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Writing Dialogue
for Scripts
 ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY

Creating Compelling Characters for Film, TV, Theatre and Radio,

Rib Davis
Novel Writing, Romesh Gunesekera and A. L. Kennedy
Writing for TV and Radio, Sue Teddern and Nick Warburton
Writing Dialogue
for Scripts
4th Edition

Rib Davis

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
 Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA

www.bloomsbury.com

BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury

Publishing Plc

© Rib Davis, 2016

Rib Davis has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on

or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: PB: 978-1-4742-6007-7

ePDF: 978-1-4742-6009-1
ePub: 978-1-4742-6008-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Cover design: Hugh Cowling

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

 CONTENTS

Thanks vi
Note on the text vii
Introduction viii

1 How do we talk? 1

2 The characters’ agendas 27

3 Naturalistic dialogue 47

4 Don’t make it work too hard! 59

5 Beyond the literal 87

6 Heightened naturalism 109

7 Tone, pace and conflict 123

8 Highly stylized dialogue 143

9 The character tells the story 157

10 Comic dialogue 181

11 Documentary dialogue 201

12 Reworking the dialogue 215

13 Last words 221

Index 223
 THANKS

I would like to thank my daughter, television script editor Harriet

for a number of invaluable pointers; the many students on the MA
courses in television scriptwriting at both De Montfort and City
Universities as well as on Write Theatre courses, for their responses
to my teaching in this area; my publishers for their very useful
feedback – and for their patience – and finally, for all her support,
my partner Lourdes.
 NOTE ON THE TEXT

With this edition I have once again taken the opportunity to

refer to many scripts that have emerged over the last few years
as illuminating examples of various aspects of scripted dialogue.
As ever, they are extremely varied, from American Hustle to The
Grand Budapest Hotel, from Peep Show to Breaking Bad, from
Earthquakes in London to London Road. We can learn from the
dialogue of all of them, along with that of classics such as Secrets
and Lies or Fawlty Towers.
The art of scriptwriting, for whatever medium, does not stand
still. Thus in this edition I have particularly drawn attention to
recent trends, such as the vogue for multi-narrative scripts, and the
rise of verbatim theatre.
As in previous editions I would like to make one comment about
authorship, with reference to film. I have decided to continue the
practice adopted since the second edition of this book and for
my sister publication in this series, recently revised as Creating
Compelling Characters for Film, TV, Theatre and Radio, in which
for film (as for other script media) I credited the writer rather than
the director. This is not some attempt to erase the director; it is
simply an acknowledgement that these books are essentially about
writing, not directing, so it is the work of the writer that is under
discussion and therefore it is the writer who should be identified.
 INTRODUCTION

Most dramatic scripts consist mainly of dialogue. Of course, there

are also stage directions – a line, a paragraph, or at the very most
a page or two – and an eccentric writer might even digress to talk
about the meaning of the text, but generally a script will consist
predominantly of dialogue. This applies whatever medium the
script is intended for, whether theatre, radio, film or television.
In film or television there may be whole sequences – perhaps held
together by music – in which there is no dialogue at all, while in
the theatre, too, there may be sections dominated by visual action;
but generally it is the dialogue that cements a script, that holds
it together. This book takes a microscope to that cement, and
then uses the findings to provide not only some insights into how
dialogue works, but also a better understanding of how to go about
writing it.
Here we set out, then, to study the writing of dialogue as it exists
across the script media. There are of course differences of approach
and usage from one medium to another, but the types of dialogue
used in each medium have much more in common with each other
than they have differences.
Yet dialogue in scripts is utterly entwined with the other
elements of the work – the characterization, the plot, the action,
the structure, the visual effects, the music … How is it possible to
extricate the dialogue from all this and talk about it separately? It
can be done, but with some difficulty. In his book Aspects of the
Novel, E. M. Forster notes the problem when trying to disentangle
‘story’ from other elements of novel-writing; yet he does conclude
that somehow one might pull out what he calls this ‘tapeworm’
of story, even if other things tend to cling on to it. My experience
is very similar. It is possible to talk about dialogue, even if along
the way one has to continually refer to all the other bits and
pieces that one finds still attached to it. After all, without a plot,
 INTRODUCTION ix

characterization and the rest, dialogue alone is of very little use to

us. It always has to be placed in its context.
There is a great deal of advice for the scriptwriter in this book.
After the opening chapters, which look at how conversation works
in ‘real life’, that advice is closely linked to examples from real
scripts. These extracts are analyzed in some detail, as there is much
for the scriptwriter to learn from the example set by others. Most
of the extracts chosen are from scripts of the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries, but there are also a few quotations from earlier
times, since in some respects the modern writer can learn as much
from Shakespeare and Jonson as from Stoppard and Tarantino. In
addition I have used extracts from a number of my own scripts –
not because I believe that they are in the same league as the work
of the writers mentioned above, but simply because I do have a
very clear idea of what I was intending to achieve in my own work.
In one well-known 200-page book on screenwriting, just half
a page is devoted to dialogue. The author presents four purposes
of dialogue, pointing out that many writers find dialogue the most
difficult part of their work, but then adding that good dialogue will
come with experience. While this attitude seems inadequate to the
point of being cavalier, it is true that to some extent the writing of
dialogue may be ‘caught rather than taught’. Writers who have ‘a
good ear for dialogue’ – those who pick up the inflections of the
speech of others with apparently effortless ease – obviously have a
head start. However, just as a musician who may not have perfect
pitch may nevertheless be trained to identify and notate harmonies,
rhythms and melodies – and then may also be trained in how to
use them in composition – so may the writer be assisted in learning
how to listen to dialogue and how to write it. We can learn what
to consciously listen out for in everyday speech – all the subtle ways
in which it functions – and we can learn too how to use dialogue
in scripts most effectively.
Ultimately, of course, a writer learns most by the hard road of
experience, trial and error (particularly error), but this book should
at least point out some of the pot-holes and cul-de-sacs – and
perhaps a few bypasses – in advance, and should help to make the
journey a little less painful.
x
 1
How do we talk?

Writing and speaking

When we are scripting dialogue we are, of course, scripting speech.
That speech is nearly always fictional – it will hardly ever comprise
the exact words that anyone has actually said on any specific
occasion (although there are exceptions, which are examined in
a later chapter). Yet whatever the style of scripted dialogue used
– and there are many – it will always relate in some way to how
people talk in ‘real life’. The writer, then, needs to have a very clear
understanding of how speech and conversation work. So, although
most of this book concentrates upon aspects of the scripting of
dialogue, in this chapter the focus is on the raw material: the ways
in which we speak in real life.
We tend to take speech for granted. We want to say things, so we
say them; we need to listen to people’s replies, so we do. Generally,
we don’t think too much about it. Unlike written language, with its
rules about clauses and punctuation, speech is not generally taught
but rather is acquired unconsciously, and as a result we tend to
underestimate just how complex and varied it actually is. For many
of us, it is only when we try to reproduce speech – as dialogue in a
script – that we realize it is not quite as straightforward as we had
assumed. Of course, there may be very good reasons for a scriptwriter
not to reproduce in its entirety language as we commonly speak it –
and we will come on to many of these reasons later – but that does
not detract from the fact that it is important to be aware of how
conversation actually functions before setting out to script dialogue.
2 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Spoken language is very different from written language. Even

written language that is relatively informal in tone (such as that
used in this book) is still a very long way from language as we use
it in everyday conversation. So what, exactly, is the difference?
The basic point is that conversational language, unlike written
language, is a mess – albeit a mess that we are all entirely used to
dealing with. Chatting together, for example, we will often leave
sentences unfinished, or realize half-way through that there is a
better way of putting something, so after a false start we begin
again:

We came along the – it was on the A27 and we caught up with

them near Brighton …

We are improvising, and revising our thoughts – or at least our way

of expressing them – as we go along.

‘Running repairs’ to speech

This improvising doesn’t seem strange at all, but perfectly natural.
Indeed, the individual who speaks without any hesitations or
revisions whatsoever will probably speak slowly and may well have
a tendency to be pedantic; they might be seen as rather tedious, or
at best as lacking in spontaneity. Conversation normally does have
a strong element of spontaneity, of improvising, of changing things
as we go along; written language, on the other hand (putting aside
the interesting phenomena of blogging, texting, and to a lesser
extent emailing), has usually had these elements ironed out in the
drafting and redrafting. With the exception of a formal speech,
such as in the House of Commons or at a business dinner (where
incidentally the speech normally starts life as something written
anyway, so it is in fact written language being spoken), there is
usually no drafting or redrafting of spoken language.
To go back to the example given above, we are being told about
the car trip verbally, not through written language, so it might
continue in this way:

… caught up with them near Brighton, yeah, near Brighton.

 How do we talk? 3

Terrible traffic, and pouring with rain. And it was getting dark
by now, too. Could hardly make out which was their car.

Here we have one sentence without a main verb, another sentence

without a subject, and a repetition which adds nothing new
at all – yet when spoken, it all sounds normal. On the page,
however, it looks odd, since we are used to language on the page
being neater, more controlled, more correct. The problem is that
although dialogue is spoken, dialogue in scripts is at the same
time written language – written language designed to sound like
spoken language. In the process of putting the words down on to
the page we may find ourselves tempted to tidy them up, to make
them appear less awkward on paper. In other words, we may feel
the urge to make written dialogue look more like the rest of written
language. Thus, if the verbal report on the journey were part of a
script, instead of the above we might write:

The traffic was terrible and it was pouring with rain … We could
hardly make out which was their car.

There is nothing wrong with this as a piece of dialogue. Many

people on many occasions might well express themselves in this
way; others on other occasions, though, would speak in the
first, less ‘correct’ way; others again might speak in a manner
somewhere between the two or, in stylistic terms, more extreme
than either of them.

Interruptions and simultaneous speech

In conversation, the improvisation of speech often leads to sentences
being unfinished or restarted; to verbs, subjects or other parts of
speech being missed out; and to words or ideas being unnecessarily
repeated. Additionally there is all the messiness which arises from
the fact that there is more than one person taking part. Talking
together, we continually interrupt and speak across each other. We
may have been taught that these things are not polite, but in fact
we do them all the time, and very often they do not feel impolite at
all. If when you speak you are listened to in silence until you have
4 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

finished speaking, the effect can be a very awkward one – you can
feel almost as though you were being interviewed, or it can seem
that the listener is not interested, or doesn’t understand, or perhaps
is even irritated or bored. So very often the listener will interrupt
with ‘Yes …’, ‘Of course …’, or ‘Exactly the same happened to
me …’ to show at the very least that they are still listening, and
hopefully also that they recognize the truth of what is being said.
The listener may interrupt with ‘No, I don’t think so …’ if he or
she disagrees, but even this interruption is not usually taken to be
rude. Frequently one of these interjections will just be a second
or two of simultaneous speech, with the first speaker continuing,
while at other points in the conversation the interruption will lead
to the new speaker taking over so that the speeches of the two
individuals overlap for a few words. Very often we will anticipate
when another person is coming to the end of what they want
to say and, rather than wait for the very end, we will come in a
second or two early (after all, otherwise the other person might
just carry on speaking!). Usually this does not seem at all impolite;
it is a perfectly normal element of everyday talk. When we write
dialogue, however, this is another element which we might find
ourselves perhaps unconsciously tidying up. Of course, a writer
may have good reasons for doing just that (and more will be said
about this in later chapters), but here we need to recognize that
the raw material – everyday conversation – is more messy than we
had probably appreciated. It is certainly much messier than written
dialogue, and a major reason for this is the interaction between
speakers.
Of course, while much simultaneous speech is not impolite some
of it certainly is. The rudeness of Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of
It is not just a matter of what he says (his very first words in the
series are, ‘No, he’s useless. He’s absolutely useless. He’s as useless
as a marzipan dildo’), but also when he says it – he continually
makes his comments across the speeches of others, when he is both
on and off the phone. But he is not alone – in this series multiple
simultaneous conversations are the norm.
One of the themes of David Mamet’s extraordinary play Oleanna
is the difficulty experienced in genuinely communicating. The play
begins with a phone call:

john (on phone) And what about the land. (Pause) The land.
 How do we talk? 5

And what about the land? (Pause) What about it? (Pause) No.
I don’t understand. Well, yes, I’m I’m … no, I’m sure it’s signif
… I’m sure it’s significant. (Pause) Because it’s significant to
mmmmmm … did you call Jerry? (Pause) Because … no, no, no,
no, no. What did they say …? Did you speak to the real estate
… where is she …? Well, well, all right. Where are her notes?
Where are the notes we took with her. (Pause) I thought you
were? No. No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, I just thought that
I saw you, when we were there … what …? I thought I saw you
with a pencil. WHY NOW? is what I’m say … well, that’s why I
say ‘call Jerry.’ Well, I can’t right now, be … no, I didn’t schedule
any … Grace: I didn’t … I’m well aware … Look: Look. Did you
call Jerry? Will you call Jerry … ? Because I can’t now. I’ll be
there, I’m sure I’ll be there in fifteen, in twenty. I intend to. No,
we aren’t going to lose the, we aren’t going to lose the house.
Look: Look, I’m not minimizing it. The ‘easement’. Did she
say ‘easement’? (Pause) What did she say; is it a ‘term of art’,
are we bound by it … I’m sorry … (Pause) are: we: yes. Bound
by … Look: (He checks his watch.) before the other side goes
home, all right? ‘a term of art.’ Because: that’s right. (Pause) The
yard for the boy. Well, that’s the whole … Look: I’m going to
meet you there … (He checks his watch.) Is the realtor there?
All right, tell her to show you the basement again. Look at this
because … Bec … I’m leaving in, I’m leaving in ten or fifteen
… Yes. No, no, I’ll meet you at the new … That’s a good. If he
thinks it’s nec … you tell Jerry to meet … All right? We aren’t
going to lose the deposit. All right? I’m sure it’s going to be …
(Pause) I hope so. (Pause) I love you, too. (Pause) I love you,
too. As soon as … I will.

(He hangs up.)

