I would do, but then…I’m not a filmmaker; I just like to watch them work their magic.

Since we’re already talking about different incarnations of the Duke of Buckingham in different works of fiction, I’d like to use this opportunity to talk about two ground rules that I have for watching period dramas.

(And no worries, I haven’t forgotten that I actually wanted to talk about something else, something very specific on this show. I know that, true to my usual ever-chatty self, I’m technically still stuck in the introduction of this text and haven’t got around to talking about today’s actual topic. Patience, my friends, patience; I promise we’ll get there eventually.)

So, here’s my ground rule No. 1:

Period dramas don’t depict history; they’re fiction!

I know I’ve been standing on my soapbox, shouting about this whole fiction-ain’t-reality business for ages already. And it’s certainly true for each and every other film and TV show, too. But it’s even more true for period pieces!

Chiding films and TV shows for historical inaccuracies has become the favourite pastime of all those history bros over on twitter who love to check if the brass buttons on a movie’s military uniforms are accurate or something. But personally, I think discussions of this sort are a waste of time.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that they aren’t entertaining. They certainly are. But films aren’t reality. A work of fiction isn’t a history lesson. And even where you’re shown historical figures on screen, you’re not shown a historically accurate documentary about their actual, real life, i.e. a biography; you’re watching a work of art. And the only way to measure if it’s any good is to ask the following question, “Does it work?” By which I mean, does the film work as a film?

The actual, real, historical Antonio Salieri never concocted any schemes to kill Mozart and pass off Mozart’s Requiem as his work; Salieri wasn’t even the one to commission the Requiem, as historians today know full well. (Shocker, I know.) That whole conspiracy theory is ridiculous. None of that ever happened. But hey, would you prefer to watch actual, real, boring history? Or rather the wonderfully devious and conniving Salieri of the movie ‘Amadeus’? Be honest, isn’t the fictional Salieri much more fun? What you get to see in Miloš Forman’s 1984 ‘biographical’ drama isn’t really biographical. It never actually happened. But as a film, it works. And that’s what counts.

Watching period dramas like this is actually an enormous relief. You don’t have to argue with people whether historical figure X,Y, Z really looked like this or that, really was of this particular ethnic origin, really did or said whatever they are doing or saying on screen. You can spare yourself the trouble. It’s not real. It’s not supposed to be. It’s just supposed to work…as a work of fiction. As a film. ‘Does it work?’ is the only question you should concern yourself with.

I mean, you’re all aware Hitler and Goebbels weren’t gunned down by the ‘Basterds’ in 1944 in a cinema that was rigged with explosives, right? None of that really happened. And yet…Did you like Tarantino’s ‘Inglorious Basterds’ and its historically inaccurate ending or not? Thought so. (And please note how subtextually significant it is that all of this is literally happening at the cinema and that the theatre itself burns down and explodes because someone sets the flammable film behind the screen on fire! Quentin Tarantino knows, loves and understands subtext and metatext very well. He never went to film school, but taught himself everything there is to know about screenplays and scriptwriting; he’s a geeky autodidact who learned everything by watching many, many films and reading many, many scripts. He certainly knows what he’s doing in ‘Inglorious Basterds’.)

So, I say…Don’t even argue with people who try to convince you that the colour of the buttons on some guy’s uniform was wrong or something. Discussions like this are a waste of your breath. 

Instead, let the filmmakers of this world be creative; let them give us a Napoleon who’s played by an Asian actor, a Jesus who’s a ginger Irishman, a headless Marie Antoinette surviving and embarking on an affair with Robespierre, a Churchill with a laptop and a smartphone in hand, a Cleopatra as a guy, a Charlemagne and his entire court as little green men in flying saucers, and absolutely everyone as cartoon characters…or animals in a fable…or robots…

Dear filmmakers, just knock yourselves out. Your creativity knows no bounds, so don’t imprison it within the bleak walls of historical accuracy. Do whatever you need to do to make a film into a good film. (I mean it.) Do whatever serves the story. Don’t stick to reality, don’t stick to what history books tell us, don’t be accurate. Just be good.

And yes, of course, I’m writing all of this because a show such as ‘Mary & George’ will inevitably invite the usual suspects to quibble over the question of whether the historical King James and George Villiers were, in fact, in a sexual and romantic relationship with each other or not and to cry foul whenever they are shown to be in one on screen. There will definitely be discussions about the historical King James’s sexuality, and the question of whether he was gay or bisexual or something else will be hotly debated.

Here’s what I usually recommend doing in these cases: Don’t engage the quibblers. Don’t feed the trolls. Don’t even start any arguments with these people. It’s not worth it. They clearly don’t understand that art is not reality.

Here’s what actually counts: It doesn’t matter one bit if the relationship between the historical King James and the historical George Villiers was sexual or platonic (and there are actually good reasons to believe that it was both sexual and romantic, but that’s really neither here nor there). It doesn’t matter because this isn’t history; this isn’t reality. It’s a work of fiction.

Alexandre Dumas’ Duke of Buckingham in the novel is in love with Queen Anne. Well, and this incarnation of George Villiers has, uhm, different priorities in the bedroom. They’re both great works of fiction. Nothing more and nothing less. They’re not reality.

This TV show’s George Villiers is clearly bisexual and has a complicated sexual and romantic relationship with the King of England. Who cares if that’s historically accurate or not. If you want history, read what historians have to say. If you want art, engage with art, but don’t for a second think that art is historiography. Because it’s not.

Alexandre Dumas’ George Villiers was straight and in love with a Queen. This George (as played by Nicholas Galitzine) is not and is in love with a King. The next incarnation of him can be asexual or an alien or an elephant in heat. I don’t care. And neither should you.

The only thing we should care about is: Does this film, this book, this show work? Nothing more and nothing less.

And just so you know: Yes, I really mean it. If a film pulls it off and manages to make Brahms gay and Tchaikovsky straight, I would totally watch that. I’m not a hypocrite. I’d embrace historical inaccuracy in both directions. Really. (And both things would be wildly historically inaccurate, just so you know. But if it works, it works.)

And in case you’re wondering now, “Tvmicroscope, didn’t you just quibble over the whole a-viol-is-not-a-cello question?” then, yeah, you’re right. I did do that. But I quibbled over it because…well, look how that was connected to the rest of the text and subtext! I did not just quibble for the sake of quibbling.

In fact, if that same scene had anachronistically featured an instrument that was only invented much, much later (say, a grand piano), I would have probably laughed out loud at that. But if it had been there for a sound textual, subtextual or metatextual reason, I would have said, “Well, it’s not reality, anyway. What can you do? It’s fiction, not a history lesson.”

So, that’s my personal ground rule No. 1. I.e. let’s not even discuss the question of whether King James was or wasn’t…whether James and George were or weren’t…It’s pointless. 

And most importantly, let’s never use historically correct info as an argument in a fictional context. (“The King looked worried in this shot and this scene because I read somewhere that at this point the historical King was already preoccupied with political problem X,Y, Z…” This is a nonsensical argument because it mixes and merges reality with fiction. A character has to have a motivation on screen, i.e. in the fictional context they appear in. Otherwise the film just isn’t a very good film. It only works when the film itself provides the character with his or her motivation – not when you have to look up actual, real-life events from history in order to justify a fictional character’s actions.)

So, in short, when you’re seeing King James or George Villiers on screen…those are not the actual, historical King James and George Villiers. Those are fictional characters. They are creations. They’re not real. They might share their names and some superficial traits with those historical figures, but they’re nonetheless fictional characters.

