Mark Smeaton is born into inauspicious circumstances; his father is a poor carpenter, which, for most, would set one\u2019s destiny in stone. However, he\u2019s also a prodigiously talented musician\u2014a composer, singer, and lutenist\u2014and becomes a court musician for the king, who admires his abilities. He impresses Anne Boleyn as well, a beautiful woman of \u201csilken faultlessness\u201d who becomes the monarch\u2019s second wife, and as her star rises, so does his. However, after Anne falls out of favor with the king, his own status is threatened, and he finds himself ensnared in a plot, manufactured by the king\u2019s cunning chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, to discard her. Meanwhile, Mark engages in an imprudent flirtation with Anne\u2019s cousin Madge Shelton, who lives in a rarefied world that no amount of success would ever allow him to enter\u2014a predicament he grasps with both sadness and pragmatic resignation, captured intelligently by author Johnson: \u201cI wasn\u2019t a friend of the king. I was a lowborn commoner who was perhaps exceptionally skilled in music. In the eyes of the world, my worth had barely changed even with my new duties and responsibilities.\u201d The story is told from the perspectives of both Madge and Mark, and she also resolutely accepts that their love is a mere \u201cfairy tale.\u201d The author astutely depicts a seedy world in which \u201cpolitics seeped into every act\u201d; even as Mark becomes famous and wealthy, Mark realizes the precariousness of his fortune, and the way in which he is \u201cfloating above a cesspool of terror and death.\u201d The protagonist is a real historical figure, though little is known about him, which makes him a perfect point of departure for a dramatic and engrossing reimagining of history. It\u2019s an era that both historians and novelists have extensively covered, but Johnson\u2019s work remains an original and worthwhile effort. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Smeaton is born into inauspicious circumstances; his father is a poor carpenter, which, for most, would set one\u2019s destiny in stone. However, he\u2019s also a prodigiously talented musician\u2014a composer, singer, and lutenist\u2014and becomes a court musician for the king, who admires his abilities. He impresses Anne Boleyn as well, a beautiful woman of \u201csilken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}