Phone calls are often poorly presented in scripts, with the person
‘at this end’ artificially repeating the unheard speeches for the
benefit of the audience. But not here. Despite only hearing one
side of the conversation we gain the gist of the meaning – and feel
the tension of the situation – at the same time as being aware of
all the general messiness of this verbal interaction. There are the
repetitions, the half-made sentences and even half-made words, the
misunderstandings and rephrasings, the false starts and hesitations
6 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

and, above all, the overlappings and interruptions. This is dialogue

that is full of running repairs.
In the Mamet example, all the mess of conversation is written
into the dialogue itself. At one point in the play Our Country’s
Good, Timberlake Wertenbaker comes up with a different solution.
In Scene Six, which involves no fewer than ten speaking characters,
rather than attempt to commit to paper all the overlaps and simul-
taneities of speech which would occur, Wertenbaker presents the
main dialogue only – but invites improvisations from the cast with
the following stage direction:

It is late at night, the men have been drinking, tempers are

high. They interrupt each other, overlap, make jokes under and
over the conversation but all engage in it with the passion for
discourse and thought of eighteenth-century man.

More commonly, however, the messiness of dialogue is written

into the script, so that a number of writers have developed
particular styles of presentation for interruptions and overlapping
speech. Caryl Churchill, for example, uses the slash, /, to indicate
the point at which the next speech starts; an asterisk, *, is used to
match up the point where one speech overlaps with another, when
the two speeches are not consecutive on the page; and finally,
when one speech continues right across another, she simply leaves
the first adrift with no punctuation at all where the other begins,
and then continues it without an upper-case start. All these are
present in the following extract from her play Top Girls. A group
of prominent women from various periods of history are in a
restaurant together, looking at the menu, while the waitress stands
next to them:

isabella Yes, I forgot all my Latin. But my father was the

mainspring of my life and when he died I was so grieved. I’ll
have the chicken, please, / and the soup.
nijo Of course you were grieved. My father was saying his
prayers and he dozed off in the sun. So I touched his knee
to rouse him. ‘I wonder what will happen,’ he said, and
then he was dead before he finished the sentence. / If he died
saying
marlene What a shock.
 How do we talk? 7

nijo his prayers he would have gone straight to heaven. /

Waldorf salad.
joan Death is the return of all creatures to God.
nijo I shouldn’t have woken him.
joan Damnation only means ignorance of the truth. I was
always attracted by the teaching of John the Scot, though he
was inclined to confuse / God and the world.
isabella Grief always overwhelmed me at the time.
marlene What I fancy is a rare steak. Gret?
isabella I am of course a member of the / Church of
England.*
gret Potatoes.
marlene I haven’t been to church for years. / I like Christmas
carols.
isabella Good works matter more than church attendance.
marlene Make that two steaks and a lot of potatoes. Rare.
But I don’t do good works either.

Here, then, we have an excellent example of scripted interruptions

and simultaneous speech without a hint of anyone being impolite.
These overlappings are perfectly normal – and in many ways even
positive – elements of our everyday conversations. (Incidentally,
the quotations in this book are presented in forms of layout
which resemble the printed version of each script respectively.
These forms do vary somewhat from one script to another, so the
variations have been reflected in this text.)
At the start of Earthquakes in London Mike Bartlett gives
similar instruction to those of Caryl Churchill above, but adds two
more, stating that a speech with no written dialogue indicates a
character deliberately remaining silent and a blank space between
speeches in the dialogue indicates a silence equal to the length of
the space. The former of these is becoming increasingly common
in script media generally, while the latter is far less common, and
really restricted to some play scripts.
8 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Helping out
Sometimes our interruptions are not made in order to agree or
disagree, nor are they made to change the subject: they are to finish
off someone else’s speech. Some individuals are particularly prone
to this, always trying to anticipate the ending of a sentence and
leaping in just before the speaker has had time to finish. This can
be an extremely irritating character trait – one which can of course
be reproduced in scripted dialogue, often to humorous effect:

sam So, Mr Parks, we are going to have to block the –

parks Drains.
sam Air vent. For the time being, while we reconstruct that
part of the wall. Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t use
the –
parks The toilet.
sam The toilet. No, no you can use the toilet. It doesn’t mean
you can’t use the fan –
parks Fan, yes.
sam The fan, which works –
parks When you pull the cord.
sam Which works quite efficiently. When you pull the cord, of
course.
parks Yes.

The character who wants to demonstrate that he or she has

understood a speech by jumping in with the last word may not,
in fact, understand very much at all. Similar humorous patterns
may be set by an individual who habitually repeats the last word
or phrase spoken. Couples who have lived together for a long
time often slip into these sorts of habits of speech, either repeating
the other’s line (sometimes in an apparent show of subservience)
or finishing the other’s phrase (sometimes out of impatience or a
desire to show control). There is a wonderful example of this in
one of the pseudo-interviews with an old couple in the film When
Harry Met Sally (writer, Nora Ephron).
Each of these aspects of dialogue, whether comic or not, is
very far from formal, written speech: again, it is the interaction of
characters which is most important.
 How do we talk? 9

Verbal shorthand
Very often, when people speaking together know each other
well, or when the speaker is aware that the listener has a
particular knowledge of the topic under discussion, a type of
verbal shorthand is used. The most obvious example is technical
or professional jargon. At an airport information desk, one
employee might ask a colleague if she knows the ETA of BD148;
overhearing this, we might well know that ETA means Expected
Time of Arrival but would be much less likely to know that
BD148 refers to a flight by British Midland (though we would
probably assume that BD stood for some airline or other). Every
workplace has its jargon and abbreviations, with limited and
varied access for outsiders.
Scriptwriters have always delighted in playing with jargon,
frequently satirizing the pretentiousness of the language and
pointing up the hollowness behind all the impressive-sounding
words. An outstanding modern example is Caryl Churchill’s
Serious Money, set in the money markets of London; but Ben
Jonson, too, was exploring how greed and emptiness can be
wonderfully disguised by jargon-laden language in The Alchemist.
In the following extract, Subtle and his assistant Face are in the
process of fooling Mammon to believe that through a marvellous
knowledge of alchemy they are able to turn base metals into gold,
though Mammon’s friend Surly is not convinced:

subtle Look well to the register

And let your heat, still, lessen by degrees,
To the aludels.
face Yes, sir.
subtle Did you look
O’ the bolt’s head yet?
face Which, on D, sir?
subtle Ay.
What’s the complexion?
face Whitish.
subtle Infuse vinegar,
To draw his volatile substance, and his tincture:
And let the water in glass E be filtered,
10 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

And put into the gripe’s egg. Lute him well;

And leave him closed in balneo.
face I will, sir.
(Exit face)
surly What a brave language here is? Next to canting?

We do not know why the heat should be lessened, or what aludels

are, or volatile substance, tincture, gripe’s egg, luting or balneo.
Neither would the vast majority of Jonson’s original audience
(although just as Caryl Churchill uses the authentic language of
the City, so Jonson’s terms are all taken from books on alchemy
current at the time). We are not meant to understand jargon when
it is presented in this way; its purpose is to obscure meaning, and
it does that very well! Of course, if there is no respite from such
jargon in a whole script, then it might become tiresome; its use
must not obstruct the audience’s appreciation of characterization,
plot or other aspects of the production.
While we tend to reserve the term ‘jargon’ for words arising in
a context of specialization – at work, for example, or in sport – we
often use types of verbal shorthand in everyday social contexts, too:

jack How much were they asking?

phil Hundred and twenty thousand. Yeah well exactly.
jack And what did Judy say when –
phil (overlapping) Well not at that price. And outside London –
jack She’s always said –
phil (cutting in) Exactly.
jack So are you going to keep looking?
phil I suppose so.

This piece of conversation depends heavily on the shared knowledge

and shared assumptions of the two speakers. They both know
that Judy, the partner of Phil, doesn’t really want to move out of
London, and certainly not to somewhere more expensive. They
only need to remind each other of these things, not to state them
fully. Thus the ‘Yeah well exactly,’ which Phil adds to his first line
is a response to the expression on Jack’s face, as well as the shared
knowledge of the expected reaction of Judy. As before, we see
here a conversation that looks odd on the page but which reflects
language as we actually speak it.
 How do we talk? 11

Conversational ping-pong
Another way in which we may be tempted to turn the messiness
of dialogue into something neater is by writing what might
be termed ‘conversational ping-pong’. In this form of fictional
dialogue, every topic is clearly introduced (the serve). There is
then a series of speeches, each a logical response to the previous
one (the rally); a new topic is only opened when the previous
point has been finished with (the ball has gone out of play and
there is a new serve). Conversational ping-pong is probably the
most common form of poor dialogue produced by inexperienced
scriptwriters.
So what is wrong with it? In small doses, nothing, but very
often we don’t talk in this way. In normal conversation more than
one topic is frequently being dealt with at the same time (which in
table-tennis terms would mean two balls in play simultaneously!);
any sort of predictable statement-and-response or question-and-
answer pattern is broken up by all the factors already referred
to, as well as a number of others. These include: dealing with
misunderstandings which may arise, or not dealing with them and
having the misunderstandings develop further; the occurrence of
silences within conversation; a speaker going off at a tangent; or
one speaker verbally responding, not to the words of another, but
to some physical action. There is also the particular agenda and
state of mind brought to the scene by each participant (more of
this in the following chapter), which is likely to produce something
even more complicated. In short, then, conversation is complex,
and can rarely be reflected accurately by dialogue of the continual
ping-pong variety.
It should also be pointed out that the pattern and style of
any conversation is not just a product of the circumstances of
that moment and that particular interaction, but is fundamen-
tally affected by the background and individual character traits
of each person present: dialogue is inextricably bound up with
characterization.
12 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

‘Oh I say’ and ‘Ee by gum’

While all English speakers obviously speak the same language,
every single one of us speaks it differently. Some characteristics of
speech are specific to the individual, but others are the result of
their place of origin, class, education and occupation – to which
we might add ethnicity and other factors. An individual’s speech
patterns will to some extent betray each of these elements, as well
as some more personal attributes.
I began one play, A Few Kind Words, with the following speech:

Allus bin willin’ te mek an effort, all o’ my life, when it wor

needed. Which is more un can be said fer some folk. But yer got
to. Yo mek your birr of an effort, tha meks tha’n an’ that’s ha yer
goo on. Well it wor in mah day. Can’t see uz ’ow it can change.

This, clearly, is not ‘standard English’, and it certainly demands

to be spoken in an accent which is not ‘received pronunciation’.
The character speaking, Tommy, is a retired miner from Ilkeston,
Derbyshire. I chose to write his part phonetically (though the BBC
then unsuccessfully attempted to have me write it out again more
conventionally) because I could foresee the difficulties that might
arise for an actor if this character’s speeches were presented with
standard spelling:

Always been willing to make an effort, all of my life, when it

were needed …

The idea of having an actor try to turn this conventionally spelt

language into that particular type of Derbyshire speech did not
appeal to me. But it is not just a matter of the accent which marks
out this language; there is also the vocabulary – ‘tha meks tha’n’
– which makes it Derbyshire speech of a certain sort. A little later
Tommy refers to ‘wock’:

… thee’d no pride in wock, didn’t know what real wock wor.

The dialect may already have given us a good idea of where

Tommy comes from (as well as his class, education and possible
 How do we talk? 13

occupation), but to listeners from that part of the Midlands

the word ‘wock’ will sound a note of particular authenticity. A
middle-aged person there at that time would say something like
‘wairk’; a younger person from the same place might say ‘werk’
(with a longer vowel sound than the southern ‘work’); but only an
old person would persist with ‘wock’. If one is going to write in
dialect, it has to be done properly!
There may be other occasions, when dealing with better-known
dialects such as cockney, on which it is sufficient in terms of accent
simply to put in a stage direction – for example, In strong cockney
accent – and then to make sure that the vocabulary and phrase-
ology are, in fact, cockney. Putting apostrophes for every ‘’asn’t’
and ‘wha’’ can in fact become tedious, though in the case of a very
strong but less well-known dialect such as that of an old Ilkeston
man I believe that the phonetic spelling was justified. (However, as
the agent Julian Friedmann has pointed out to me, writing phonet­
ically in dialect is not advisable for the writer who is not already
established: initially it can be very off-putting for a script-reader or
prospective director.)
Whatever the difficulties of presentation on the page, then,
there are clearly recognizable differences in speech arising from
the background of each individual. Good written dialogue will
certainly reflect these differences. What must be avoided, however
(except in certain forms of comic writing, and even this has its
limits), is the clichéd version of these differences, in which all
upper-class characters pepper their speech with phrases such
as ‘Oh I say!’, and anyone from north of Watford throws in a
frequent ‘Ee by gum!’ for good measure. We must be aware of
many more subtle mixes, such as the language used by the upper-
class Lancastrian – neither Eton nor Coronation Street – or the
speech of the well-educated middle-class woman who now lives
on a working-class estate and has taken on some (but only some)
of the speech characteristics of her adopted milieu (not that she
would feel comfortable now using the word ‘milieu’). Perhaps
she speaks in one way with her local friends and in another with
certain members of her family. She may also speak rather differ-
ently when in male or in female company.
14 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The gender gap

Many of us will be vaguely aware of differences in conversational
style between men and women – a contrast which is probably
stronger when the company is all-female or all-male. Of course,
whichever gender we belong to, we cannot have had first-hand
experience of a conversation between members exclusively of the
opposite sex. We may suspect how such conversations might go,
but we cannot be sure. Some academic research, however, helps
us out here, and indeed quite a lot of research has been conducted
on the differences between male and female types of speech1,
examining both style and content. Again, while stereotypes are to
be avoided (once more with the possible exception of their use in
comedy), the consensus does seem to be that in general – and with
many exceptions – there is a tendency for women to use language
more as a tool of co-operation, less competitively than men. They
may use it more to support each other and less as a means of
control than men (women will tend to make more supportive inter-
ruptions than men); and more to genuinely ‘connect’ and less to
impress with status than men (this is a paraphrase of a summary
by Janet Holmes2). Of course, we will all know of many occasions
when women have not conformed to these generalizations (starting
with the first British female Prime Minister), and there are many
of both genders who appear consistently to have contradicted the
research – but it is nevertheless useful to bear the generalizations
in mind. If there were not some truth in them, then surely all those
comedies based upon the differences between men and women (and
particularly their styles of socializing) would cease to be so funny.