Now, here’s my ground rule No. 2 (and I promise that, after that, we’re going to finally discuss what I actually came here to talk about today):

Period dramas are not about the past; they are about the present!

While ground rule No. 1 is still sort of easy to grasp on an intuitive level, the second one often trips people up. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less true.

When you’re watching a so-called ‘historical drama’, you’re never watching an account of what things were really like back in the day. Historical dramas just aren’t very…historical. They’re usually about the present. They’re speaking to you in the here and now.

Don’t believe me? Watch historical dramas that were made thirty, forty or fifty years ago. Do you notice something? The past seems to change. And since that’s obviously impossible (there was one Cleopatra; she behaved in a certain way and very specific things happened to her; there weren’t a dozen different incarnations of her who did completely different and potentially even contradictory things), so, since there was only one past, there must be something else going on here.

A Cleopatra movie from the 1960s is very different from one that is made today. Napoleon in the 1920s is a very different Napoleon from the Napoleons in a 1950s or a 1970s movie. Depictions of Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc were different half a century ago from what they would be like today.

But the past itself did not change. What changed was the lens filmmakers applied when looking at that past.

That’s why period dramas from, say, the 1960s and 1970s suddenly started to feature a lot of cheeky, feisty, strong female characters™. It’s not because the role of women in Ancient Greece or 17^th-century France had somehow mysteriously, retroactively changed. (The past doesn’t change.) It’s because clearly the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s influenced the writers and filmmakers making those movies.

Well, it was the role of women in period dramas fifty or sixty years ago. And these days, it’s topics like LGBT or racial and ethnic minorities.

All of that (and that’s very important to understand) hasn’t got anything to do with the actual, real past as it happened centuries or millennia ago.

When a topic like this is suddenly brought to the forefront, it has something to do with what ails us now, what our societies are concerned about right now, what the obsessions of the educated elites in any given country are. That’s it.

It’s not really obvious as long as you’re just watching films made in the 2020s (in the same way that it’s not obvious to a fish that it’s surrounded by water). But it becomes immediately obvious once you watch older period dramas and suddenly realize that, no, you’re not actually watching something about Ancient Rome or the Middle Ages or whatever…you’re watching something about the 1960s or 1970s or whatever time period the film in question was made in.

I know this might be difficult to admit, but no, the way we portray historical figures in our films today, the way we depict historical time periods…hasn’t really got anything to do with history. And future generations will find that very easy to see. Sometime in 2084 or something (if we haven’t managed to blow up the planet by then), some film aficionados will watch our films and TV shows and find them totally ‘cringe’. They will immediately realize that those aren’t films about history, that those aren’t films about the ancient Egyptians or Vikings or the Napoleonic wars or whatever; they will immediately see that those are films about the 2020s. And whatever is in those movies is less about Cicero, Charlemagne and Henry VIII than it is about us. About our obsessions, our hangups, our problems and the things we deem to be important.

Ground rule No. 2 isn’t very easy to grasp, at least not intuitively. But it’s really important to understand if you want to understand what period dramas are all about.

Basically…just imagine you’re looking at a painting depicting, say, the crucifixion of Christ. Let’s assume it was painted sometime during the Renaissance, and many of the subjects in the frame are wearing clothes typical for that time period: You have your 16^th-century knight’s armours and flags, a crowd dressed like European peasants; the buildings depicted on the canvas include a bona fide Renaissance castle, and the landscape is much more reminiscent of Central Europe than it is of the Middle East.

If you saw a painting such as this (and there are many prominent examples hanging in our museums), would you ever say, “This is anachronistic! The clothes and houses are all wrong for the first century AD in Jerusalem! Booo! What a bad painting!”

Of course, not.

You’d understand that the artist was actually making the story of Jesus’s crucifixion relatable to the audience of his time (and place). What’s more, the artist was probably trying to tell a story about his own time and the people surrounding him by choosing this religious subject matter. (There are, at all times, people willing to yell, “Crucify him!”, willing to lie and cheat and sacrifice innocent people. There are, at all times, people turning a blind eye to injustice and washing their hands of the blood of the innocent. And there are always victims suffering horrifically because of that…all of which you can express in a painting that pretends to depict a religious or historical subject matter but which actually holds up a mirror to the viewers looking at it. These viewers would then hopefully recognize their own style of clothes; their city walls, their faces in the painting and draw the necessary conclusions.)

So, if you, as a viewer, can do that when looking at a painting, if you can just dismiss the whole question of historical accuracy and instead focus on the idea that this is a piece of art in its own right and that it wants to impart a message, why not do that with a film or TV show?

Period dramas aren’t history lessons. The people portrayed in them are just as fictional as the completely made-up characters in any novel are (even when they wear the names of some prominent historical figure). And often the movies and shows in question aren’t so much telling us something about the past as they are telling us something about the present, about the time period said films and movies were made in – whether that’s intentional or unintentional, deliberate or just something that shines through underneath the text.

So, now you know: That’s how I approach any period drama on principle. And should the mood strike me again, should I ever decide to write about another period drama on this blog, I will undoubtedly do so with the same two ground rules in mind, which I’d encourage you to internalize, as well. It saves you a world of trouble and many a needless argument.

That being said…Why are we here today, anyway? Why did tvmicroscope drag out this totally outrageous period drama about King James I and George Villiers? Why is this thing actually worth talking about? (...I ask after about 15 pages of introduction; yeah, I know, I know…Sorry, guys.)

You see, there’s a scene on this show that can serve as a take-off point for a fascinating mythology and art history discussion, and unlike with the casting of Khalil Gharbia (where I’m not quite sure if it was, in fact, done intentionally as a bow to Alexandre Dumas or not), I’m actually very, very sure that this scene is deliberate as hell. The writers of this show knew exactly what they were doing there and why…and, well, I just tend to like clever stuff that’s bubbling up underneath the surface of whatever text I’m looking at, so here we are…

Remember how I told you that Mary does everything in her power to propel her pretty son into the orbit of King James? Her schemes don’t quite work at first, and in one memorable scene she even demands George hang out by the side of the road the King and his entourage will travel along later in the day.

Well, here’s another one of her schemes that backfires:

Through a string of machinations that I won’t go into here, she finds out that the King will hold a banquet in honour of the King of Denmark and that there’s a vacancy for a server at that banquet. She makes sure her son takes the job, so he can wait on the King and maybe catch his eye in the process (well, boy, does that whole thing go sideways, but more on that later).

Anyway…so, she tells George that she expects him to work as a server in the King’s grand dining hall during that banquet. And here’s what that scene looks like:

It’s a brief scene (just under a minute long). George has just returned from France (thoroughly educated about the facts of gay life by one Khalil Gharbia, uh, I mean, Jean, at this point, and wouldn’t we all want to be), and his mother springs the idea on him. Please watch the scene now.

Did you notice the curious wording here?

Mary says, “A new friend tells me there are openings for cupbearers.”

Now, it is correct that the historical George Villiers was, indeed, able to secure an appointment as Royal Cupbearer at the age of twenty-one, but A) please refer to ground rule No. 1 (we aren’t really concerned with historical accuracy here) and B) Royal Cupbearer is a permanent position at Court, not a temp job for one evening where you work as a server filling in for someone at the last minute.

What’s far more interesting for our purposes, though, isn’t just the fact that the scriptwriter kept in the word ‘cupbearer’ here despite stripping it of its historically accurate and correct context. He did far more than just that; he made sure to draw attention to this word in the dialogue.

Mary says, “A new friend tells me there are openings for cupbearers.”

