Henry VIII (Vol. 41) | Maurice Hunt (essay date 1994)
Maurice Hunt (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: "Shakespeare's King Henry VIII and the Triumph of the World," in English Studies, Vol. 75, No. 3, May, 1994, pp. 225-45.
[In the following essay, Hunt explores the transformational power of speech in Henry VIII.]
For several decades, critics have recognized that Shakespeare's interest in the proper use of language, most intense during the phase of the great tragedies, extends to the late romances.1 Recently a paradigm of unusual kinds of speech that either rectify or offset inadequate language has been described in the group of plays beginning with Pericles and ending with The Tempest. 2 Critics have also identified romance motifs and dramatic methods in King Henry VIII, a play written shortly after The Tempest? However, no one has yet directly addressed the question of whether Shakespeare's interest in the radical limits and possibilities of language extends to...
[The entire page is 10731 words long]
Navigate