Social codes
Our conversations all take place within certain social conven-
tions, and these have a major bearing upon how any piece of
dialogue develops. The conventions are not entirely rigid – they
vary according to class, background and situation – but there are
certain generalizations which can be made. For example, in a group
conversation in a pub, say, or at a dinner party, anecdotes will
often be told in accordance with the unwritten rule that everyone
 How do we talk? 15

should be given the opportunity to tell a story on a particular topic

– holiday disasters, giving up smoking or whatever; we take it in
turns. Keeping to this rule is normal; in a script, however, a point
may be made by the breaking of such a rule. Perhaps a character
is not given the chance to contribute an anecdote, or perhaps he or
she can’t think of anything to say. This is an example of conveying
something not through the meaning of the words, but through the
form of the dialogue.
Similarly, there are conventions which generally apply to the
tone of any given conversation, or at least to parts of a conver-
sation. If people are speaking in a jokey way, then a sudden
change of tone to the extremely serious might well be considered
an irritation or embarrassment. The reverse – someone throwing
a joke into an intense conversation about, say, death or politics –
could be even more of a gaffe. Again, we have dialogue conveying
something through the breaking of codes rather than through the
meanings of words. In the television comedy series Friends, much
of the humour associated with the character of Phoebe arises out of
just such breaking of conventions – she never seems to quite under-
stand the rules, so her odd interjections (trying to catch the tone
but not quite succeeding) are both charming and funny. Similarly,
in the series The Royle Family, Mam continually arrives in conver-
sations from utterly unexpected directions; often she seems to
come from a world of her own. In other scripts, when a character
breaks the conventions of conversation it might show arrogance,
or rebelliousness: how we handle codes through dialogue is central
to characterization.
One excellent example of a character whose dialogue contin-
ually clashes with the social codes of those around her is the
detective Saga Norén in The Bridge (writer, Hans Rosenfeldt).
How she speaks is entirely a reflection of her character; indeed,
the whole of the first series ultimately revolves around whether
or not she is capable of telling a lie. She is always direct, always
straightforward. There is virtually no subtext. This ought to be a
recipe for dull dialogue but it isn’t. This is partly because many of
her speeches are (unintentionally) funny. When she wants sex, even
from someone she has only just met, she simply asks ‘Do you want
sex?’ with a blank expression, and it takes our breath away. But
more importantly, the dialogue works because of the context. If
everyone in the piece spoke as she does it might indeed be dull, but
16 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

she is the only one, and in that context there is a continual fasci-
nation in her trying to decode what those around her say, and in
those around her coming to terms with how she expresses herself.
There is a similar linguistic disjunction in The Imitation Game,
in which Alan Turing finds difficulty understanding what others
mean because they hardly ever express themselves directly, whereas
he does, to a painful degree. As Turing comments, language is
in fact a code – just as much as the other codes which come to
fascinate him.

Culture clash
The differences in speech between Tommy in the extract from A Few
Kind Words given above, and the speech of the other characters in
the play (particularly that of his own well-educated daughter, who
has moved further south) reflect major social differences between
them; indeed, these are a very important thematic element of the
play. Yet the differences may be even greater than this when they
are between characters who come from cultures as distinct as, for
example, British African-Caribbean and British Asian, or between
English speakers who were born and live in other countries –
whether Singapore or New Zealand, the USA or India.
Each of these English-speaking cultures has its own vocabulary,
grammar and style of speech. But it goes beyond this. For example,
I have considerable experience of socializing with Latin Americans
who speak English as a second language, and have learned that
their rules of conversation are rather different from ours. When
a new person – a Latin American, say – is brought along to an
English group, that person is introduced to the others but may
then be left to sink or swim – he or she has to some extent to battle
to make space in the conversation, to make a contribution. This
is not seen as rude by the English: the new person is left to accli-
matize to the group, and to pay them too much attention might be
seen as pressurizing, or perhaps patronizing. To a Latin American,
however, being treated in this way seems extremely impolite. Their
social conventions (perhaps mirroring their wider cultural values,
which also differ from ours) dictate that when a new person is
introduced to a group, then much of the talk is directed to that
 How do we talk? 17

person; throughout the conversation strenuous efforts are made to

ensure that the new person is included.
The scriptwriter must take note of these culture clashes in social
conventions. Where a Latin American in an English group might
feel upset at being almost ignored (not understanding the codes), an
English person in a Latin American group may gain an inflated idea
of their own importance, not realizing that the lavish attention they
are receiving is a matter of social convention and does not neces-
sarily reflect tremendous interest in them as an individual. This is
one cultural clash in use of language of which I am aware, but there
are certainly many more of which I am not aware between these
two cultures, and of course there are countless more between all
the other English-speaking cultures and subcultures.
As has already been noted, the development of any conversation
is heavily dependent on social codes, and these we generally take
for granted, as we tend to operate within groups from our own
culture and subculture. The danger for the scriptwriter lies in
making the assumption that people from other cultures or subcul-
tures operate within the same rules. We may notice the different
accent, vocabulary, phraseology, and even the different ways of
constructing sentences, but we must also make ourselves aware of
the social codes which are in operation, if our scripted dialogue for
characters from cultures and subcultures other than our own is to
be convincing.

Our fingerprints of speech

We have looked at similarities in use of speech arising from
similarities of background, yet if we think of the person who is
most similar to ourselves – perhaps a relative or a best friend
– and mentally try to recreate that person’s style of speech, we
will realize that despite everything we have in common with that
person, their style of speech is still not the same as our own. This
is the case despite our being of the same gender, and despite all the
similarities that there may be in our background or occupation.
One individual may have a tendency to speak in short, clipped
phrases; another may ramble on in sentences which seem to go on
for ever and where the sense occasionally gets lost. One may have
18 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

a habit of hardly ever finishing a sentence, as each new idea is more

interesting than the one she is currently expressing. One may be
hesitant, almost stuttering and full of ‘ums’ and ‘ers’; another may
always seem to speak with complete fluency. One may delight in
being playful and humorous with language; another may only ever
be literal. One may slip into elaborate storytelling at every oppor-
tunity; another may use language primarily as a tool with which to
analyze every concept. One may use the ambiguity of language to
distort ideas and manipulate people; another may only ever speak
plainly and directly. One may continually interrupt; another may
hardly ever do so. The list is almost endless.
And then there are the pet words and phrases. We all have prefer-
ences for particular words, sometimes to the point of exasperating
those we are closest to. Our preferences are not always so obvious,
however. I have realized (through my writing and re-drafting)
that I tend to use the word ‘just’ a great deal – although not to
the extent, I hope, that anyone else has ever noticed it! When it
comes to pet phrases, some of us use the same phrase again and
again even within one speech. ‘As I say’ and ‘of course’ continually
occur, while ‘you know’, either alone or as part of a longer phrase,
is equally popular. I was with a cab driver recently who finished
almost every sentence with ‘… you know what I’m saying’, and
he still managed to work in ‘Know what I mean’ an impressive
number of times as well! One friend of mine continually punctuates
her speeches with, ‘Well this is it’, while another often repeats the
less common ‘It’s like everything else …’. Many of these phrases
are slipped in, along with ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ and repetitions, simply to
give the speaker time to think, to sort out what to say next. They
may fulfil other functions as well, such as emphasizing a point or
making sure that the listener does agree.
The choice of precisely which words or phrases we habitually
repeat – and how often we resort to them – may be partly mere
habit, but it does say something about each of us. Many script-
writers have latched on to this (and novelists too, incidentally
– notably Dickens). In Michael Frayn’s Alphabetical Order, for
example, Leslie is continually saying ‘Sorry’, while John’s verbal
tic is ‘as it were’. In Leslie’s case, ‘Sorry’ keeps arising as she is
aware that she frequently says things that people do not want to
hear, but which are generally correct nevertheless; at times the
word expresses her embarrassment at her own directness, while
 How do we talk? 19

at other times she does not seem sorry at all – rather, it seems to
mean, ‘Sorry, but I’ve just got to say it anyway and you’ve got to
put up with it.’ The one word encapsulates a major element of the
character, including traits which are both irritating and admirable.
John, on the other hand, endlessly uses variants of ‘as it were’
because he is never happy with his own way of expressing himself
(he writes leader columns for a provincial newspaper, without
conspicuous success); the phrase suggests, too, a more general
uncertainty about his own opinions, and even about whom he feels
himself to be. In the second act of the play the other characters
increasingly use these phrases back at Leslie and John. There is
an open acknowledgement of the use of these pet phrases, and
with it a clearer acknowledgement of exactly what makes these
characters tick.

Words for the moment

We have seen that there are certain characteristics – such as class,
education, area of origin and occupation – which we may have in
common with others, and which may affect our speech in fairly
predictable ways; and that, in addition, there are other individual
characteristics which will find their way into our speech patterns,
differentiating one person’s speech from that of the next. But
clearly, how any of us uses language has a further major ingredient
– the circumstances of any particular occasion.
Each of us uses language in radically different ways depending
upon the situation. The vocabulary, the phraseology, in fact every
element of our speech varies enormously depending on the setting
in which we speak. It is obvious that the same person will talk in
quite different ways at a business meeting, at a football match,
alone with a lover, at a child’s birthday party or when drinking
late at night with a close friend. We all have a range of ‘registers’
of speech (though we don’t all have the same range). The writer of
dialogue must differentiate the manner of speech of one character
from that of another, but at the same time must not be afraid of
using the whole range of registers employed by any one character.
It is too easy for a scriptwriter to pigeonhole the speech of a
character in an over-simplified way. In the best scriptwriting, the
20 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

major characters (and some of the others too) will be given the
opportunity to show the range of registers they use.
And then there is the small matter of emotions. When furious,
for example, we may become positively incoherent, or start to use
rhythm and repetition in a more marked way than at any other
times:

I hate your mum, I hate her house and I hate her ruddy dog!

Sometimes, of course, we make mistakes: we use the wrong

register. A bad swear-word, one which you might use with your
drinking partner, slips out in front of Grandma; or you find
yourself talking to your lover in the sort of language you might
use to an office junior – or to a boss. And these mistakes – the
inappropriate word or the type of sentence which is out of place
– also say something about the speaker at that moment, perhaps
reflecting tensions or preoccupations, or revealing more general
limitations or a lack of sensitivity on the part of an individual
who does not even realize that he or she is using an inappropriate
register.
So, the way in which we use language varies immensely from
person to person, from situation to situation. Were we to know
enough about ourselves and others, perhaps we would be able to
say precisely why it is that each of our speeches takes the form that
it does. But I am not suggesting that a scriptwriter should have to
consciously analyze the psyche and every other aspect of each one
of their fictional characters and, on the basis of that, supply them
with appropriate language for each new occasion. No, the writer
should use their most effective tool: the ear. The writer must make
him- or herself specially aware of all the differences that exist
between speech patterns, and should be constantly listening out for
all the subtle variations between one person’s speech and another’s,
between language used on one occasion and that used on another.
Then the writer is in a position to introduce all these elements into
the writing of dialogue.
 How do we talk? 21

Word-for-word transcription
All the examples given so far have been invented, either specifically
for this book or for a script. Now we will look at some examples
of people’s actual speech, transcribed from tape recordings. First,
here is Norma, a Scots woman talking about rationing and her
childhood in general. Her parents ran a shop. Here, she is being
formally interviewed:

norma You only got so much each week, I don’t remember

what, but … We had bread units, and so much sugar each
week. I remember the blue bags of sugar that we used to
have to make up in the shop, and as a child I did this quite
a lot. From a huge sack of sugar we’d make up the pound
bags and fold them in a special way – do you remember
that, no?
interviewer (overlapping) No.
norma And that was all during the war.
interviewer Do you think those sorts of things had an effect
on you?
(Pause)
norma I suppose they did inevitably, but I’m not conscious
of that. I had a very innocent childhood, with no pressure
whatsoever. You know, it was all just fun really. I suppose
having parents with a shop – you know, I could go into the
box and have a Mars Bar when I felt like it –
interviewer (interrupting) Even during the war?
norma Yes. That’s wicked really, isn’t it.
interviewer (simultaneous with above) Whooa!
norma I don’t say it was necessarily a Mars Bar but … erm …
interviewer (speech simultaneous with above, but inaudible)
norma No, I don’t remember it being difficult at all. It was
fun. It must have been terrible to be a parent but I didn’t
feel any pressure at all.

The next example is of Dick, a North Bucks butcher. Again, it is a

formal interview (though the interviewer is a different person). Like
Norma, Dick comes from a shopkeeping family. Here he is talking
about his father and grandfather.
22 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

dick One Saturday morning, our Sam wanted half a scone.

You know what a scone is, don’t you? And erm, they give
him – give him a penny or something like that out the till,
that was about that, so anyhow he come back. So he said,
‘Dad,’ he said, ‘He wou’n’t serve me with a scone.’ His
Dad says, ‘What?’ Says, ‘Wou’n’t serve me with one.’ He
says, ‘Roight!’ – straightaway, and he wrote him a letter
(you understand, I’d barely know about this, but o’ course
we knew), course you see ’e’d – ooh my God! – didn’t half
carry on! ‘Dear Mr so-and-so, I shall not want any more
bread, as I’m starting making me own, and scones, which
I’m going to break into. You got up in the world since you
first come to Bradwell, when you used to ask me to bet your
horse for you, ’cause you couldn’t afford it didn’t yer? Yours
truly, Sam Tarry.’ Yours truly, you know, not faithfully.
Truly. (laughs) So that was that. Now then …
interviewer So he started making his own bread. Did he
keep to that –
dick Ooh, he, he used to, he make that – I’m telling you,
well, it’s the truth, used to make – he done it for about six
months, and how long do you think it was interval between
one batch of bread and the next? How long do you think
it was? Well I won’t ask yer. It was a month. Yeah. He
used to get the yeast, he used to get the flour – home-made
bread this is I’m talking – home-dried lard, which means
the leaf out of a pig which had been rendered down and
then allowed to set you see, and he’d put, he’d put, let’s see
what – some potatoes in it, boiled ’taters, and … a little bit
of, now what is it now, powder summat … ooh by God boy
you’d love some o’ that. Phoo! Well, no comparis’ – see it’d
got some guts in it, hadn’t it?
interviewer But how did it manage to keep fresh for a
month?
dick That was put in that pantry, on a board, and then put
down, one on top o’ the other, an’ a big cloth over the top,
do you follow me, in the pantry, in the shop. Well you see
it was the salt content wa’n’t it? He put a bit more salt in to
allow for it, do you follow me. Ooh that was, look, fresh as
a daisy. I should like some on it now. Oh yes. So that ain’t a
bad tale, is it?
 How do we talk? 23

Here, then, we have two sets of speeches. They have a number

of factors in common. In neither case are they part of a normal
conversation; they are more like monologues with occasional
prompting. Since both people are being interviewed about their
lives, they are both speaking in the same relatively formal situation.
And finally, the speakers have in common an element of their
backgrounds, in that they both come from families engaged in
retailing. There, however, the similarities end. The differences
between the two individuals are not restricted to the content of
what each of them has to say; it is above all their style of speech
which displays the dissimilarities.
Norma tends to speak in complete, grammatically correct
sentences, though with the occasional hesitation and the odd
unnecessary phrase thrown in. Transcribing this from the tape, I
almost missed out the ‘you know’, partly because the phrase was
uttered very fast – much faster than the rest of her speech – but
also because my brain simply cancelled it out; from the continual
practice that we have all had, my brain was telling me to focus as
usual on the sense of what was being said, and in this respect the
‘you know’ was irrelevant. And this, of course, is what we do all
the time: we dismiss the little added phrases, very often not even
realizing that they are there. But they are there, and the writer must
be aware of them.
Dick’s style of speech is very different indeed. He is much more
willing to restart sentences, to use filler words and phrases and to
throw in the odd pet phrase as well. For example, ‘Do you follow
me?’ occurs many times later in the interview. He adds to his
thoughts as he goes along, throwing in new phrases and ideas as
they occur to him in the middle of saying something else, and is
less concerned than Norma with speaking in complete sentences.
He will often leave words out, too:

His Dad says, ‘What?’ Says, ‘Wou’n’t serve me with one.’