And her son replies with a somewhat vulgar joke, “You want me to hold a man’s cup while he swallows?”

To which she says, “I’ll leave the specifics to you,” making it extra-clear that this is double entendre.

Remember what we stated a long time ago when we started analyzing ‘Young Royals’?

Jokes are perfect for hiding subtext!

The audience laughs (or harrumphs and groans more like at a joke of this calibre) and that drowns out all rational thought and scepticism for a moment.

What does this joke actually do?

Well, two things: 

1. It sexualizes the term ‘cupbearer’. (I’ll leave it to you to work out the logistics of ‘holding a man’s cup while he swallows’; I’m sure you can figure it out.)

2. But more importantly, it draws attention to the word ‘cupbearer’. It tells us that this word isn’t just there for funsies. And it wasn’t just used because the actual, historical George Villiers really was the Royal Cupbearer (which would have implied a completely different job anyway: a permanent position at Court). And it’s no coincidence that the text doesn’t use the term ‘server’ here instead (which is, after all, what we see George do later on during that banquet: He actually won’t be working as a cupbearer, i.e. he won’t pour the King any drinks; he will serve him meat). This joke is there to draw attention to a very specific term: cupbearer.

I’m going to tell you a story now, and I want you to listen very carefully.

There is an ancient Greek myth…(Well, if we want to be accurate, we should probably note that it is potentially much, much older than that and that the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia knew versions of this particular one already. But the Greek one is the one that’s best-known, and it’s the one that’s usually depicted in paintings and referenced in literature, so we’re going to stick to that one. Homer’s ‘Iliad’, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ and Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ all tell versions of this myth; it was really incredibly popular throughout Antiquity and beyond.)

So, let me start again…

There’s an ancient Greek myth according to which there once lived an insanely beautiful youth. He was, in fact, so handsome that people considered him to be the most beautiful mortal in the entire world!

His name was Ganymede.

The Greek god Zeus caught sight of him and fell madly and passionately in love with Ganymede, desiring nothing more than to possess him…in every conceivable way.

And so Zeus took on the form of a giant eagle. And he spread his wings and swept down from the heavens, grabbing Ganymede with his talons and carrying him off to Mount Olympus.

The topos this myth inspired is known in art history as the ‘Rape of Ganymede’, with ‘rape’ (from the Latin word ‘raptio’) meaning ‘abduction’ in this context; the term can carry undertones of sexual violence (cf. ‘The Rape of the Sabine women’ for that), but it doesn’t have to. With Ganymede, the meaning is arguably ambiguous.

So, the giant eagle carried Ganymede off, and they flew higher and higher until they landed on Mount Olympus, where the banquet of the gods was ongoing. There Zeus made Ganymede his…

…cupbearer!

There you have it. Words have meanings, but more than that, they have connotations, and writers who are, after all, wordsmiths usually know about those.

You can probably see where I’m going with this, right?

We are, after all, not just dealing with any period drama here; in ‘Mary & George’, we are specifically dealing with a story about same-sex love and desire.

The Ganymede myth is actually clouded by ambiguity and controversy spawning many different interpretations over the centuries and even millennia.

There is the question of consent, for example. And believe it or not, but this one was hotly debated even in ancient times (and for aeons after that).

Did Ganymede in the myth consent?

There are basically two different schools of thought on this, as you might have already guessed from my hinting at the twofold meaning of the word ‘rape’ in art history:

Either this is a story about sexual violence, about Ganymede being abducted by a sexual predator against his will…

…or the whole story is actually a parable hiding a different story, the abduction in and of itself being a metaphor for something very much consensual happening between two men.

It’s ambiguous, and it has always invited and will always invite different interpretations.

Then there are, of course, the three different ways in which you can interpret the myth:

1. It’s a story about pederasty.

2. It’s a homoerotic story featuring two consenting adults, i.e. a story about homosexuality.

3. It’s not sexual at all. It has a spiritual meaning.

If No. 3 surprises you, let me assure you that this was actually quite a popular interpretation, and interestingly it’s as old as the myth itself: Xenophon of Athens did read this myth as a spiritual story, as a story in which Zeus’s interest in Ganymede is purely platonic. Later on Renaissance artists followed this interpretation, highlighting the spiritual meaning of the myth as a metaphorical story about the ascent of the human soul to Heaven upon death. (Somebody tells me just now that this spiritual, i.e. non-sexual, reading of the Ganymede myth is actually Neoplatonic, but since this somebody doesn’t want to be part of this blog experience, you’re all going to miss out on the details here, sorry. But I really don’t fancy sleeping on the couch tonight, so no metaphysics lecture for you.)

The Dutch painter Nicolaes Maes still referenced this spiritual reading of the Ganymede myth in the 1600s:

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

In his 1673 ‘Portait of Three Children’, he depicts the two children of a family who are still alive as Ceres and Diana and the child in the middle (that had already died) as Ganymede riding the eagle, i.e. as a soul ascending to Heaven.

In times of high child mortality, this interpretation of the Ganymede myth actually made a lot of sense: It comforted grieving parents.

Personally, I think the most heartbreaking detail about this painting is the fact that the child on the left is clutching her brother’s leg as if to try and pull him back to earth…back to life. If this doesn’t make you choke up, I don’t know what will.

Now, as for interpretation No. 1 (a pederastic story):

Obviously, that’s the way the ancient Greeks read this story. It was seen as a myth legitimizing the institution of pederasty (παιδεραστία: paiderastia). Which should obviously make us very uncomfortable today, to say the least.

I actually had several very long paragraphs typed out here, which I think I’m going to cut. Suffice it to say that I get periodically upset about the fact that the gay community itself doesn’t seem to be very aware of the problem. You regularly get ‘The Advocate’ and similar publications writing long think pieces about how, say, the Roman Emperor Hadrian and Antinous had ‘a gay love affair for the ages’, all of which is presented without a whiff of the proper historical context. (Just so you know: Antinous was 12-13 years old when he caught Hadrian’s eye – a ‘relationship’ in the way we would understand the term, this was not!) In short, with many of these ‘Top Ten iconic gay couples throughout history’ type of lists, it would actually serve the journalists in question well to brush up on their history knowledge and ask themselves the question: Do we actually want to celebrate this in the here and now? Do we, as a community, draw legitimacy from this particular practice? Or should we instead delineate these concepts cleary, discuss them critically and show that our understanding of who we are today isn’t based on those historical concepts at all?

Crucial in this context is the following notion: All your faves are problematic!

Yes, even Oscar Wilde. (Enjoy his brilliant writing, love and admire him as the literary giant that he undoubtedly is, be incensed at the trial and the subsequent imprisonment that broke him. Do all of that, but for Heaven’s sake, don’t make him into a gay icon.) Understand that what many, many of your favourite ‘gay icons’ advocated and often even practised in the 19^th century would today quite rightfully be labelled as sexual abuse of underage working class boys. Understand all of that not to ‘cancel’ Wilde or any other of the great geniuses whose works we rightfully enjoy and admire, but so you can critically examine that which you find abhorrent and separate it from that which they created and that you find admirable.

I’m not saying this to be mean; I’m saying it because blurring the lines between the concepts of pederasty and homosexuality is a favourite ploy, a brush with which homophobic detractors like to paint the whole gay (male) community. Let’s not give them any ammunition. Let’s not practise idol worship where we should critically re-examine our so-called ‘gay icons’. And no, not to ‘cancel’ them, not to rob us of the enjoyment of their art, but to make sure we (today, in the here and now) can always draw a clear line between one concept and the other.

