Bring Up the Bodies on A Glasse of the Truthe: “The king – it would be three or four years back and to justify his first divorce – put out a book called A Glass of the Truth.”
The Mirror and the Light on New Tenures: “I have set aside Linacre’s Grammars, but now I must look into Littleton’s New Tenures, and be educated in the law.”
The Mirror and the Light on Magnificence: “The players are Collusion and Abusion, Folly and Mischief, and Magnificence himself, who proclaims: ‘I reign in my robes, I rule as me list, I drive down these dastards with a dint of my fist.’ But at length Magnificence is brought low. (Low confidence: the play's title is never stated outright in the passage — it's identified only via…”
Wolf Hall on Utopia: “This is how the book Utopia begins: friends, talking in a garden.”
Wolf Hall on Le Morte d'Arthur: “He reads Le Morte d’Arthur, and because it is the new edition they crowd around him, looking over his shoulder at the title page. ‘Here beginneth the first book of the most noble and worthy prince King Arthur sometime King of Great Britain…’”
Wolf Hall on The Golden Legend: “When the weather is too wet to hunt, Gregory sits poring over The Golden Legend; he likes the lives of the saints.”
Wolf Hall on The Book of the Courtier: “Because it is said in the book called The Courtier that in men of base degree we often see high gifts of nature.”
Wolf Hall on Chronicles: “And here is Froissart done into English, which His Majesty himself bade me undertake.”
Wolf Hall on The Freedom of a Christian: “The leather-seller had possession of Luther’s Liberty of a Christian Man, the text copied out in his own hand.”