Here he leaves out ‘Sam’ before ‘Says’, and also the ‘He’ before
‘Wou’n’t’: meaning is more important than grammar, and Dick is
quite happy to leave out the subject of the sentence rather than
slow the story up with extra words. His concern is to dramatize,
to bring his thoughts to life, so he happily mixes the present tense
with the past tense to tell his story – which is very much a story – as
24 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

the present tense helps to make the events of the past feel so much
more immediate:

He says, ‘Roight!’ – straight away, and he wrote him a letter …

At one point he tells the interviewer:

Well, no comparis’ – see it’d got some guts in it, hadn’t it?

Here he can’t be bothered to finish the word ‘comparison’, as

he interrupts himself with a stronger way of expressing what he
wants to say. This is language where the thoughts seem to come
out virtually unprocessed, and it is language which the scriptwriter
would do well to try to imitate.
Dick’s use of English is much further from ‘standard’ than is
Norma’s. Dick will say ‘something like that out the till’ rather than
‘out of the till’, or ‘I should like some on it’ rather than ‘I should
like some of it’, and he will use words like ‘summat’. (Note that
he comes from Buckinghamshire – careful listening reminds us
that use of this and many other such words and phrases, such as
‘My duck’, is not restricted to Northerners.) By contrast, Norma’s
vocabulary – at least in this extract – is entirely standard, and
despite her Scots origins even her accent is closer to ‘received
pronunciation’ than is that of Home Counties-born Dick. Thus in
transcribing I felt no need to write any of Norma’s words phonet­
ically, while for the other transcription I couldn’t resist writing
‘Roight’ (and I could well have put ‘clorth’ for ‘cloth’ as well). This
says more about their relative class backgrounds than about their
geographical origins; their parents may have been retailers, but
they were not from the same stratum of society.
Judging from the page, one might be tempted to conclude that
Dick is not particularly intelligent, but such a conclusion would be
entirely wrong. His is not an educated style of speech, but neither
is he confused in what he is saying; he is certainly intelligent. The
problem is that we are used to written speech which has been
tidied up; very often editors tidy up the language even in books
compiled from taped oral history! Similarly, for many years script-
writers would create fictional characters who spoke in ways that
were similar to Dick’s speech only when they wanted to portray
simpletons. More recently that has changed, as writers have more
 How do we talk? 25

accurately reflected how we speak and the ways in which our

speech shows what we are.
As pointed out earlier, of course a writer does not have to have
made a detailed analysis of a character before setting out to script
their speeches (though actually, many writers do find just such an
exercise useful in really pinning down exactly who – or what – that
character is, even if they do not necessarily complete the exercise
before starting to write). Rather, in some cases a character’s speech
might be based upon a particular individual known to the writer, or
a careful mix of a number of individuals known to the writer, so very
little actual analysis of the use of language by the character might
be necessary. However, for this straightforward, non-analytical
approach to succeed, the writer must have developed the habit of
noticing, studying and remembering various speech patterns, so
that they can then be called up at will as the need arises.
Habitual styles of speech – even those of characters from fairly
similar backgrounds – differ as greatly as do Norma’s from Dick’s.
We must never tire of listening for the variations.

Notes
1 These include Smith, P. (1985) Language, the Sexes and Society,
Oxford: Blackwell and Tannen, D. (1991) You Just Don’t Understand,
London: Virago.
2 Holmes, J. ‘The Role of Compliments in Female–Male Interaction’ in
Maybin and Mercer (eds) (1996) Using English, from Conversation to
Canon, London: Routledge.
26
 2
The characters’ agendas

What we want
In Chapter 1 we looked at many of the aspects of how normal
conversation works. In this chapter we will look at one further
aspect – the agendas which each one of us brings to each conver-
sation, and we will examine the effects that these agendas have.
Whenever we begin speaking with someone, we have a personal
agenda. This is some sort of idea of what we want from the conver-
sation. We might want to communicate something specific, or to
find out something. There might be only one item on the agenda
and it may be relatively trivial, such as, ‘I must tell Shirley that the
High Street’s been blocked off.’ In this case the agenda (or at least
the initial agenda, since an agenda may alter as the conversation
evolves) can be dealt with very easily: ‘Oh Shirley, did you know
the High Street’s been blocked off?’ – and that’s it. On another
occasion an agenda might consist of a number of items, none of
which is trivial. For example, a man meeting his partner after a
long separation might have an agenda consisting of the following,
not necessarily in this order: (a) making it clear to her how much
he has missed her; (b) telling her how well he has used the time
while she has been away; (c) the need to sort out major financial
problems. Immediately, it may be seen that there are different
types of items on this agenda: (a) is concerned with emotions; (b)
is also at least partly about emotions, as he is trying to make her
feel more positively towards him by impressing her with his use of
time; (c) is mainly dealing with practicalities, but this item too has
28 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

a bearing on the relationship (how many couples have broken up

over conflicts involving money?).
It is becoming apparent already that none of these agenda items
is watertight – they tend to seep into each other, so that even
while you are dealing with one item you find yourself dealing with
another. Thus, while this man is telling his partner how much he
has achieved – decorating the house, say – while she has been away,
he may also take the opportunity of saying how he was thinking
of her all the time as he was doing it, and how he was looking
forward to seeing her face when she saw it. Or – a slightly less
harmonious combination – he might at the same time introduce the
matter of how much all the redecoration has cost, priming her for
a later, fuller discussion of finances.

The agenda and the script

So, how does all this relate to effective scriptwriting? The first
point to make is that most writers are aware that characters have
some sort of agenda for each conversation (though they may
confuse it with their own agenda, which we will discuss later); but
the ineffective scriptwriter will over-compartmentalize, so that a
conversation clearly deals with one topic, then another. This is a
close relative of conversational ping-pong, discussed in Chapter 1.
Sometimes, of course, that is what happens in life, but very often
conversation is not like that – we are opportunistic, slipping from
one item of our agenda to another as the opportunity arises.
Sometimes we know exactly what we want to talk about in
a conversation – we have a conscious agenda. This is obviously
the case in, for example, business meetings (though neither side’s
agenda may correspond entirely to the agreed written agenda –
each side in a business meeting may well also have a conscious
‘hidden agenda’). On other occasions, we may have little or no idea
of what we want to say or what we want to achieve; thus when out
for a drink with a friend we might not be conscious of any agenda
beyond ‘having a good night out’. But none of this acknowledges
the crucial role of the semi-conscious and unconscious agenda.
Let us revert to our original example, ‘I must tell Shirley about
the High Street being blocked off.’ This item may be dealt with in
 The characters’ agendas 29

many different ways, depending upon what other semi-conscious

or unconscious agendas also exist:

You know, Shirley, I’m not too keen on the Co-op any more, but
anyway I thought you might like to know that the High Street’s
been blocked off.

Here the speaker also has another item on her agenda – wanting
to impress by mentioning that she is now above shopping at
the Co-op in the High Street (wanting to impress may well be a
permanent agenda item for this individual!). Or the topic might be
dealt with quite differently:

Shirl, did you know the High Street’s been blocked off? But I got
to the Co-op anyway, the back way. Well it’s stupid to spend all
that money at Waitrose isn’t it.

Here again, the speaker is not merely imparting information;

another agenda item is her desire to make clear to her friend that
she is not being extravagant.
Very often, then, there is a slant on one agenda item – the slant
being, in fact, another agenda item. Rather than being presented
baldly, a topic is dealt with in such a way as to serve some other
purpose at the same time; to deal with some other agenda. At its
strongest this can have the effect of giving a piece of dialogue what
is sometimes called an ‘edge’, a feeling of not entirely explained
tension. This can arise when a character is openly presenting an
opinion on one item agenda, but at the same time is indirectly
presenting a contradictory opinion on another, connected, agenda
item. So there might be, say, a conversation in which one character
is praising another for all that she has achieved as a business
woman, but at the same time cannot conceal feeling bitterly angry
and jealous of her for that very same achievement. The conflict
between these two agenda items produces an edge.
Sometimes the edge can arise out of comments which at face
value mean one thing but in fact clearly mean another, though
this second meaning is deniable. An example of this occurs in an
episode of Frasier, when Ros’ sister comes to visit. This sister is full
of barbed yet deniable comments, which Ros refers to as ‘code’.
When her sister describes Frasier as ‘distinguished’ Ros decodes
30 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

this as ‘old’. It is not so much the insults which give the edge as
their infuriating deniability.
For a writer, it is useful to think of each character’s agenda in
any scene not only in terms of what they want – in terms of what
they want to achieve at this moment – but also in terms of what
they want from the other character(s). It is this – the wanting from
– that is likely to be most productive dramatically. And remember,
what they might want from another character might not be
conscious at all. We might understand it before they do.

Who has control?

So far we have looked only at the agenda of any one individual
in conversation. In fact, of course, there is always more than one
agenda in dialogue, as there is always more than one individual
taking part. Sometimes we will politely take it in turns to go
through our agendas. After talking about ourselves, we might then
ask, ‘And how about you?’, thus passing the initiative over to the
other person. On other occasions exactly the same happens but
with a less obvious cue: one character simply leaves the space for
the other one to take over. Very often, however, the movement from
one individual’s agenda item to another’s is nowhere near as clear
as this. Examine the following two examples:

Example one
pete Are you going to the disco tonight?
alan Dunno.
pete Julie’ll be there.
alan Julie?
pete You know, the bubbly one, with the legs.
alan Oh Julie.
pete Yeah, Julie.
(slight pause)
alan I got beaten at snooker again last night.
pete Yeah?
alan It’s that Brian – he cheats.
pete Oh. You can’t cheat at snooker. How can you cheat at
snooker?
 The characters’ agendas 31

alan It’s the adding up.

pete How do you mean?
alan Well, he can do it and I can’t.
pete Ah.

Example two
pete Are you going to the disco?
alan Dunno.
I got beaten at snooker again last night.
pete Yeah?
alan It’s that Brian. He cheats.
pete Oh.
Julie’ll be there. At the disco.
alan Julie?
pete You know, the bubbly one, with the legs.
alan Oh Julie.
pete Yeah, Julie.
(slight pause)
pete You can’t cheat at snooker. How can you cheat at snooker?
alan It’s the adding up.
pete How do you mean?
alan Well, he can do it and I can’t.
pete Ah.

The two examples are obviously extremely similar: each character

speaks almost identical lines in each example, and in each they
also have their own clear agendas – Pete wants to tell Alan about
the disco and see how he reacts to the mention of Julie, while
Alan wants to moan about Brian and the snooker. The difference,
technically, is simply the order of the speeches, but that difference
also says something about how these two characters relate to each
other. In the first example, one topic is dealt with and finished
with (at least for the moment) before we move on to the other
character’s agenda. In the second example the two topics are dealt
with at the same time. The characters certainly listen to each other
and are not rude – they reply to each other – but each of them
turns the conversation back to their own agenda. At the end of
the second example, though, there is a swap, as it is Pete who
32 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

brings the conversation back to the snooker; he has adopted Alan’s

agenda.
Both the above examples are fairly successful pieces of dialogue.
What the scriptwriter needs to recognize is that depending on the
particular characters and situation, both types occur in real life and
should be represented in scripts. A complete script written entirely
in the form of Example 1 might seem too consistently direct and
blunt, while one written entirely in the form of Example 2 could
well become tiresome.
Of course, a scriptwriter may not always sit down before every
scene and ask, ‘What does each character want in this scene?’ or,
even better ‘What does each character want from the others in this
scene?’ before writing it (though it is not a bad idea to do so), but
he or she does have to be acutely aware of the particular histories
and tensions that already exist between characters – their ongoing,
semi-conscious agendas – as well as any characters’ concerns that
are specific to that scene. In this way, every piece of dialogue is
informed with the characters’ attitudes, with the possibility of
‘edge’. Any failure to do this will result in dialogue that is bland
and ultimately uninteresting.
Pinter takes to extremes the conflict over control of the agendas,
while sometimes Stoppard has his characters hardly attend to each
other’s lines at all, so intent are they on following through what is
important to themselves. The following extract is from Stoppard’s
Albert’s Bridge:

mother Ring for Kate, would you, Albert?

albert (going) Yes, mother.
mother That reminds me.
father You’ll start where I started. On the shop floor.
albert (approach) Well, actually, Father –
mother I don’t want to sound Victorian, but one can’t just
turn a blind eye.
albert What?
father Yes, I never went in for books and philosophy and
look at me now.
mother I suppose that’s the penance one pays for having
servants nowadays.
albert What?
father I started Metal Alloys and Allied Metals – built it up
 The characters’ agendas 33

from a biscuit tin furnace in the back garden, small melting

jobs in the cycle-repair shop.
mother I’ve suspected it for some time and now one can’t
ignore it. Even with her corset.
albert Who?
father You can come in on Monday and I’ll hand you over
to the plant foreman.
albert I’ve already got a job. Actually.
father You haven’t got a job till I give you one.
albert I’m going to paint Clufton Bay Bridge, starting
Monday.
mother What colour?
albert Silver.
father Just a minute –
kate (off) You rang, madam?

More will be said about this passage later, but here we need only
note how little these characters listen to each other, and thus how
they relate – or fail to relate – to each other. Father is concerned
only to lay down the law about his son’s job, and Mother wishes
only to voice her concerns about the likely pregnancy of Kate,
the maid. Albert – who is in fact affected by both these topics far
more directly than either of his parents – is put in the position of
having to respond and trying to make sense of it all. It is his lack
of control of the agendas that adds much to the humour of the
scene, particularly as we know that he already has a job, and that
he is almost certainly responsible for Kate’s condition. An added
touch of humour is provided by Mother’s ‘What colour?’: she has
listened to Father’s statement but has not attended to the tone – the
humour arises out of the triviality of her question set against the
seriousness of the topic.