Anyway…long story short. So, the ancient Greeks read the Ganymede myth (which is actually much older than Greek civilization) as a story legitimizing the institution of pederasty. And many artists followed in their footsteps and depicted it as such.

I’m talking about depictions such as this one, of course:

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

You can probably see why this makes us very uncomfortable today (as it should): Ganymede is depicted younger than an ephebe here, clearly still a child. Zeus is bearded, broad-chested, with skin burnt by the sun, which gives you this strong contrast when compared to Ganymede’s milky white complexion that so clearly hints at his innocence and youth.

Zeus’s gesture is overbearing and possessive; he’s pulling the boy towards himself with his hand in order to kiss him.

The chalice Ganymede is handing Zeus hints at the boy’s position as cupbearer on Mount Olympus, but since this moment links this gesture to the kiss, it also sexualizes the title ‘cupbearer’, hinting at the fact that simply being a server is not what this job entails.

I did actually pick this one because of an interesting art-historical fact (because I’m guessing if we’re already discussing something we all find so unsavoury, you might as well learn something in the process):

It’s a fresco painted sometime around the years 1758/59 by Anton Raphael Mengs, a German 18^th-century painter who is seen by many as one of the precursors of Neoclassicism. He painted it together with his pupil Giovanni Battista Casanova (and in case, you recognize that name: Yes, that’s the younger brother of the Casanova; he was, in turn, the teacher of the great Angelika Kauffmann; and yes, in history, there really are these periods of time when suddenly all the famous stars burst onto the world stage at the same time).

In short, it was painted by Mengs and his pupil, the younger Casanova, and if you look at it you can clearly see the influence of the Pompeiian frescoes in it. (Pompeii had just been discovered and was all the rage at the time.)

Mengs was actually a very well-respected and successful artist; this fresco however caused a huge scandal. And no, not because of the subject matter, in case you’re wondering. You see, what happened was that Mengs and Casanova painted it and then…Mengs proceeded to pass it off as an actual, original Roman fresco from Antiquity. And virtually everyone, like, the Who’s Who of the top European art experts fell for the con.

The famous and groundbreaking Hellenist, aestheticist, art historian and celebrated ‘father of modern archaeology’ Johann Joachim Winckelmann not only fell for it; he celebrated this fresco as one of the most beautiful Roman originals he had ever seen. He subsequently proceeded to include it in his immeasurably influential book ‘History of Ancient Art’ (1764), firmly believing it to be an original. This obviously turned the whole saga into a huge scandal of European proportions once the truth came out that the fresco was, in fact, a forgery. None other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (famous German polymath, poet and playwright) fell for the con, too.

But the story is even crazier than that: Mengs, the forger, (who was otherwise a very well-respected artist, Court painter both in Dresden, Germany, and at the Spanish Court in Madrid, highly decorated artist of his time and much celebrated in Italy, as well), so Anton Raphael Mengs was actually friends with both of them: Winckelmann and Goethe…And yet he conned them; he conned them in such a brazen way that it actually makes me wish someone would turn that story into a film or TV show.

Why he did it and what on God’s green earth possessed him to pass off a fresco of his own as an original in the first place…isn’t clear. Nobody knows. And Mengs only admitted to the deed on his deathbed; it appears he didn’t know himself why he had done it. (Again: Mengs was a highly respected artist. This isn’t some habitual liar, criminal and con man we’re talking about here.) Perhaps it was insanity or vanity, the sense of secret glee that comes with having Europe’s first and foremost experts praise your handiwork as the most beautiful Roman original ever seen.

By the way, Winckelmann definitely falls into the category of ‘problematic faves’ (cf. above). His work is foundational for European art history and archaeology and was rightfully celebrated throughout Europe on the 300^th anniversary of his birthday a few years ago. But the fact that these celebrations always included references to his allegedly being ‘an iconic figure in gay history’ made me want to bash my head against the nearest wall, to be honest. Not because I would ever doubt how incredibly influential and important Winckelmann was in his time, but because the sexual aspects of it deserve to be taken apart very cautiously and with a scalpel in hand, separating the important gay-liberation-message part from the highly-suspect-and-problematic-message parts. And yet, that’s not what was happening at all. (And it’s still not happening now.) Instead you get journalists and his biographers defending everything about him in a blanket-defence kind of way. (One such defence that I remember was a biographer of his claiming that it wasn’t ‘all that bad’ because all the boys were at least 16 years of age. You can’t make this stuff up.)

So, Winckelmann falls into this category. Well, and Goethe, who was famously massively influenced by Winckelmann’s ideas and published a whole book about him, actually defended Winckelmann and his ‘Greek love’ as a natural phenomenon that deserved to be accepted – whether Goethe separated the ideas of same-sex love and pederasty is difficult to say; the lines were very blurry at that time, so I honestly doubt it.

Some irrational part inside of me just wants to believe that the fact that both Winckelmann and Goethe fell for the forger’s con was, in a sense, poetic justice – as if the topos depicted in the fresco itself were cursed…as if something supernatural just possessed the otherwise well-respected painter Mengs to create this forgery, so his two friends could fall for this very specific fake, inevitably tainting their reputations in the process.

Anyway…so, that’s interpretation No. 1 (the pederastic one). And if you keep digging for a bit, you will find many, many frescoes, paintings, statues and reliefs depicting Ganymede as a child and Zeus as an adult in the pederastic tradition.

One famous artist who made fun of this very interpretation is none other than Rembrandt himself. Check out this brilliant painting here:

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

Rembrandt van Rijn’s ‘Rape of Ganymede’ certainly gives us the youngest Ganymede ever depicted in art history, and this satirical treatment of the subject matter is clearly intentional, seeing as Rembrandt breaks with art-historical tradition in virtually every way here: Usually, Ganymede is depicted either as a teenager or as a young man. Here we get a baby!

What’s more, the baby isn’t just resisting the eagle, trying to fight off the bird with his right forearm; he is crying (‘ugly crying’ is the internet term for this particular facial expression, I believe). And on top of that, he is peeing himself (yes, really, look at the canvas closely).

Art historians are still debating who exactly Rembrandt is poking fun at in this 1635 painting, but one thing seems clear: He is poking fun at someone.

The extreme treatment of the subject matter, the exaggerations, the whole ‘over-the-top’ feel of it make it clear that this is, indeed, meant to be understood as satire.

The artist considered everything that was controversial about the myth (Ganymede’s youth, the lack of consent, etc.) and took it all to the extreme to get comedic value out of it.

The only question that remains is: Who exactly is Rembrandt satirizing here? Gay men? (And while the concept of homosexuality didn’t exactly exist back then, people were well aware of the fact that some men showed behaviour that they found, shall we say, peculiar). So, was Rembrandt, in fact, making fun of men who were having relations with other men, denigrating them as predators who would target children, too, no matter how young? Or was he, in fact, specifically making fun of those who interpreted this myth in this way? 

Personally, I like the interpretation that he was making fun of Hellenists, classicists, archaeologists, art historians and the appreciators of all things Graeco-Roman in general. Perhaps he was trying to say, “Hey, you like staring at ancient Graeco-Roman art? But what is this type of art actually all about: It’s just pederasty all day long, see?! Why don’t you appreciate our modern-day art in the here and now? Well, since you don’t, I’ll just make fun of you and your obsession with the ancients in the most absurd way possible.”

(Feel free to come up with your own interpretation.)

So, now we’ve talked about two possible interpretations of the Ganymede myth (the non-sexual, spiritual one and the pederastic one), but since ‘Mary & George’ is clearly a gay-themed story, it’s time we turned to the last of the interpretations I listed above: the homoerotic one.

