Henry VIII (Vol. 72) - Thomas Healy (essay date 1999)
Thomas Healy (essay date 1999)
SOURCE: Healy, Thomas. “History and Judgement in Henry VIII.” In Shakespeare's Late Plays: New Readings, edited by Jennifer Richards and James Knowles, pp. 158-75. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
[In the following essay, Healy highlights the theme of historiography in Henry VIII, exploring the drama's concern with the evaluation, interpretation, and malleability of historical “truth.”]
I
MOPSA
I love a ballad in print, alife, for then we are sure they are true.
AUTOLYCUS
Here's one to a very doleful tune, how a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she longed to eat adders' heads and toads carbonadoed.
MOPSA
Is it true, think
AUTOLYCUS
Very
(The Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 251-6)
2ND Gentleman
[D]id you not late...
[The entire page is 7869 words long]
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