‘What do you want from that line?’

I was once present at a rehearsal at which an excellent director
was leading a detailed examination of the script. Before every line
the director would turn to the relevant actor and ask, ‘What do
you want to achieve with this?’, meaning, ‘What do you think
34 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

the character you are playing wants to get as a result of saying

(or sometimes doing) this?’ Sometimes the answers were easy, but
on other occasions the actors found it very difficult to say what
the character was trying to achieve – what his or her agenda was
– beyond, say, the straightforward requesting or sharing of infor-
mation, or expression of emotion. Yet our motivations for saying
things are often very complex, and there is a compelling theory
which states that we want to ‘get something out of’ everything
we say – that there are no utterances that are simply themselves.1
What we can be certain of is that during any conversation, each of
us has a whole set of agenda items. Some of them are specific to
that conversation, and others are semi-permanent, such as perhaps
wishing to raise our own status relative to that of others. It is the
simultaneous operation of a number of these agenda items which
lends much of the fascination to dialogue.
We should pay a little further attention to the issue of status. In
his fascinating book Impro, Improvisation and the Theatre,2 Keith
Johnstone explores the proposition that much of our speech – and
action – attempts to raise our status relative to that of those around
us. This is not always done in an obvious way – ‘My son’s going to
Oxford. I should think yours will get on well at the Tech.’ – but rather
is often subtle, with people trying to establish their status as being just
slightly above that of their neighbour. This way not only is vulgarity
avoided, but it is also easy to deny that any attempt at raising status
is taking place. Frequently, indeed, people are competing for status
while attempting to appear supportive and friendly:

sophie It was terrible. I thought I was going to get stuck

under the boat!
anne That’s really scary, isn’t it, when you capsize.
sophie It certainly is!
tara At least the first time.
anne I remember once when we went over I actually was
stuck under the boat – only for a while of course. And it
was in October.
tara The water must have been freezing.
anne It was.
tara I was hit by the boom once. I was actually unconscious.
It’s just incredibly lucky that I wasn’t sailing single-handed
or –
 The characters’ agendas 35

anne (laughing) But it’s a bit stupid letting yourself get hit by
the boom, isn’t it?

Here we have three women, all apparently being friendly and

supportive of each other, yet in fact competing with each other
for status. Sophie begins by raising her status (a little) by being
involved in an interesting incident, and one that felt dangerous.
Anne begins by sympathizing, while Tara greatly reduces Sophie’s
status by stating that yes, capsizing can be ‘scary’, but at the same
time making it clear that the fear lessens progressively each time
one capsizes – for her, capsizing is really quite routine. Anne then
recounts a more seriously dangerous capsizing than Sophie’s, thus
raising her own status at Sophie’s expense. Sophie now drops out
of the race – and, for the moment, the dialogue – as she realizes
she cannot compete with these two. Tara then sympathizes with
Anne – re-establishing her credentials of friendship – before
recounting her own experience, which was even more dangerous.
At this point, though, rather than accept defeat, Anne laughs – the
laugh is intended to emphasize that she is not seriously criticizing,
thus disguising the status-lowering intention – undermining the
basis of Tara’s claim to high status: her experience may have been
more dangerous but she had also been more stupid, so perhaps this
stupidity cancels out altogether any status claim from this incident.
The terms of status acquisition in this particular piece of dialogue
are being questioned.
Some characters may hardly ever indulge in raising or lowering
status, while others seem interested in doing little else, but there
are few people indeed who are never involved in these games. The
scriptwriter must be aware of these manoeuvres used to raise or
lower status. It hardly needs to be said that the speakers themselves
are often either unconscious or only semi-conscious of exactly
what is going on, but the scriptwriter needs to be as conscious as
possible. As with other aspects of scripting, the writer needs to
develop the habit of taking note of exactly how these manoeuvres
take place in everyday life; they will then be incorporated into
scripting almost effortlessly.
36 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Status changes
Let us continue the above dialogue a little further. It could go like
this:

tara (laughing) I had a hell of a bump on my head, I can tell

you!
(Slight pause)
sophie You know that money I inherited.
anne Nnn.
sophie Well I’m thinking of buying a yacht.
anne A yacht?!
sophie Only a small one. About thirty foot.
anne Doesn’t sound that small to me. But … would you know
how to sail it?
sophie There are training courses. I’d go on one of those. I
don’t suppose it’s all that difficult, but you ought to learn
properly, if you’re going to be serious about it, don’t you
think?
anne Well yes, I suppose you’re right.
tara So are you completely set on this?
sophie Not totally.
tara Only – don’t get me wrong – I mean I’ve been on
yachts a number of times, and it’s great, but it’s not quite
as exciting as dinghy sailing. It’s a bit more sedate really.
Well it’s bound to be, isn’t it. You’re not leaping around the
whole –
sophie (overlapping) But I don’t think I want to be leaping
around the whole time.
tara Fine. Well, maybe … maybe a yacht’s the thing for you
then.

In this passage, the dialogue produces a clear change in status. This

is important. Status is not static; it is always relative to that of the
others present, and fluctuates depending upon what is being said
or done. Thus a junior college lecturer might generally adopt high
status relative to his or her students, but low status relative to many
colleagues; he or she might be high status when taking a nephew to
a classical concert, but low status when dragged along by that same
 The characters’ agendas 37

nephew to a football match (the lecturer knowing nothing about

football). An audience recognizes and enjoys observing status
changes, and status reverses are even better.
So, what exactly happens in the passage above? First, following
on from the previous passage, Tara joins in the laughter, but her
first line, ‘I had a hell of a bump on my head, I can tell you!’ only
hints at accepting the stupidity of which she has been accused.
At the same time it emphasizes again – though now in the jokey
manner established by Anne – the seriousness of the incident: she
is not going to have her status reduced very far.
Then Sophie, who has been silent for a little while, brings up the
subject of her proposed purchase of a yacht. This, of course, raises
her status immediately, a yacht being much more impressive than
a dinghy. Anne accepts this raising of Sophie’s status (and thus the
relative lowering of her own), although she does question whether
Sophie would actually know how to sail it. Even this, though,
Sophie turns to her own advantage, emphasizing her own profes-
sional approach, which further raises her status. Tara, however,
does not surrender her status so easily. She attempts to lower the
status of yachting itself, and thus that of Sophie, by questioning
how exciting it can possibly be. Sophie refuses to relinquish her
new high status: by stating that she does not wish to be ‘leaping
around the whole time’ she implies that dinghy sailing is an inferior
activity. Tara pretends to accept this, but the tone of her final
speech at the same time makes clear that while yachting might be
the thing for Sophie, it certainly would not be for her. A sort of
status stalemate has been reached.
Or let’s take another example.

archie and ben, both in their 50s.

archie I’ve bought this sports car, did I tell you.
ben No.
archie It’s crappy and old, but you know, it’s really exciting.
Shirley says I should’ve got a Volvo -
ben A Volvo sports?
archie No a Volvo like yours. Which would have been much
more sensible, from a security point of view –
ben It would.
archie So I know it’s really stupid.
ben Not so stupid really.
38 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

archie No it’s stupid I know. Like a virility symbol or

something.
ben Do you feel you need that?
archie Not really no. I didn’t mean it was a virility symbol,
just –
ben It could seem…
archie Yes it could seem.
(Pause)
ben I really like getting older, you know?
archie Yeah?
ben I was saying to Alice, you can finally be yourself when
you’re older. You don’t have to pretend anything anymore.
archie … No.

Here Archie employs the false self-deprecating strategy; he intends

to raise his status by having bought a sports car but pretends
that the choice was stupid, while in the process in fact drawing
attention to Ben’s choice of car being rather safe and boring.
Archie takes this one stage further, pre-empting any implication
that the sports car might have been purchased as a virility symbol
by implying it himself, and thus taking the wind out of the sails of
any criticism along those lines. However, Ben is not to be so easily
out-witted. After at first being supportive (‘Not so stupid really’)
he insists on dealing with Ben’s pre-emptive self-criticism literally,
pushing Archie into an uncomfortable flat denial. Ben then sets
about establishing his own higher status; without pointing out that
Archie’s purchase may have been an attempt to regain his youth, he
talks about his pleasure in getting older and not having to ‘pretend’
any more. The unstated connections are left for Archie (and us) to
make, and are entirely deniable.
Of course, it could well be said that I am putting forward a very
cynical view of the world – or at least of an important element of
how dialogue functions. Certainly I am aware that some people
refuse to play status games, at least consciously, unless they feel they
are absolutely forced into it; and there are some who actually view
any attempt to raise status – however subtle – as something negative
about that individual (if they were thinking in status terms, then,
trying to raise status would automatically result in a lowering of it).
Nevertheless, if we observe closely what people are trying to achieve
moment-to-moment in dialogue, status is often at the heart of it.
 The characters’ agendas 39

Lowering status
Different individuals have different attitudes towards status, some
ruthlessly using it and others doing so much less aggressively.
Sometimes we learn, too, that attempting to use status – or even
unintentionally allowing it to come into a conversation – can have
negative results. For example, a nuclear physicist may have a
friendly, chatty relationship with his or her hairdresser – until the
hairdresser finds out what the customer does for a living. Now
the hairdresser feels ignorant and inhibited in such company,
and clams up completely for fear of looking foolish. The nuclear
physicist changes to another hairdresser, and this time refuses
to be drawn on his or her profession, or perhaps pretends to be
something different altogether – a taxi driver or whatever. The
relationship with this new hairdresser is allowed to continue to be
friendly and chatty, though there is now a different awkwardness
– of the nuclear physicist always having to be careful in order not
to be discovered.
Or let us take another example. A wealthy female psychiatrist has a
daughter who attends a state school where most of the children come
from a very different background. The girl is having some problems,
so the psychiatrist, her mother, visits the (male) headteacher:

headteacher (opening the door) Come in, Mrs Waring.