Because, believe it or not, there were a lot of people who didn’t take this myth literally but read it as a parable about consensual relations between two adult men instead.

Here’s my all-time favourite example of this interpretation:

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This is a pencil drawing by Michelangelo.

Or rather…it’s a copy of a 1532 original drawing that is sadly lost forever.

First off, let’s note Ganymede’s well-muscled thighs, abdomen and left arm. This is definitely not a teenager. This is a young man who’s in his twenties at the very least.

Michelangelo actually brilliantly breaks with tradition here, too: Even adult depictions of Ganymede usually show him as a slender, delicate man, underlining his youth and innocence. In Michelangelo’s interpretation, he is very muscular and you can practically feel his physical strength. It’s as if the grand master went out of his way to make sure he depicted a fully developed and potentially very strong adult man.

The other thing that’s really unusual about this interpretation is the fact that the eagle (Zeus) is positioned behind Ganymede. Usually, Ganymede is shown facing the eagle, often desperately holding on to his feathers in order not to plummet back to earth.

This one is different.

I don’t have to spell it out, do I? These two are intentionally positioned one behind the other, so as to evoke the image of penetrative sex between two men.

The languid expression on Ganymede’s face, the way his head falls to the side, the soft tenderness with which he looks down on the eagle, the way his hands are relaxed (instead of desperately grasping the eagle’s feathers)…all of this speaks of the fact that the Ganymede in this drawing is very much consenting to what is happening here, that he is pretty much inviting it, in fact.

To really understand what you are seeing in this drawing, it’s very important not to take the scene literally: This isn’t literally an abduction. Instead the abduction, this encounter of the eagle and the young man, serves as a metaphor for gay sex.

Just replace the image of the eagle in the drawing with the mental image of a second man, and you’ll get it: 

The way the eagle’s talons are spreading Ganymede’s legs, for example; that’s just a veiled reference to the fact that the man on top is spreading the other man’s legs with his thighs. The way the eagle’s head snakes around Ganymede’s torso? Another veiled reference to the way a lover would try to snake his head around his beloved in every which way in order to try and kiss him right before (or even during) penetration.

This is a very erotic picture, but it is cleverly hiding what it is actually trying to say by giving us an eagle…and an ancient myth.

You think you’re seeing the mythical story about the abduction of a young man, but you’re not…You’re actually seeing something else here. And it’s rather obvious that Michelangelo knew exactly what he was doing when he drew this.

You’re not watching a kidnapping in progress here. You’re watching two intertwined (male) bodies that are completely at ease with each other – because that’s exactly what these two men, these two lovers, are.

Well, if you wanted to depict gay sex in the 1500s, you had to be clever about it. And clever good old Mick was, that’s for sure.

He drew this little gem as a gift for a friend, by the way. A very special friend: Tommaso dei Cavalieri. (And yes, in 1532, when Michelangelo first met Cavalieri, Cavalieri was already well into his twenties, just in case you’re worrying here.) 

Cavalieri may have been Michelangelo’s lover, but it’s unlikely. Most likely he was just a very close (and probably heterosexual) friend. But Michelangelo certainly loved him passionately and throughout his entire life, regarding him as his muse. Whether that love was ever physically consummated remains unclear, but the Ganymede drawing (which was a gift to Cavalieri) seems to hint at where Michelangelo’s desires lay in that regard. Cavalieri was apparently exceptionally handsome, very well educated, intelligent and a very gifted artist in his own right. The two of them were very close and remained dedicated to each other throughout their entire lives. Some of Michelangelo’s most intimate and sensual sonnets were dedicated to Cavalieri, and Cavalieri was actually present when Michelangelo was lying on his deathbed. Many consider him to have been Michelangelo’s great love. So…you can think whatever you want…but, well, personally, I think that drawing seems to at least suggest what might have been in Michelangelo’s heart.

By the way, I know that we mentioned Shakespeare’s sonnets on this little blog before, and we briefly noted that a large portion of them (the so-called Fair Youth sonnets, including the infamous Sonnet 18) were addressed to a man (!).

Well, how about this little fun fact: Michelangelo’s sonnets to Cavalieri are actually older! They predate Shakespeare’s sonnets by half a century and are thus the oldest extant love poetry of this kind where a male speaker addresses a male addressee in a modern language.

Fascinating, right?

(And personally, I consider Michelangelo’s drawing to be one of the most erotic works of art ever created, precisely because it cleverly doesn’t show you what it means, but also…really, really does show you exactly what it means.)

There are so many other things we could say about Cavalieri and Michelangelo here, but I have to get back to ‘Mary & George’ at some point (sorry), so let’s leave Italy now.

But, yes, the Ganymede myth has been used to showcase homosexuality, not just pederasty; it has been used as a metaphorical expression of same-sex love and desire between two adult men. There can be absolutely no doubt about that.

So, what do you think? Are you up for another homoerotic painting depicting the Ganymede myth?

Okay, here’s one that was possibly inspired by the Michelangelo drawing we discussed above:

(Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This one is by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens and was painted between 1636 and 1638. 

And although his Ganymede isn’t quite as shredded as in Michelangelo’s drawing, you can clearly see that this is a man, not a child. The way the eagle snakes his head around his torso is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s drawing, but this painting really impresses with its dramatic overall composition: Everything about it seems to be vertical. The narrow format itself underlines the upward movement of the eagle and the youth. A bolt of lightning right above Ganymede’s head serves as Zeus’s signature: This is the God of thunder, the sky God, we are told here.

Well, and since we’re already talking about mischievously erotic paintings that don’t tell you anything outright, but actually tell you everything once you know where to look:

Please take a look at the quiver full of arrows. The arrows are literally pointing at…well, at Ganymede’s rather shapely behind (and good Lord, Rubens really made sure those buttocks were well-rounded and firm). The literal arrows are figurative arrows, as well, and they are pointing at where exactly the, ahem, sexual act that is being referenced here is supposed to be performed:

You did notice where Ganymede’s bum is actually positioned in the composition, right? Literally at the centre of the painting:

Cheeky, right. (Like…literally cheeky.)

Well, and now look at the highly suggestive end of that quiver. Look at where it’s placed in relation to Ganymede (as if protruding from between his thighs). And look specifically at its shape…ahem…

Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that’s hanging in our public museums, ladies and gentlemen. (I always laugh when people tell me that an appreciation for art is allegedly somehow ‘highbrow’.)

You did see that that quiver is pointing upwards, right? It’s erect, so to speak.

Well, and now pay attention to what the eagle is actually doing in this painting. The eagle is actually tugging at the strap of the quiver with its beak, and the way this is depicted makes it clear that a tug on that strap will move the quiver upwards, i.e. it’s the eagle’s actions that are, uhm, raising the end of that quiver…

As I said: all very highbrow and totally above board. (You can hear me laughing, right?)

Rubens couldn’t have been any clearer as to what this painting is actually supposed to represent.

And yes, this really is by Rubens, noted lover of voluptuous women both on canvas and between the sheets, the one who almost certainly wasn’t into men at all. Whatever possessed him to paint this I don’t know.

But here’s a fun fact for you: Rubens was also a passionate collector of art and an art dealer. He sold many of the works of art that he had collected to one specific man – a man whom he also painted more than once. 

Wanna guess who that man was?

George Villiers, the real, historical Duke of Buckingham!

Unfortunately, the Duke wasn’t the one to commission the Ganymede painting above (that would have been just too cool). But here, take a look at this portrait of the Duke by Rubens’ hand:

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

Doesn’t look like Nicholas Galitzine at all, but you can probably see why the Duke was considered to be very handsome in his time (and potentially even turned the head of the historical King James).

