Henry VIII (Vol. 61) - Gordon McMullan (essay date 1999)
Gordon McMullan (essay date 1999)
SOURCE: “‘Thou Hast Made Me Now a Man’: Reforming Man(ner)liness in Henry VIII,” in Shakespeare's Late Plays: New Readings, edited by Jennifer Richards and James Knowles, Edinburgh University Press, 1999, pp. 40-56.
[In the following essay, McMullan explores Henry VIII's treatment of contemporary definitions of manliness, examining standards of masculinity and appropriate social conduct.]
I
‘Thou hast made me now a man’, Henry tells Cranmer after the archbishop has spoken prophetic words over the baby Elizabeth in the christening scene at the close of Henry VIII, announcing ‘never before / This happy child did I get anything’ (V, iv, 64-5). This claim of the king's that his masculinity has only now finally been established by his fathering (or perhaps more accurately, by Cranmer's christening) of a baby girl is a puzzling one, and one which has generally been...
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