waring (coming in) Thank you. Actually, it’s …
headteacher I’m sorry?
waring No, nothing.
headteacher Well, sorry to have kept you waiting so long.
waring It’s all right – thanks for taking the time to see me.
headteacher A pleasure. Now, what can I do for you?
waring Well it’s about my daughter, obviously …
headteacher Yes.
secretary (poking her head round the door) I’m sorry to
bother you, but the Mercedes outside – is it yours?
waring Well I –
secretary Only it’s blocking the school coach.
waring (to headteacher) It’s a bit of a rust bucket actually.
secretary It’s –
waring Yes, right. Won’t be a moment.
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 EDINBURGH AFTER FLODDEN. (See p. 114.)
James and all his nobility about him in the main body were fighting
on foot, and being clad in splendid armour, they suffered less from
the English archers, who were opposed to them in the ranks of
Surrey. On James's right hand fought his natural son, the
accomplished Archbishop of St. Andrews. Soon the combatants
became engaged hand to hand in deadly struggle with their swords,
spears, pikes, and other instruments of death. Whilst hewing and
cutting each other down in furious strife, face to face, life for life,
showers of English arrows fell amid the Scottish ranks, and dealt
terrible destruction to the less stoutly protected. When the Earls of
Bothwell and Huntly rushed to the support of the main body on the
one side, and Stanley, the Howards, and Dacre came to the aid of
Surrey on the other, the strife became terrible beyond description,
and the slaughter awful on every side of the environed Scots. Before
the arrival of the reserves the Scots appeared at one time to have
the best of it, and to be on the very edge of victory; and even after
that James and the gallant band around him seemed to make a
stupendous effort, as if they thought their sole hope was to force
their way to Surrey and cut him down. James is said to have reached
within a spear's length of him, when, after being twice wounded
with arrows, he was despatched by a bill. This decided the day; the
Scots, after suffering fearful losses, retreated next morning from the
field, after holding Flodden Hill during the night.
When the news of the Scottish overthrow reached Edinburgh, it
plunged the inhabitants into terrible grief and dismay. Women,
weeping and seeking for tidings of their friends, thronged the
streets. But the civic authorities kept their heads in the crisis. They
ordered all the inhabitants capable of bearing arms to assemble for
the defence at the tolling of a bell. Women and strangers were
required to remain at their work and not to frequent the streets
"clamorand and cryand;" while women of higher station were to
repair to church, to offer up prayers "for our Sovereign Lord and his
army, and the townsmen who are with the army." The crisis soon
passed. No invasion was ever likely in view of the serious losses
which the English themselves had suffered, and the city in due
course regained its wonted aspect.
James IV., who fell at Flodden in the forty-first year of his age, and
the twenty-fifth of his reign, was a prince of quick, generous, and
chivalric character. Like his father, he had a taste for the arts,
particularly those of civil and naval architecture; he built the great
ship St. Michael, and several churches, and maintained a Court far
superior in its elegance and refinement to that of any of his
predecessors. On such a nature, Henry, by kind and even just
treatment, might have operated so as to excite the most devoted
friendship. As it was, a neighbouring nation, instead of a firm ally,
had been made a more embittered enemy; its prince had been slain,
and his kingdom left exposed, in the peculiar weakness of a long
minority, to the ambitious cupidity of his royal uncle, whose
overbearing designs only tended to defeat that union of the crowns
which he was most anxious to ensure, and to perpetuate crimes,
heartburnings, and troubles between the two governments, for two
eventful generations yet to come. Henry, however, overlooking all
these things, on returning home elate with his own useless
campaign, and this brilliant but cruel victory, rewarded Surrey by
restoring to him the title of Duke of Norfolk, forfeited by his father
for his adherence to Richard III., and Lord Thomas Howard, his son,
succeeded, for his part, to the title of Earl of Surrey, which had been
his father's. Lord Herbert was made Earl of Somerset; and Sir
Edward Stanley, Lord Monteagle. At the same time, his favourite, Sir
Charles Brandon, Lord Lisle, the king elevated to the dignity of Duke
of Suffolk. Wolsey, his growing clerical favourite, he made Bishop of
Lincoln, in addition to his French bishopric of Tournay.
Henry VIII. had returned from the Continent as much inflated with
the idea of his military greatness as if he had been Henry V.; his
allies, in the meantime, were laughing in their sleeves at the success
with which they had duped him. It was true that he had seriously
distressed Louis, but it was for the benefit of those allies, who had
all reaped singular advantages from Henry's campaign and heavy
outlay. The Pope had got Italy freed from the French; Ferdinand of
Spain had got Navarre, and leisure to fortify and make it safe; and
Maximilian had got Terouenne, Tournay, and command of the French
frontiers on the side of Flanders, with a fine pension from England.
It was now time to see what acknowledgment those allies were
likely to make him for his expensive services, and they did not
permit him to wait long. While he had been so essentially obliging to
the Pope, his Holiness had sent four bulls into his kingdom, by every
one of which he had violated the statutes of the realm, especially
that of Provisors, taking upon himself to nominate bishops and to
command the persecution of heretics. The pontiff now went farther,
and made a secret treaty with Louis of France, by which he removed
the excommunication from Louis, and the interdict from his
kingdom, on condition that Louis should withdraw his countenance
from the schismatic council of cardinals; but knowing Henry's vain
character, the Pope, to prevent him from expressing any anger, sent
him a consecrated sword and banner, with many fulsome
compliments on his valour and royal greatness.
Henry's father-in-law, Ferdinand, was growing old, and having
obtained all that he wanted—Navarre—was most ready to listen to
Louis' proposals for peace. Louis tempted him by offering to marry
his second daughter, Rénée, to his grandson Charles, and to give her
as her portion his claim on the duchy of Milan. Ferdinand not only
accepted with alacrity these terms, without troubling himself about
what Henry might think of such treachery, but engaged to bring over
Maximilian, Henry's ally and paid agent, but still the grandfather of
Charles. When the news of these transactions, on the part of his
trusty confederates, reached Henry, he was for a while incredulous,
and then broke into a fury of rage. He complained that his father-in-
law had been the first to involve him with France by his great
promises and professions, not one of which he had kept, and now,
without a moment's warning, had not only sacrificed his interests for
his own selfish purposes, but had drawn over the Emperor of
Germany, who lay under such signal obligations to him. He vowed
the most determined revenge. Here was Maximilian, for whom he
had conquered Terouenne and Tournay, whom he had subsidised to
the amount of 200,000 crowns, and whose grandson Charles was
affianced to his sister Mary, who had in a moment forgotten all these
benefits and his engagement. As the time was come for the
marriage of Charles and the Princess Mary, Henry sent a demand for
its completion; Maximilian, who had already agreed to Louis' offer of
his daughter Rénée, sent an evasive answer, and Henry's wrath
knew no bounds. It was impossible for even his egregious vanity to
blind him any longer to the extent to which he had been duped all
round.
Louis, having thus destroyed Henry's confederacy of broken reeds,
next took measures to secure a peace with him. The Duke of
Longueville, who was one of the prisoners taken at the Battle of
Spurs, was in London, and instructed by Louis, kept his ears open to
Henry's angry denunciations of his perfidious allies. He represented
to him that Anne, the Queen of France, being dead, there was a
noble opportunity of avenging himself on these ungrateful princes,
and of forming an alliance with Louis which would make them all
tremble. Mary, the Princess of England, might become Queen of
France, and thus a league be established between England and
France which would decide the fate of Europe.
Henry's resentment and wounded honour would of themselves have
made him close eagerly with this proposal; but he saw in it the most
substantial advantages, and in a moment made up his mind. He had
the policy, however, to appear to demur, and said his people would
never consent for him to renounce his hereditary claims on France,
which must be the case if such an alliance took place. They would
ask themselves what equivalent they should obtain for so great a
surrender. The shrewd Frenchman understood the suggestion; he
communicated what passed to his Government, and proposals were
quickly sent to meet Henry's views. Louis agreed to pay Henry a
million crowns in discharge of all arrears due to Henry VII. from
Charles VIII., &c.; and Henry engaged to give his sister a dower of
200,000 crowns, to pay the expenses of her journey, and to supply
her with jewels—probably those of which he had defrauded the
Scottish queen. The two kings agreed to assist each other, in case of
any attack, by a force of 14,000 men, or, in case of any attack by
either of them on another power, by half that number. This treaty
was to continue for the lives of the two kings, and a year longer.
Thus was the Holy League, as it had been called, for the defence of
the Pope and the Church against the King of France entirely done
away with; and this great pretence was not so much as mentioned
in any one of these treaties which put an end to it. The King of
France strove hard to obtain Tournay again; but, though it was
evidently Henry's interest to restore it, his favourite Wolsey,
apprehensive of losing the profits of the bishopric, successfully
opposed its restoration. Wolsey and Fox of Durham were Henry's
plenipotentiaries for the management of the treaty, which was
signed on the 7th of August, 1514.
By this treaty, Mary Tudor, Princess Royal of England, a remarkably
beautiful young woman of sixteen, and passionately attached to
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the handsomest and most
accomplished man of Henry's Court, was handed over to the worn-
out Louis of France, who was fifty-three in years, and much older in
constitution.
But this unnatural political mésalliance was not destined to be of
long duration. Louis wrote in the course of December to Henry,
expressing his happiness in possessing so excellent and amiable a
wife, and on the 1st of January he expired. The dissipation at Court,
consequent on his marriage, is stated in the "Life of Bayard" to have
precipitated his end. "For the good king, on account of his wife, had
changed the whole manner of his life. He had been accustomed to
dine at eight o'clock, now he had to dine at noon; he had been
accustomed to retire to rest at six in the evening, and now he had
often to sit up till midnight." Louis was greatly beloved by his
subjects, who regarded him as a brave, upright, and wise prince,
and gave him the honourable title of "the Father of his People." Mary
promptly married her old lover, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.
Henry was angry at first, but the storm soon lulled. Wolsey is said to
have been in the secret from the first, and such was his influence
now, that a much more difficult matter would have given way before
it. The young couple were received into favour, and ordered by
Henry to be re-married before him at Greenwich—an event which
took place on the 13th of May, 1515. So far was the part which
Francis I. had taken in this matter from being resented, that he and
Henry renewed all the engagements which existed between Louis
and Henry, and so satisfactorily that they boasted that they had
made a peace which would last for ever.
We have had frequent occasion already to introduce the name of
Wolsey; we shall have still more frequent and more surprising
occasion to repeat that name: and it is therefore necessary to take a
complete view of the man who was now rapidly rising into a
prominence before Europe and the world, such as has few examples
in history, in one whose origin was as mean as his ascent was
dazzling, and his fall sudden and irrevocable.
In the reign of Henry VII. we find first the name of Thomas Wolsey
coming to public view as the private secretary of the king at the time
of the forced visit of the Archduke Philip to the English Court. This
originally obscure clergyman was born in 1471 at Ipswich, where his
father was a wealthy butcher, and, therefore, could afford to give his
son an education at the university. Probably the worthy butcher was
induced to this step by a perception of the lad's uncommon
cleverness, for at Oxford he displayed so much talent that he was
soon distinguished by the title of the "Boy Bachelor." He became
teacher of the grammar-school adjoining Magdalen College, and
among his pupils were the sons of the Marquis of Dorset, on whom
he so far won that he gave him the somewhat valuable living of
Lymington, in Somersetshire. This might seem substantial promotion
for the butcher's son, but an eagle, though hatched in the nest of a
barn-door fowl, is sure to soar up towards the sun. Thomas Wolsey
was not destined to the obscurity of a country parish. The same
abilities and address which won him the favour of the marquis were
capable of attracting far higher patrons.
Leaving his country parish, he seems to have been introduced to
Fox, the Bishop of Winchester, and minister to Henry VII., who
introduced him to the king, who was so much satisfied with him that
he made him one of the royal chaplains. In this position the
extraordinary talents and Court aptitude of Wolsey soon became
apparent to the cautious old king. He employed him in sundry
matters requiring secrecy and address. He was soon advanced to the
deanery of Lincoln, and office of the king's almoner. Wolsey was
Henry VII.'s envoy to the Duchess of Savoy when that amorous
monarch had fallen in love with her fortune.
On the accession of Henry VIII., Wolsey rose still higher in the
favour of the youthful monarch. Henry was but nineteen. Wolsey
was forty; yet not a young gallant about the Court could so
completely adapt himself to the fancy of the young pleasure-loving
and power-loving king. In a very few months he was Henry's bosom
friend—the associate in all his gaieties, the repository of all his
secrets, the dispenser of all his favours, and, in reality, his only
confidential minister. Henry seemed wrapped in admiration at the
union of intellect and courtly accomplishment in the wonderful man.
He gave him a grant of all deodands and forfeitures of felony, and
went on continually adding to these other offices, benefices, and
grants. In November, 1510, he was admitted a member of the Privy
Council, and from that time he was really Prime Minister. Henry could
move nowhere without his great friend and counsellor. He took him
with him on his expedition to France in 1513, there conferred on him
the wealthy bishopric of Tournay, and on his return made him Bishop
of Lincoln, and gave him the opulent Abbey of St. Albans in
commendam.
The ascent of Wolsey was now rapid. From the very commencement
of his career at Court no man had been able to stand before him.
Bishop Fox had first recommended his introduction into the Privy
Council because, growing old himself, he perceived that the Earl of
Surrey, afterwards conqueror of Flodden, and Duke of Norfolk, was
winning higher favour with the king than the ancient bishop;
because his martial tastes and more courtly character were more
attractive to Henry. Wolsey soon showed himself so successful that
he not only cast Surrey, but his own patron, into the shade. In
everything Wolsey could participate in the monarch's pursuits and
amusements. Henry had already an ambition of literary and polemic
distinction. He had studied the school divinity, and was an ardent
admirer of Thomas Aquinas. Here Wolsey was quite at home; for he
was a widely read man, and would, as a matter of course, soon
refresh himself on any learned topic which was his master's hobby.
While he flattered the young king's vanity, he was ready to
contribute to his whims and his pleasures.
 ARCHBISHOP WARHAM. (From the Portrait by Holbein.)
On the 14th of July, 1514, Leo X. addressed a letter to Henry,
informing him that his ambassador, Cardinal Bambridge, the
Archbishop of York, had died that day; and that, at the request of
the deceased, he had promised not to appoint a successor till he had
learnt the pleasure of his Majesty. This pleasure, there can be no
doubt, was already known; and that the Pope, like every one now,
perceiving the power of the favourite, was ready to conciliate him.
The king at once named Wolsey to his Holiness, and showed that he
was quite satisfied that that nomination would be confirmed by at
once placing the archbishopric and all its revenues in the custody of
the favourite. Thus was this great son of fortune at once possessed
of the Archbishopric of York, the Bishoprics of Tournay and Lincoln,
the administration of the Bishoprics of Worcester, Hereford, and
Bath, the possessors of which were Italians, who resided abroad,
and were glad to secure a portion of their revenues by resigning to
the native prelate the rest. Henry even allowed Wolsey, with the See
of York, to unite that of Durham, as he afterwards did that of
Winchester. The Pope, seeing more and more the marvellous
influence of the man, before this year was out made him a cardinal.
"For," says Hall, "when he was once archbishop, he studied day and
night how to be a cardinal, and caused the king and the French king
to write to Rome for him." Leo found a strong opposition amongst
the cardinals to this promotion; but, desirous to oblige both Henry
and Francis, he declared him a cardinal in full consistory, on
September 11th.
My Lord Cardinal Wolsey almost immediately received a fresh favour
from the Pope, who appointed him legate in England. This
commission was originally limited to two years, but Wolsey never
relinquished the office. He obtained from succeeding Popes a
continuation of the post, asking from time to time even fresh
powers, till he at length exercised within the realm almost all the
prerogatives of the Pontiff. The only step above him now was the
Papacy itself, and on that dignity he had already fixed his ambitious
eye.
From the moment that Wolsey saw himself a cardinal and Papal
legate, as well as chief favourite of the king, his ambition displayed
itself without restraint, and we shall have to paint, in his career, one
of the most amazing instances of the pride, power, and grandeur of
a subject. When his cardinal's hat was brought to England, he sent a
splendid deputation to meet the bearer of it at Blackheath, and to
conduct him through London, as if he had been the Pope himself. He
gave a reception of the hat in Westminster Hall, which more
resembled a coronation than the official investiture of a subject and
a clergyman. His arrogance and ostentation disgusted the king's old
ministers and courtiers. The Duke of Norfolk, with all his military
glory, found himself completely eclipsed, and absented himself from
Court as much as possible, though he still held the office of
Treasurer. Fox, the venerable Bishop of Winchester, who had been
the means of introducing Wolsey, found himself superseded by him,
and, resigning his office of Keeper of the Privy Seal, retired to his
diocese. On taking his leave, the aged minister was bold enough to
caution Henry not to make any of his subjects greater than himself,
to which the bluff king replied that he knew how to keep his subjects
in order. The resignation of Fox was followed by that of Archbishop
Warham, who delivered the Great Seal on the 22nd of December,
1515, resigning his office of Chancellor. Henry immediately handed
over the seal to Wolsey, who now stood on the pinnacle of power,
almost alone. He was like a great tree which withered up every other
tree which came within its shade, and even the kingly power itself
seemed centred in his hands. For the next ten years he may be said
to have reigned in England, and Henry himself to have been the
nominal, and Wolsey the real king. Well might he, in addressing a
foreign power, say, "Ego et rex meus:" "I and my king."
Whilst the great looked on all this grandeur in obsequious but
resentful silence, the people settled it in their own minds that the
wonderful power of the priest over the fiery nature of the monarch
was the effect of sorcery. But Wolsey was no mean or ordinary man.
His talents and his consummate address were what influenced the
king, who was proud of the magnificence which was at once his
creation and his representative; and Wolsey had a grasp, an
expanse, and an elevation in his ambition, which had something
sublime in them. Though he was in the receipt of enormous
revenues, he had no paltry desire to hoard them. He employed them
in this august state and mode of living, which he regarded as
reflecting honour on the monarch whose chief minister he was, and
on the Church in which he held all but the highest rank. He devoted
his funds liberally to the promoting of literature. He sent learned
men to foreign courts to copy valuable manuscripts, which were
made accessible by his vast influence. He built Hampton Court
Palace, a residence fit only for a monarch, and presented it to Henry
as a gift worthy such a subject to such a king. He built a college at
Ipswich, his native place, and was in the course of erecting Christ
Church at Oxford when his career was so abruptly closed. Besides
that, he endowed seven lectureships in Oxford.
The peace which Henry had made with the young monarch of
France was not destined to be of long continuance. Francis I. soon
had the misfortune to offend both Henry and Wolsey, and in their
separate interests. James IV. of Scotland had left by his will the
regency of his kingdom to his widow. The Convention of the States
confirmed this arrangement, but on condition that the queen
remained unmarried. James V., her son, of whom she was to retain
the guardianship, was on his father's death an infant of only a year-
and-a-half old. In less than seven months after the death of her
husband, Margaret was delivered of a second son, Alexander, Duke
of Ross; and in less than three months after that she married, in
defiance of the Convention of the States, Douglas, Earl of Angus, a
young man of handsome person, but of an ambitious and
headstrong character. This marriage gave great offence to a large
number of the nobility, especially those who had a leaning to France.
They asserted that Henry of England, the queen's brother,
notwithstanding that he had deprived her of her husband, and
notwithstanding her difficult position as the widowed mother of an
infant king, so far from supporting her, took every opportunity to
attack her borders. They therefore recommended that they should
recall from France John, Duke of Albany, the son of Alexander, who
had been banished by his brother James III., and place the regency
in his hands. Albany, though of Scottish origin, was a Frenchman by
birth, education, and taste. He had not a foot of land in Scotland,
but in France he had extensive demesnes, and stood high in favour
of the monarch.
 By permission, from the Painting in the City of London Corporation
Art Gallery.
CARDINAL WOLSEY GOING IN PROCESSION TO WESTMINSTER
HALL
By Sir John Gilbert, R.A., P.R.W.S.
At the head of the party in opposition to the queen was Lord Home,
on whose conduct at Flodden aspersions had been cast. By him and
his party it was that Albany was invited to Scotland. Henry was
greatly alarmed at this proposition, and for some time the fear of a
breach induced Francis I. to restrain Albany from accepting the offer.
Yet in May, 1515, Albany made his appearance in Scotland. He found
that kingdom in a condition which required a firm and determined
hand to govern it. The nobility, always turbulent, and kept in order
with difficulty by the strongest monarchs, were now divided into two
factions, for and against the queen and her party. Lord Home, by
whom Albany had chiefly been invited, had the ill-fortune to be
represented to Albany, immediately on his arrival, as, so far from a
friend, one of the most dangerous enemies of legitimate authority in
the kingdom. Home, apprised of this representation, and of its
having taken full effect on the mind of Albany, threw himself into the
party of the queen, and urged her to avoid the danger of allowing
the young princes to fall into the hands of Albany, who was the next
heir to the crown after them, and was, according to his statement, a
most dangerous and ambitious man. Moved by these statements,
Margaret determined to escape to England with her sons, and put
them under the powerful protection of their uncle Henry.
Henry had himself made similar representations to her, for nothing