This actually brings me back to the question of why we were discussing the Ganymede myth in the first place: the show ‘Mary & George’ and the question of why the word ‘cupbearer’ was used in a line of dialogue. And not just that: Why the screenwriter used it and then drew attention to it by making a joke that sexualizes the term.

Let me quickly throw you one final painting. Another Rubens (since we were just talking about him and his close connection to George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, it seemed fitting):

Yes, Rubens really worked on this subject matter twice. And this painting (1611/12) was painted much, much earlier than the one above (1636-38).

You can see that, in this version, there’s none of the in-your-face homoeroticism of the other painting. (Yeah, get that: Rubens painted the other one, the more homoerotic one, decades later, when he was already much older, and it’s in that one that he cranked up the gay to eleven. Some senior citizens have a lot of fun in old age, or so it seems.) Anyway…this painting here shows us a later scene in the myth. This isn’t an abduction; this is the moment the eagle has already landed on Mount Olympus (you can see the banquet of the gods in the top left corner of the canvas), and Ganymede is receiving a chalice from someone in the top right corner, hinting at the fact that he’s about to be made Zeus’s cupbearer.

The character who is handing Ganymede the chalice in this Rubens painting is actually important for understanding the show ‘Mary & George’, so we will talk about her in a second.

Ooookay…

We have now dissected the Ganymede myth from any angle I can think of (non-sexual, i.e. spiritual, interpretation, pederastic interpretation, and homoerotic interpretation). Forgive me if I can’t go into any more detail here. I know some of you will be disappointed that we won’t be discussing Shakespeare’s ‘As you like it’ today. (It’s so, so tempting, seeing as how Rosalind disguises herself as Ganymede and then acts out a relationship with Orlando while in this male disguise, but it would really blow up this post, sorry.)

Now, I can practically see you all frowning. “Tvmicroscope, didn’t you say that we shouldn’t take one detail and just come up with interpretations on the spot? Aren’t you doing that with the word ‘cupbearer’ here?”

Patience, my friends. You’ll see in a minute how this is about more than just that single word ‘cupbearer’.

This isn’t just about the fact that that scene between Mary and her son (in which she presents him with her idea to have him infiltrate the King’s banquet) features that one word. And it’s not even just about the fact that this word is obviously sexualized by the line with which George responds. (“You want me to hold a man’s cup while he swallows?”)

The parallels are structural, and the story actually goes on after that, too.

First off, structural parallels:

In ‘Mary & George’ we have a middle-aged King who, over the course of the story, will start to lust after the much younger George and desire him. Just like the immortal god Zeus who is often depicted as a bearded middle-aged man.

Ganymede in the myth is said to be the most beautiful mortal in the world. Well, and if you take one look at Nicholas Galitzine, who’s been cast for the part of the twenty-something George, you will have to admit that he’s definitely a gorgeous young man.

There’s more than just an age difference at play, though. There’s also the power differential here: Zeus is a god, and not just any god; he’s the king of the gods, their chief on Mount Olympus, the supreme god, the sky father…And while there are different versions of the Ganymede myth (in some of them Ganymede is a shepherd, for example, in others he’s a Trojan prince), one thing is always made clear in them: He’s a mere mortal. He’s no god. 

But in the myth, it’s a god who falls head over heels in love with him and passionately desires him.

Well, who is James in our story? A King, right? Someone akin to a god; he’s almighty, a ruler over his subjects in the realm.

And George is, metaphorically speaking, just a mere mortal: He comes from the lower gentry and is a nobody, basically. He has nothing: no money, no power, no status; even his pedigree is questionable. 

In short, George Villiers is a young man who has nothing going for him – except for his looks. But those are…oh, boy. In a memorable and somewhat ridiculous line, his mother Mary tells him, “If I were a man and I looked like you, I’d rule the fucking planet.” (Yes, that’s the general level of sophistication of this show, why are you asking?)

But this is, indeed, what the story is all about: George’s looks, his beauty, his charm and intelligence…all of that ensnares the King (the Zeus of our story). George is Ganymede, and King James, the supreme god up on Mount Olympus can’t resist this perfect creature.

Note the other important parallel, as well: Zeus carries off Ganymede to make him a cupbearer at the banquet of the gods on Mount Olympus.

Well, and George on the show is supposed to show up and work as cupbearer at a banquet, too – the banquet of King James and the King of Denmark. King James’s wife, the Queen of England is present, too, as are many members of the high nobility, plus, notably, the King’s current favourite, the very, very jealous Earl of Somerset. With so many crowned heads in attendance, this banquet is, for all intents and purposes, a banquet of the gods – the gods of Europe, so to speak, the gods ruling those mere mortals beneath them.

Now, here’s an important detail of the Ganymede myth that we haven’t discussed so far:

Zeus makes Ganymede his cupbearer and replaces his current cupbearer: Hebe.

This is important because the whole story of ‘Mary & George’ revolves around this exact narrative element: the replacement of one favourite by another, the swapping out of one lover for another. Replacing is exactly what this whole show is all about. Mary (and her upper-echelon allies) are trying to get the Earl of Somerset thrown out on his ear and replaced by George; they are trying to get King James to fall for the prettier and younger George, so he goes off the Earl, forgets him and gets rid of him. (And we don’t even need to go into all the machinations behind this scheme; just so you know: there are powerful people who resent the Earl of Somerset because of his influence over the King and want him replaced with someone they think would be a more pliable candidate.)

So, replacing is a strong theme in both the Ganymede myth and our period drama.

Granted, Zeus isn’t replacing a lover: Hebe is not Zeus’s mistress in the myth; she’s his daughter.

But here comes the next interesting detail: Hebe is the goddess of youth, as she is in charge of the so-called Fountain of Youth.

The show ‘Mary & George’ twists this strand of the myth around a bit: On the show, it’s the Earl of Somerset who is afraid of being replaced, swapped out for a younger lover, precisely because he feels that he’s ageing. He is terrified of the fact that the King might want some fresher meat, so any pretty young man (like George) in the King’s vicinity is an instant threat that needs to be eliminated. George’s youth and beauty is threatening to the Earl of Somerset’s position in the King’s bedchamber. (By the way, I actually laughed out loud at this plotline, just so you know: The Earl of Somerset is what? In his thirties or something? So, while he might be a few years older than the twenty-something George, it’s absolutely ridiculous to call him ‘old’. But then, this right there is actually eerily realistic for the meat market that gay hookup culture today can sometimes turn into. ‘Mary & George’ really is the Grindr show, what can you do.)

So, unlike Hebe in the myth, the Earl of Somerset is precisely not the god of youth; he’s not in his prime anymore, which is what makes him vulnerable and his position untenable.

In the Greek pantheon, the goddess Hebe and her Fountain of Youth exist for the following reason, by the way: All the Greek gods have a bit of a penchant for beautiful mortals. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, many of these myths revolve around some god or goddess falling madly in love with a mortal man or woman. But the gods are also weary of their mortals ageing! They tire of their beautiful playthings once the wrinkles start to appear, so it’s Hebe’s job to make sure these mortals are restored to permanent youth and beauty again, which is why she’s usually depicted serving them ambrosia from a chalice.

‘Mary & George’ features a similar idea, but it twists it around for its own purposes: It’s the Earl of Somerset, i.e. the one who is about to be replaced by George, who’s afraid of ageing, the implication being that it’s the new guy (George), i.e. the one who is about to replace him, who has the Fountain of Youth on his side.

In any case, everyone keeps whispering about the fact that the King might soon pick a new favourite because he may tire of the ageing and difficult Earl and look for a younger, prettier and (ostensibly) more innocent lover.

Now, here comes the brilliant part (are you ready?):

The whole scheme of having George show up at the Royal banquet as cupbearer to catch the King’s eye blows up in George and Mary’s faces.

Why?

Well, at first everything looks good: George isn’t even supposed to pour the drinks anymore, as would befit a cupbearer. They make him serve the meat course instead (and considering that this whole scheme is exactly that: a show where the King is supposed to look at the ‘fresh meat’ that is George and forget about the ageing Earl of Somerset, I must say I laughed out loud at the revelation that George’s serving duties were amended in this way; yeah, George, go serve the King his ‘meat’; feed him his ‘meat’, good Lord, this shouldn’t be so funny, now I have tears in my eyes…). Anyway…so, you can also see how important that term ‘cupbearer’ actually is in the text: George doesn’t even work as a cupbearer once he arrives at the castle and puts on the server’s uniform; he serves the meats instead, and yet the screenwriter introduced that idea of the ‘cupbearer’ earlier on in the conversation George had with his mother. The writer could have just had George as a server of meats from the get-go, without this change, yet it was apparently important to drop the word ‘cupbearer’ into the conversation. Just saying. The writer really draws a lot of attention to the term. (Because he’s hinting at the Ganymede myth here.)

Anyway…so, what happens then at the banquet is that George trips and falls in front of everyone! (Or rather he is tripped and made to fall by a jealous other servant and subsequently looks ridiculous in front of all those crowned heads.) George throws a temper tantrum, violently attacks the man who tripped him, and the jealous and clever Earl of Somerset now has a good excuse to punish George, the pretty man he doesn’t want to get any closer to the King. (The whole scene plays out in slow motion, and you can really see how the whole Court laughs at George falling face down on the floor – the whole Court…except for the King! The King isn’t laughing. The King’s pensive face says that he has already noticed George’s beauty and feels for him. Well, and the Earl of Somerset has noticed that the King has noticed…)

The Earl of Somerset then threatens to cut off George’s hand, which notably none other than King James forbids at the last moment, hinting at the fact that no matter how clumsy and hot-headed George behaved in front of the King, he has already caught his eye with his undeniable beauty. (Also, yours truly is traumatized now; threatening to cut off someone’s hand? This pianist says: Stuff of nightmares!)

That tripping of George, the way he falls is filmed in a brilliant little slow motion sequence underscored by the ethereal, then dramatic soundtrack at this point. The show puts a lot of emphasis on this fall.

Well, and the deal: There’s a version of the Ganymede myth in which Hebe, the goddess of youth, trips and falls while serving at the banquet of the gods on Mount Olympus. She falls, just like George in the story, and embarrasses herself to the great laughter and derision of all the gods assembled at the banquet. This is then the reason why she is dismissed by Zeus and why he replaces her with Ganymede. This version of the myth doesn’t come from an ancient source; it was actually invented in the 16^th century in England. (So, this is more than just a little fitting in the context we are discussing.) This story was used by the Church of England as a morality tale, telling women to dress modestly (you do understand that a woman tripping and falling sweeps up her skirts, and if she isn’t wearing anything underneath, this can be quite embarrassing indeed, right?).

Again, the show twists and turns this story around: It’s not the one who’s being replaced (Somerset) that falls face down and embarrasses himself; it’s the newcomer (George), the one who will replace the old ‘cupbearer’, who trips and then heaps shame on his head with his behaviour. The element that remained unchanged, however, is the fact that Hebe is the goddess of youth, and George is indeed the young, pretty, strong new lover showing up and trying to take over and replace the old favourite.

In a cool twist, it’s actually not the fall and embarrassment of Hebe that gets the old cupbearer (Hebe) replaced. On the show, it’s the other way around: It’s the newcomer who trips, and it’s specifically pointed out to us that this fall draws attention to him; the King has noticed him because he fell. The King has caught sight of him because George behaved inappropriately afterwards. The King has for the first time in a long while noticed another man, and he will remember him when he meets him again later on.

The script makes sure to point this out specifically by having Mary explain this to her hugely embarrassed son when he tells her about his fall.

So, while a lot of the symbolism on this show is actually quite clunky and on the nose; some of it (like this reworking of the Ganymede myth) is a bit more subtle and clever.

So…Final verdict on the show. What are my thoughts?

Well, I’m not overly convinced here, to be honest.

I could point out that I’m not massively enthusiastic about Nicholas Galitzine as an actor. (I’m not knocking him; I’m just saying…I find him okay, but not great. The difference between Galitzine’s acting and Tony Curran’s - who everyone probably remembers as Vincent van Gogh in that wonderful ‘Doctor Who’ episode and who plays King James here – is noticeable; Curran plays pain so much more believable; well, and I’ve already told you about Khalil Gharbia, so…) But then, maybe I’m unfair; maybe the part of George just doesn’t lend itself to much more than standing around, glowering and looking gloomy in a hot kind of way? Maybe that part is the reason, and it’s not Galitzine’s fault?

But I think my dissatisfaction (or rather general meh-ness about this show) doesn’t just stem from whatever one might or might not think of Galitzine’s acting chops. I think it goes deeper than that.

For one, the subtext is, well…not exactly all that sophisticated. And where it raises its head, it often runs along the lines of Mother-refusing-to-cut-the-umbilical-cord, next scene: Mother-refusing-to-cut-the-rope-her-son-has-just-hanged-himself with. That’s usually the level of subtext you get here.

Sure, you get your ‘music’ metaphor, of course (strike the viol, people). And you get your Artemisia Gentileschi painting shoved in your face in the title credits.

But it’s all a bit like that. I suppose if you like that sort of thing, you like it. And that’s okay. But it’s not what everyone thinks of when they hear the word ‘subtext’.

My main problem with the show is just a gut-level instinct type of thing, though. (And no, I’m not salty because the show doesn’t mention the fact that King James commissioned the King James Bible, which might not be the perfect Bible translation but is foundational for the English language and, all in all, is just a freaking perfect piece of literature. But I understand that you can’t fit everything in a miniseries such as this. So, no, that’s not the reason.) Here’s why I’m not overly enthusiastic about it:

In order for me to love a show, I have to be able to really feel for the characters, relate to them and most importantly be able to root for them.

Now, this is obviously much more interesting in a context where the main protagonist of the show isn’t some goody-two-shoes but actually an antagonist at the same time, i.e. an antihero. The best shows and movies are the ones where you’re constantly shocked that you’re rooting for a morally ambiguous or even deeply disturbed dark character. The best stories are the ones where you realize that you actually want this character to win even though you know that that’s morally wrong. Where you just can’t help yourself but root for them.

This could have been one of those shows…but sadly it just isn’t. At least not for me. You get all of your deeply disturbed, morally dark characters, and I suppose you’re meant to root for them, but it just never worked for me.

This show just didn’t manage to create the same fascination as, say, ‘Breaking Bad’ or ‘The Godfather’ or ‘The Sopranos’, where you know you’re rooting for the villain of the story, but you still want them to win, despite the fact that you’re sometimes shocked at your own feelings as a viewer.

Maybe it was different for you when you watched it, dear reader? (Or will be different once you do.) I don’t know. But this is what it was like for me. I just watched a lot of unlikeable characters who I didn’t really care about enough to truly feel for them.