would suit his views on the crown of Scotland so well as to have
possession of the infant heirs. But Albany was quickly informed of
the queen's intentions; he besieged the castle of Stirling, where she
resided with the infant princes, compelled her to surrender, and
obtaining possession of the princes, placed them in the keeping of
three lords appointed by Parliament. Margaret herself, accompanied
by her husband Angus, and Lord Home, succeeded in escaping to
England, where she was delivered of a daughter.
The part which Francis I. evidently had in permitting the passage of
Albany to Scotland, and in supporting his party there, had given
great offence to Henry. He sent strong remonstrances through his
ambassador to Francis, complaining that Albany had been permitted
to leave France and usurp the government of Scotland, contrary to
the treaty; and that by this means the Queen of Scotland, the sister
of the King of England, had been driven from the regency of the
kingdom and the guardianship of her children. Francis I.
endeavoured to pacify Henry by assurances that Albany's conduct
had received no countenance from him, but that he had stolen away
at the urgent solicitation of a strong body of nobles in Scotland.
Henry was not convinced, but there was nothing to be obtained by
further remonstrances, for Francis was at this moment at the head
of a powerful army, while Henry, having spent his father's hoards,
was not in a condition for a fresh war without the sanction of
Parliament.
Francis was bent on prosecuting the vain scheme of the conquest of
Milan, which had already cost his predecessors and France so much.
He had entered into alliance with Venice and Genoa, and trusted to
be able easily to overcome Maximilian Sforza the native Prince;
Sforza, on his part, depended upon the support of the Pope and the
Swiss. Francis professed, in the first place, that his design was to
chastise the hostile Swiss. These hardy people had fortified those
passes in the Alps by which they calculated that the French would
attempt to pass towards Milan, but Francis made his way with
60,000 troops over the mountains in another direction, a large part
of his army taking the way to the left of Mount Genèvre, a route
never essayed by any army before. The Swiss mercenaries in the
service of Sforza, thus taken by surprise, were rapidly defeated by
the French, and were on the point of capitulation, when their
countrymen, who had been watching to intercept Francis and his
army, seeing that he had stolen a march upon them, descended
from their mountains, 20,000 strong, and came to the relief of their
countrymen under the walls of Milan. At Marignano, Francis won a
great victory over them on September 13th, 1515.
The effect at the English Court of this brilliant success was to
heighten extremely that discontent with Francis which Henry had
shown at the very moment that the chivalric young French king had
set out for Italy. Henry, who was ambitious of military renown, was
stung to the quick by it, and his envious mood was artfully
aggravated by the suggestions of Wolsey.
On the 12th of November, 1515, Parliament was summoned to meet.
Henry had caught a very discouraging glimpse of the iron at the
bottom of his father's money-chests, and was, therefore, obliged to
ask supplies from his subjects. His application does not appear to
have been successful, and Parliament was therefore dissolved on the
22nd of December, and was never called again till the 31st of July,
1523, an interval of eight years. A Parliament which would not grant
money was not likely to be a very favourite instrument with Henry,
and this still less so, because it had involved him in a contention with
the Convocation. The Convocation had dared to claim exemption for
the clergy from the jurisdiction of the secular courts. The clergy in
Henry's interest resisted this claim; it was brought before Parliament,
and both the Lords and Commons, as well as the judges, decided
against the Convocation. Henry, who was at once as fond of power
and as bigoted as the Church, found himself in a most embarrassing
dilemma, but declared that he would maintain the prerogatives of
the Crown, and was glad to get rid of the dispute by the dismissal of
Parliament.
On the 8th of February, 1516, Queen Catherine gave birth to a
daughter, who was named Mary, and who survived to wear the
crown of England. In the previous month died the queen's father,
Ferdinand of Spain, one of the most cunning, grasping, and
unprincipled monarchs that ever lived, but who had by his
Machiavelian schemes united Spain into one great and compact
kingdom, and whose sceptre Providence had extended, by the
discovery of Columbus, over new and wonderful worlds. His
grandson Charles, already in possession of the territories of the
house of Burgundy, and heir to those of Austria, succeeded him, as
Charles V. Henry had just entered into a commercial treaty with
Charles, as regarded the Netherlands, and perceiving the vast power
and greatness which must centre in Charles—for on the death of
Maximilian, who was now old, he would also become Emperor of
Germany—he was anxious to unite himself with him in close bonds
of interest and intimacy. To this end, he gave a commission to
Wolsey, assisted by the Duke of Norfolk and the Bishop of Durham,
to cement and conclude a league with the Emperor Maximilian and
Charles, the avowed object of which was to combine for the defence
of the Church, and to restrain the unbridled ambition of certain
princes—meaning Francis.
The sordid Emperor Maximilian, who had so often and so
successfully made his profit out of the vanity of Henry, seeing him so
urgent to cultivate the favour of his grandson Charles, thought it a
good opportunity to draw fresh sums from him. Maximilian was now
tottering towards his grave, but he was not the less desirous to pave
his way to it with gold. In a confidential conversation, therefore, with
Sir Robert Wingfield, the English ambassador at his Court, he
delicately dropped a hint that he was grown weary of the toils and
cares attending the Imperial office. Pursuing the theme, he
pretended great admiration for the King of England; he declared that
amongst all the princes of Christendom, he could see none who was
so fitted to succeed him in his high office, and at the same time
become the champion and protector of Holy Church against its
enemies. He therefore proposed to adopt Henry as his son, for a
proper consideration. According to his plan, Henry was to cross the
Channel with an army. From Tournay he was to march to Trèves,
where Maximilian was to meet him, and resign the empire to him,
with all the necessary formalities. Then the united army of English
and Germans was to invade France, and, whilst they thus sufficiently
occupied the attention of Francis, Henry and Maximilian, with
another division, were to march upon Italy, crossing the Alps at
Coire, to take Milan, and, having secured that city, make an easy
journey to Rome, where Henry was to be crowned emperor by the
Pope.
In this wild-goose scheme—which equally ignored the fact that
Charles V. was the grandson of Maximilian, heir of his kingdom, and
therefore neither by the natural affection of the emperor, nor by the
will of his subjects, likely to be set aside for a King of England; and
the difficulty, the impossibility almost, of the accomplishment of the
enterprise by two such monarchs as Maximilian and Henry—only one
thing was palpable, that Maximilian would give his blessing to the
stipulated son for these impossible honours, and then would as
quickly find a reason for abandoning the extravagant scheme as he
had already done that of taking Milan. Yet it is certain that, for the
moment, it seized on the imagination of Henry, and he despatched
the Earl of Worcester and Dr. Tunstall, afterwards Bishop of Durham,
to the Imperial Court, to settle the conditions of this notable
scheme. Tunstall, who was not only an accomplished scholar, but a
solid and shrewd thinker, no sooner reached the Court of Maximilian
than he saw at a glance the hollowness of the plot and of the
Imperial plotter. He, as well as Dr. Richard Pace, the ambassador at
Maximilian's Court, quickly and honestly informed Henry that it was
a mere scheme to get money.
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE.
These honest and patriotic statements perfectly unmasked the wily
old Maximilian, and Henry escaped the snare. Francis I., having also
now secured the duchy of Milan, set himself to conciliate two
persons whose amity was necessary to his future peace and security.
These were the Pope and Henry of England. The balance of power
on the Continent, it was clear, would lie between Francis and Charles
V., the King of Spain. On the death of Maximilian, Charles would be
ruler of Austria, and, in all probability, Emperor of Germany. It would
be quite enough for Francis to contend with the interests of Charles,
whose dominions would then stretch from Austria, with the Imperial
power of Germany, through the Netherlands to France, and reappear
on the other boundary of France, in Spain, without having that
gigantic dominion backed by the co-operation of England. Francis
had seen with alarm the cultivation of friendship recently between
these two formidable neighbours. To counteract these influences,
the French king whilst in Italy had an interview with the Pope at
Bologna, where he so won upon his regard that the Pontiff agreed to
drop all opposition to the possession of Milan by the French.
Having secured himself in this quarter, Francis returned to France,
and knowing well that the only way to the good graces of Henry was
through the all-powerful Cardinal Wolsey, he caused his ambassador
in England to endeavour to win the favour of the great minister. This
was not to be done otherwise than by substantial contributions to
his avarice, and promises of service in that greatest project of
Wolsey's ambition, the succession to the Popedom. Wolsey was at
this time in the possession of the most extraordinary power in
England. His word was law with both king and subject. To him all
men bowed down, and while he conferred favours with regal hand,
he did not forget those who had offended him in the days of his
littleness. Not only English subjects, but foreign monarchs sought his
favour with equal anxiety. The young King of Spain, to secure him to
his views, and knowing his grudge against the King of France,
conferred on him a pension of 3,000 livres a year, styling him, in the
written grant, "his most dear and especial friend."
Thus were the kings of Spain and France paying humble homage to
this proud churchman and absolute minister of England at the same
moment. But Francis felt that he must outbid the King of Spain, and
he resolved to do it. He commenced, then, by reminding him how
sincerely he had rejoiced at his elevation to the cardinalate, and how
greatly he desired the continuance and increase of their friendship,
and promised him whatever it was in his power to do for him. These
were mighty and significant words for the man who could signally
aid him in his designs on the Popedom, and who could settle all
difficulties and doubts about the bishopric of Tournay, hitherto such
a stumbling-block between them. The letters of Francis were spread
with the most skilful, if not the most delicate flatteries; he called him
his lord, his father, and his guardian, told him he regarded his
counsels as oracles; and whilst they increased the vanity of the
cardinal most profusely, he accompanied his flatteries by presents of
many extremely valuable and curious things.
Being assured by Villeroi, his resident ambassador at London, that
the cardinal lent a willing ear to all these things, Francis instructed
the ambassador to enter at once into private negotiation with
Wolsey for the restoration of Tournay, and an alliance between the
two crowns. This alliance was to be cemented by the affiancing of
Henry's daughter, Mary, then about a year-and-a-half old, to the
infant dauphin of France, but recently born! The price which Wolsey
was to receive for these services being satisfactorily settled between
himself and Francis, the great minister broke the matter to his
master in a manner which marks the genius of the man, and his
profound knowledge of Henry's character. He presented some of the
superb articles which Francis had sent him to the king, saying, "With
these things hath the King of France attempted to corrupt me. Many
servants would have concealed this from their masters, but I am
resolved to deal openly with your grace on all occasions. This
attempt, however," added he, "to corrupt a servant is a certain proof
of his sincere desire for the friendship of the master." Oh! faithful
servant! Oh! open and incorruptible man! Henry's vanity was so
flattered that he took in every word, and looked on himself as so
much the greater prince to have a minister thus admired and
courted by the most powerful monarchs.
The way to negotiation was now entirely open. Francis appointed
William Gouffier, Lord of Bonivet, Admiral of France; Stephen
Ponchier, Bishop of Paris; Sir Francis de Rupecavarde and Sir
Nicholas de Neuville his plenipotentiaries. They set out with a
splendid train of the greatest lords and ladies of France, attended by
a retinue of 1,200 officers and servants. Francis knew that the way
to ensure Henry's favourable attention was to compliment him by
the pomp and splendour of his embassy. The French
plenipotentiaries were introduced to Henry at Greenwich, on the
22nd of September, 1518, and Wolsey was appointed to conduct the
business on the part of the King of England. When they went to
business the ambassadors of Francis prepared the way for the
greater matters by producing a grant, already prepared, and,
therefore, clearly agreed upon beforehand, which they presented to
Wolsey, securing him a pension of 12,000 livres a year, in
compensation for the cession of the bishopric of Tournay. This was a
direct and palpable bribe; but there was no troublesome and
meddlesome Opposition in the House of Commons in those days to
demand the production of papers, and the impeachment of corrupt
ministers. With such a beginning the terms of treaty were soon
settled. They embraced four articles:—A general contract of peace
and amity betwixt the two kings and their successors, for ever; a
treaty of marriage betwixt the two little babies, the Dauphin and
Mary Tudor; the restitution of Tournay to France for 600,000 crowns;
and, lastly, an agreement for a personal interview between the two
monarchs, which was to take place on neutral ground between
Calais and Ardres, before the last day of July, 1519.
But while Wolsey was deeply occupied in his plans and preparations
for the royal meeting, an event occurred which for a time arrested
the attention of Europe. This was the death of the Emperor
Maximilian, and the vacancy in the Imperial office. Francis I. and
Charles of Spain were the two candidates for its occupation, and the
rivalry of these two monarchs seems to have again awakened in
Henry the same wish, though the plain statements of Bishop Tunstall
had for a time suppressed it. He despatched a man of great
learning, Dr. Richard Pace, to Germany, to see whether there were in
reality any chance for him. The reports of Pace soon extinguished all
hope of such event, and Henry, with a strange duplicity, then sent
off his "sincere longings for success" to both of the rival candidates,
Francis and Charles!
Francis declared to Henry's ambassador, Sir Thomas Boleyn, that he
would spend three millions of gold, but he would win the Imperial
crown; but though the German electors were notoriously corrupt,
and ready to hold out plausible pretences to secure as much of any
one's money as they could, from the outset there could be no
question as to who would prove the successful candidate. The first
and indispensable requisite for election was, that the candidate must
be a native of Germany, and subject of the Empire, neither of which
Francis was, and both of which Charles was. Charles was not only
grandson of Maximilian, and his successor to the throne of Austria,
and therefore of a German royal house, but he was sovereign of the
Netherlands, which were included in the universal German empire.
Even where Francis placed his great strength—the power of bribing
the corrupt German electors, the petty princes of Germany, for the
people had no voice in the matter—Charles was infinitely beyond
him in the power of bribery. He was now monarch of Spain, of the
Netherlands, of Naples and Sicily, of the Indies, and of the gold
regions of the newly-discovered America. Nor was Francis at all a
match for Charles in the other power which usually determines so
much in these contests—that of intrigue. Francis was open,
generous, and ardent; Charles cool, cautious, and, though young,
surrounded by ministers educated in the school of the crafty
Ferdinand and the able Ximenes to every artifice of diplomatic
cunning. Still more, the vulpine Maximilian, at the very time that he
was attempting to wheedle Henry of England out of his money, on
pretence of securing the Imperial dignity for him, had paved the way
for his own grandson, by assiduous exertions and promises amongst
the electors—promises which Charles was amply able to fulfil.
Accordingly, after a lavish distribution of both French and Spanish
gold amongst the elector-princes of Germany, Charles was declared
emperor on the 28th of June, 1519. Francis, though he professed to
carry off his disappointment with all the gaiety of a Frenchman, was
deeply and lastingly chagrined by the event; and though he and
Charles must, under any circumstances, have been rivals for the
place of supremacy on the Continent of Europe, there is no doubt
that this circumstance struck much deeper the feeling which led to
that gigantic struggle between them, which, during their lives, kept
Europe in a constant state of warfare and agitation.
Both Charles and Francis were intensely anxious to secure the
preference of Henry, because his weight thrown into either balance
must give it a dangerous preponderance. Both, therefore, paid
assiduous court to him, and still more, though covertly, to his all-
powerful minister, Wolsey. Francis, aware of the impulsive
temperament of Henry, prayed for an early fulfilment of the visit
agreed upon of Henry to France. It was decided that the interview
should take place in May. The news of this immediately excited the
jealousy of Charles, and his ambassadors in London expressed great
dissatisfaction at the proposal. Wolsey found he had a difficult part
to play, for he had great expectations from both monarchs, and he
took care to make such representations to each prince in private, as
to persuade him that the real affection of England lay towards him,
the public favour shown to the rival monarch being only a matter of
political expedience. When the Spanish ambassadors found they
could not put off the intended interview, they proposed a visit of
their master to the King of England previously, on his way from
Spain to Germany. This was secretly arranged with the cardinal, but
was to be made to appear quite an unpremeditated occurrence.
Accordingly, before the king set out for Calais, Charles, according to
the secret treaty with Wolsey, sent that minister a grant under his
privy seal, from the revenue of the two bishoprics of Badajoz and
Placentia, of 7,000 ducats. Henry set forward from London to
Canterbury, on his way towards Dover and Calais, attended by his
queen and court, with a surprising degree of splendour. Whilst lying
there, he was surprised, as it was made to appear, by the news that
the emperor had been induced by his regard for the king to turn
aside on his voyage towards his German dominions, and had
anchored in the port of Hythe, on the 26th of May, 1520. As soon as
this news reached Henry, he despatched Wolsey to receive the
emperor and conduct him to the castle of Dover, and Henry himself
set out and rode by torchlight to Dover, where he arrived in the
middle of the night. It must have been a hospitably inconvenient
visit at that hour, for Charles, fatigued by his voyage, had gone to
bed, and was awoke from a sound sleep by the noise and bustle of
the king's arrival. He arose, however, and met Henry at the top of
the stairs, where the two monarchs embraced, and Henry bade his
august relative welcome. The next day, being Whitsunday, they went
together to Canterbury, the king riding with the emperor on his right
hand, the Earl of Derby carrying before them the sword of State.
From the cathedral the emperor was conducted by his royal host to
the palace of the archbishop, where he was for the time quartered.
For three days the archiepiscopal palace was a scene of the gayest
festivities; nothing was omitted by Henry to do honour to his august
relative; and nothing on the part of Charles to win upon Henry, and
detach him from the interests of France. Nor the less assiduously did
the politic emperor exert himself to secure the services of Wolsey.
He saw that ambition was the great passion of the cardinal, and he
adroitly infused into his mind the hope of reaching the Popedom
through his influence and assistance. Nothing could bind Wolsey like
this fascinating anticipation. Leo X. was a much younger man than
himself; but this did not seem to occur to the sanguine spirit of the
cardinal, for "all men think all men mortal but themselves;" whilst to
Charles the circumstance made his promise peculiarly easy, as he
could scarcely expect to be called upon to fulfil it.
On the fourth day Charles embarked at Sandwich for the
Netherlands, less anxious regarding the approaching interview of
Henry and Francis, for he had made an ardent impression on the
king, and had put a strong hook into the nose of his great leviathan
—the hope of the triple crown. Simultaneously with the departure of
Charles, Henry, his queen and court, embarked at Dover for Calais;
and on the 4th of June, 1520, Henry, with his queen, the Queen
Dowager of France, and all his court, rode on to Guines, where
2,000 workmen, most of them clever artificers from Holland and
Flanders, had been busily engaged for several months in erecting a
palace of wood for their reception.
The meeting-place was called, from the splendour of the retinues of
the two monarchs, the "Field of the Cloth of Gold," but it did little to
cement the alliance between England and France.
On the 25th of June the English Court returned to Calais; half the
followers of the nobles were sent home, and then preparations were
made for visiting the emperor at Gravelines, and receiving a visit
from him at Calais. By the 10th of July all was ready, and Henry set
out with a splendid retinue. He was met on the way, and conducted
into Gravelines by Charles, with every circumstance of honour and
display. Charles, whose object was avowedly to efface any
impression which Francis and the French might have made on the
mind of Henry at the late interview, had given orders to receive the
English with every demonstration of friendship and hospitality, and
his orders were so well executed that the English were enchanted
with their visit.
On the departure of Charles, Henry and his court embarked for
Dover, returning proud of his sham prowess and mock battles, and
of all his finery, but both himself and his followers loaded with a
fearful amount of debt for this useless and hypocritical display. When
the nobles and gentlemen got home, and began to reflect coolly on
the heavy responsibilities they had incurred for their late showy but
worthless follies, they could not help grumbling amongst themselves,
and even blaming Wolsey, as loudly as they dared, as being at the
bottom of the whole affair. One amongst them was neither nice nor
cautious in his expressions of chagrin at the ruinous and foolish
expense incurred, and denounced the proud cardinal's ambition as
the cause of it all. This was the Duke of Buckingham. He was
executed in 1521 on the absurd charge of having intercourse with
astrologers.
The various causes of antipathy between Francis I. and Charles V.,
which had been long fomenting, now reached that degree of activity
when they must burst all restraint. War was inevitable. The first
breach was made by Francis. At this crisis Charles appealed to Henry
to act as mediator, according to the provisions of the treaty of 1518.
Henry at once accepted the office, and entered upon it with high
professions of impartiality and of his sincere desire to promote
justice and amity, but really with about the same amount of sincerity
as was displayed by each of the contending parties. Francis had
certainly been the aggressor, and Charles, having intercepted some
of his letters, had already convinced Henry, to whom he had shown
them, that the invasion of both Spain and Flanders was planned in
the French cabinet. Henry's mind, therefore, was already made up
before he assumed the duty of deciding; and Charles, from being
aware of this, proposed his arbitration. Henry, moreover, was
anxious to invade France on his own account, spite of treaties and
the dallyings of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but he had not yet the
funds necessary. With these feelings and secrets in his own heart,
Henry opened his proposal of arbitration to Francis by declarations of
the extraordinary affection which he had contracted for him at the
late interview.