I guess that works differently for each and everyone, and there’s just no accounting for taste. Some people will probably like this show and follow George on his descent into power-hungry madness while rooting for him all the way. I just couldn’t.

I felt twinges of sympathy for the King when he retold the sad story of his first great love (as I think everyone watching the show does; I won’t spoil it here, just watch it), but again the clunky symbolism with the buried heart was just far too cringe for me to work. Perhaps it was (or will be) different for you. And if that’s the case, then…great! All the more power to you.

Here’s another problem that I see fairly often with stories that feature this kind of ‘rise-and-fall’ narrative: The show spends a lot of time building up the character; we get a lot of his or her origin story and are shown how they slowly work their way up towards the top. But then, the descent into madness happens far too quickly and not very organically. One second the character is still very inexperienced and learning the ropes, the next you get their descent into madness and fall from grace already. The ‘rise’ and the ‘fall part’ in the rise-and-fall narrative aren’t evenly balanced.

This show definitely suffers from this fault.

The message the film tries to impart also comes far too late in the story: 

King James, we are told, was always intent on keeping peace with Spain, no matter how difficult an adversarial power and geopolitical competitor on the world stage like Spain could be, no matter how nonchalantly Spain trampled on English sensibilities and vice versa, no matter how hard the two rival powers found it to communicate with each other and how much bad blood there was between them – maintaining peace, the show makes sure to emphasize, is more important than holding grudges over personal slights. Without peace, the world descends into hell, and the blood of countless innocent people is spilled. War is the worst, most horrific thing human beings can do to each other. So, sometimes uncomfortable neighbours need to stay exactly that: uncomfortable neighbours you somehow have to try to negotiate and coexist with, uncomfortable neighbours you have to try to accept and live with, no matter how difficult that may be. The King James on the show wants to maintain peace at all costs – even at the cost of social unrest, rioting in the streets and threats to his rule and/or life. Peace is more important. (And remember that according to ground rule No. 2, shows about the past are not about the past. Period dramas reflect the present. I don’t know what D.C.Moore’s politics are, but the screenwriter and creator of ‘Mary & George’ places a lot of emphasis on this message, so I’m reasonably sure that the two 17^th-century rival powers shown in his story aren’t really supposed to represent two 17^th-century rival powers. This is the show’s political message: Peace is more important than your side feeling smug about being right. It’s an unusual message in today’s political climate, to say the least, but there you go.)

So, maintaining peace is of paramount importance to the King. Peace with a geopolitical power that adheres to a radically different ideology (Spain is Catholic, of course) is more important than being right. And the King tries to make sure things stay that way – against the rioters on the streets and the warmongers among the elites who are clamouring for war with Spain, he tries to maintain that brittle but vital peace.

But ultimately, he can’t…

You see, because towards the end of the show (and far too abruptly if you ask me), we get George’s descent into power-hungry éminence grise behind the scenes, and it’s George who breaks that vital peace with Spain and unleashes hell on earth. And he does so over a personal slight!

Petty, self-absorbed people who are out to avenge some perceived or real slight are the ones who start wars. Wars that will cost the lives of countless other people and bring devastation for generations – all because their arrogance and self-importance don’t allow them to let go of some personal humiliation or other, all because of some personal agenda.

This unusual message comes, but it comes far too late to really have an impact on the viewer. 

It’s presented rather inelegantly on the show, as well, and the only redeeming feature of these otherwise wasted scenes is the fact that we can marvel at Nicholas Galitzine with long hair, which frames his pretty face even more prettily, believe me.

But then, I think we have already established that nobody in their right mind watches period dramas for their intellectual depth: This really is a guilty pleasure. (Or ‘guilty second-hand embarrassment’? You decide.)

This really is about the opulent costumes, the fake blood, the ridiculous amounts of sex, the pheasants on the silver platters, the gilded candelabra, the castles…and the handsome young men playing the viola da gamba while hidden underneath a veil. It’s a period drama. Period.

~fin~

P.S. I’m going to tell you a little story now that will definitely earn me a night on the couch, but…oh, well, what can you do…

If you’re a paid subscriber on this little blog and you’ve ever wondered, “Why am I paying this odd person actual, real money to write me long essays about art, music and cinema?” well, then you might find this little story interesting and/or amusing:

Imagine a piano that is covered by many, many, many gigantic Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa style stacks of sheet music. Very messy stacks, I should add. Think: actual printed booklets, handwritten leafs of paper with my own music on it and a lot of photocopied stuff in various states of crumpled-up messiness. All of this stacked not neatly, but in a way that each and every stack would come crashing down the moment you were to just pull on one single sheet of paper. (Yeah, I know. I’m a slob.)

And now imagine an exasperated partner who’s constantly going nuts because of this whole tableau. “There’s dust everywhere, darling. There are actual dust balls between that Chopin stack and whatever this misshapen pyramid over there is supposed to be.”

“So what?”

“So…what?! How am I supposed to dust there? The moment I pull on one piece of paper, a whole tower of sheet music comes crashing down and–”

“Oh, my God! Why are you touching my sheet music!!! You’re not supposed to touch anything on the piano, is that clear?”

“Well, maybe if you could be bothered to do any of the housework around here, I wouldn’t have to do the dusting. And just look at it…there are actual spiderwebs in between those towers. What is this? A diorama of a city skyline for spiders?”

In short, I had to do something, or else I would have risked a dreaded sheet-music-removing incident, and Heaven knows, that’d spell civil war of the I’m-not-cooking-for-you-for-a-week kind and I don’t fancy going on an enforced diet, so…

…I bought a sheet music cabinet!

And I’m telling you this, dear readers, because I did it with your money.

I know I used to joke about you footing my wine bill, but seriously…I bought an actual piece of furniture with money from the blog. And it’s the most ingenious cabinet, too: It has three large drawers at the bottom (the type of drawers you typically file your sheet music in), but the whole upper half of the thing is actually a wine cabinet to keep your wine bottles and your wine glasses in. (Yeah, I know, sheet music and wine; that thing looks like it was custom-made for yours truly.)

Now, admittedly, it only fits a small portion of my sheet music. But I’m going to buy two other cabinets with just drawers from top to bottom in the next couple of weeks (and yes, I’ll do that with your money, too!) and then my piano lid will see the light of day for the first time in years, i.e. then I should be able to file every last piece of paper away…and I will have averted a major household crisis around here.

Many of you have kindly told me that they benefit from reading my humble scribblings on this little blog and watch TV in a different way from the way they did before, and that’s always incredibly cool to hear. It means that what I’m writing here is having some sort of impact (even though that impact is impossible to measure). But I’m so, so glad to hear that you guys are taking something away from this blog experience that has some sort of immaterial value to you.

But I’m just telling you this story, so you know that what you’re doing has an impact on me, too. A very, very easy to measure impact: There is now an actual, physical piece of furniture in my home that didn’t used to be here, and it’s just here because of you, guys. Thank you!

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you’ve saved my marriage, but you have definitely defused a ticking time bomb in my household. (And yes, I really am an awful slob and horribly, horribly lazy, but hey…now I have a sheet music cabinet that doubles as a wine cabinet, and instead of having to dust, my better half can just drink wine with me and enjoy my piano playing without getting perpetually angry at me for my messy ways. And we owe all of that to you guys!)

Thank you for sticking around. Thank you for your kind comments and lovely messages. Thank you for encouraging me and telling me I should keep writing. And thank you, thank you, thank you for my new cabinet that I’m looking at right now. Thank you for your kind donations!

(And now I’m going to have to drag my pillow over to the couch, so I can sleep there. Oops.)