HENRY VIII. (After the Portrait by Holbein.)

There was no alternative for the French king but to acquiesce in the
proposal; the place of negotiations was appointed to be Calais, and,
of course, Wolsey was named as the only man able and fitting to
decide between two such great monarchs—Wolsey, who was bound
hand and foot to the emperor by the hope of the Popedom. It was a
clear case that Francis must be victimised, or the negotiation must
prove abortive. Wolsey set out with something more than regal state
to decide between the kings. In addition to his dignity of Papal
legate a latere, he received the extraordinary powers of creating fifty
counts-palatine, fifty knights, fifty chaplains, and fifty notaries; of
legitimising bastards, and conferring the degree of doctor in
medicine, law, and divinity. By another bull, he was empowered to
grant licences to such as he thought proper to read the heretical
works of Martin Luther, in order that some able man, having read
them, might refute them. This was to pave the way for a royal
champion of the Catholic Church against Luther and the devil, and
that such a champion was already at work we shall shortly have
occasion to show. Such were the pomp and splendour of the
cardinal, that when he continued his journey into the Netherlands,
with his troops of gentlemen attending him, clad in scarlet coats,
with borders of velvet of a full hand's breadth, and with massive
gold chains: when they saw him served on the knee by these
attendants, and expending money with the most marvellous
profusion, Christian, King of Denmark, and other princes then at the
Court of the Emperor at Bruges, were overwhelmed with
astonishment, for such slavish homage was not known in Germany.
Wolsey landed at Calais on the 2nd of July, 1521, and was received
with great reverence. The ambassadors of the emperor had taken
care to be there first, that they might secretly settle with Wolsey all
the points to be insisted on. The French embassy arrived the next
day, and the discussions were at once entered upon with all that air
of solemn impartiality and careful weighing of propositions which
such conferences assume, when the real points at issue have been
determined upon privately beforehand by the parties who mean to
carry out their own views. The French plenipotentiaries alleged that
the emperor had broken the treaty of Noyon of 1516, by retaining
possession of Navarre, and by neglecting to do homage for Flanders
and Artois, fiefs of the French crown. On the other hand, the
Imperial representatives retorted on the French the breach of the
treaty of Noyon, and denounced in strong terms the late invasion of
Spain and the clandestine support given to the Duke of Bouillon. The
cardinal laboured to bring the fiery litigants to terms, but the
demands of the emperor were purposely pitched so high that it was
impossible. The differences became only the more inflamed; and on
the Imperial chancellor, Gattinara, declaring that he could not
concede a single demand made by his master, and that he came
there to obtain them through the aid of the King of England, who
was bound to afford it by the late treaty, Wolsey said that there, of
necessity, his endeavours must end, unless the emperor could be
induced to modify his expectations; and that, as his ambassador had
no power to grant such modification, rather than all hope of
accommodation should fail, he would himself take the trouble to
make a journey to the Imperial Court, and endeavour to procure
better terms. Nothing could appear more disinterested on the part of
the cardinal, but the French ambassadors were struck with
consternation at the proposal. They were too well aware of the
cardinal's leaning towards Charles; they did not forget the coquetting
of the English and the emperor both before and after the meeting at
the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and they opposed this proposal of
Wolsey with all their power. But their opposition was useless. There
can be no doubt that the prime object of Wolsey in his embassy was
to make this visit to Charles for his own purpose, and that it had
been agreed upon between himself and Charles before he left
London. In vain the French protested that such a visit, made by the
umpire in the midst of the conference to one of the parties
concerned, was contrary to all ideas of the impartiality essential to a
mediator; and they declared that, if the thing was persisted in, they
would break off the negotiation and retire. But Wolsey told them
that if they did not remain at Calais till his return, he would
pronounce them in the wrong, as the real aggressors in the war, and
the enemies to peace and to the King of England. There was nothing
for it but to submit.
The cardinal set out on his progress to Bruges on the 12th of
August, attended by the Imperial ambassadors and a splendid
retinue of prelates, nobles, knights, and gentlemen, amounting
altogether to 400 horsemen. The emperor met him a mile out of
Bruges, and conducted him into the city in a kind of triumph.
Thirteen days—a greater number than had been occupied at Calais—
were spent in the pretended conferences for reducing the emperor's
demands on France, but in reality in strengthening Wolsey's interest
with Charles for the Popedom, and in settling the actual terms of a
treaty between Charles, the Pope, and the King of England for a war
against France. So deep was the hypocrisy of these parties, that
before Wolsey had quitted the shores of England he had received a
commission from Henry investing him with full authority to make a
treaty of confederacy with the Pope, the emperor, the King of
France, or any other potentate, offensive or defensive, which the
king bound himself to ratify; the words "King of France, or other
king, prince, or state," being clearly inserted to cover with an air of
generality the particular design. The proposed marriage between the
Dauphin and the Princess Mary was secretly determined to be set
aside, and a marriage between Charles and that princess was agreed
upon; and, moreover, it was settled that Charles should pay another
visit to England on his voyage to Spain. Writing from Bruges to
Henry, Wolsey told him all this, and added that it was to be kept a
profound secret till Charles came to England, so that, adds Wolsey,
"convenient time may be had to put yourself in good readiness for
war."
After all this scandalous treachery—called in State language
diplomacy—Wolsey returned to Calais, and resumed the conferences,
as if he were the most honest man in the world, and was serving
two kings about as honest as himself. He proposed to the
plenipotentiaries a plan of a pacification, the conditions of which he
knew the French would never accept. All this time hostilities were
going on between Francis and the emperor. The emperor had taken
Mouzon and laid siege to Mézières, and Francis, advancing, raised
the siege, but was checked in his further pursuit of the enemy by
the Count of Nassau. At this crisis Wolsey interposed, insisting that
the belligerents should lay down their arms, and abide the award of
King Henry; but this proposal was by no means likely to be met with
favour on the part of the French, after what had been going on at
Bruges, and therefore Wolsey pronounced that Francis was the
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