SOURCE: "'Sit By Us': Visual Imagery and the Two Queens in Henry VIII" in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 4, Winter, 1987, pp. 452-66.

[In the following essay, Micheli investigates the contrasting visual images associated with Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn in Henry VIII and the significance of these to the play as both a romance and a chronicle history.]

The rewards that await the critic, director, or spectator who is attentive to the visual as well as the verbal elements of Shakespeare's plays have been amply demonstrated by Maurice Charney, Sidney Homan, Anne Slater, David Bevington, Alan Dessen, and others. 1 Discussion of the visual effects of the plays in performance is now common in Shakespeare criticism, and recent studies, such as Linda LaBranche's analysis of the tension between what we see and what we hear in Troilus and Cressida,² have deepened our understanding of individual plays.

This essay examines visual and nonverbal elements associated with the two Queens in Henry VIII A study of all the visual effects in this play is beyond the compass of a single essay, but a detailed analysis of the gestures, movements, and stage images connected with the Queens is needed for two reasons. First, studies of nonverbal elements of Henry VIII have to date focused on the play's large-scale spectacles—the trial of Katherine, Anne's coronation procession, and the christening of Elizabeth—and the unusually detailed stage directions that accompany them. Many critics have defended the dramatic function of such pageantry and debated its symbolic meaning.³ Others have discussed the use of music⁴ and masque-like elements,⁵ still others have researched the ways different productions have exploited (or curtailed) the play's inherent opportunities for spectacle.⁶ So far, however, the more subtle aspects of the play's dramaturgy have been neglected. In this play, as throughout the canon, gesture, movement, stage groupings, setting (as specified by the text or left indeterminate), and other nonverbal effects establish relationships—between words and actions, between one character and another, between otherwise disparate events—and thus contribute to the overall effect of the drama. An analysis of the full range of visual imagery, in concert with a close reading of the text, illuminates both Shakespeare's dramaturgy in general and the artistry and dramatic effect of this play, which has (with notable exceptions) too often been treated merely as a case study in problematic authorship.⁷

Second, a study of the visual images associated with Katherine and Anne is needed because they are polar characters identified with the old order and the new, respectively: our responses to them are central to our interpretation of the play as a whole. In the world of the play, our sympathy for Katherine, who is sacrificed to Henry's ambiguous "conscience"⁸ and England's destiny, and our view of Anne, the object and beneficiary of Henry's favor, continually color our view of the play's momentous events. While Katherine's character has generally aroused sympathy and admiration,⁹ reaction to Anne has been guarded and mixed. In some stage productions, perhaps as the result of a director's desire to maintain the greatest possible contrast between the two Queens, she emerges as a "cool and calculating minx"¹⁰ or a "Barbie doll."¹¹ Most literary critics view her more kindly, but many stress the ambiguity of her character. H. M. Richmond, who considers Anne to be Shakespeare's best study of romantic sexuality, compares her to Eve; she is both a source of disaster and the origin of a corrective new order.¹² Ronald Berman sees her as sexual yet innocent, a Venus genetrix who mads and soothes the crowds.¹³ That Anne seems enigmatic or ambiguous is not surprising: she speaks at length in only one scene, and she is elsewhere presented almost exclusively through visual means that, even more than words, permit multiple interpretations. Careful analysis of these visual effects is thus essential to understanding her, not only as a foil to Katherine, but as a character in her own right.

The portraits of Katherine and Anne contain many points of contrast: age vs. youth, royalty vs. petty nobility, assertiveness vs. compliance, moral virtue vs. sexual appeal, everyday vs. holiday virtues, and falling vs. rising fortunes. As the action unfolds, these contrasts are emphasized in a series of parallel scenes. In I.ii and I.iv respectively, each character is introduced in the context of court activities, and her relationship to the King is established visually as well as verbally. In II.iii and III.i respectively, each woman is shown with her intimate companions, and each receives news from the court that dramatically affects her fate, one rising while the other falls. Finally, Anne's coronation scene (IV.i) parallels Katherine's deathbed vision of the heavenly crown that awaits her (IV.ii). Within these six scenes, Katherine and Anne are further contrasted with respect to what David Bevington terms the "language of ceremony," the gestures and movements (such as sitting, kneeling, taking by the hand, and kissing) that express order and hierarchy in political, social, and domestic life. The gestures and movements of the two Queens and those associated with them establish them as exemplars of opposing ideals of womanhood: one primarily moral, spiritual, and strong-minded; the other primarily sexual, physical, and compliant. Paradoxically, Katherine, the reigning queen and daughter of a king, who might be expected to stand on ceremony, often criticizes or disrupts formal proceedings, while Anne, her upstart rival, accepts the ceremonies that sanction her good fortune.

Katherine first appears in the Council scene (I.ii). Before she says anything "she kneels" (S.D.I.ii.8). Her action conveys respect for her husband and casts her in the role of petitioner. In response "[The] King riseth from his state, takes her up, kisses, and placeth her by him" (S.D.I.ii.8). Henry's movements—rising to greet her, taking her up (by the hand), kissing her, and offering her a place as his partner on the throne—are gestures at once personal and public; they demonstrate affection and observe the expected forms of courtesy. As Anne Slater has noted, the exchange of gestures also mirrors harmony in a larger sense:

. . . kneeling is a visible symbol of order, an illustration of the chain of dependence from Man to God. . . . Its reciprocal action, of raising the suppliant, is a further extension of that order. 14

Thus far, gesture and movement would seem to establish the royal pair as a model of conjugal, political, even universal harmony.

This impression is complicated, though not cancelled, by Katherine's words and actions in the first half of the scene. Though she observes all the forms of duty and protocol, she is not their slave. The stage direction at the beginning of I.ii requires that the King enter "leaning on the Cardinal's shoulder" In contrast to the King's dependence on Wolsey, Katherine displays a marked independence. Her opening line indicates that her first stage action is to resist his intent to place her by him: "Nay, we must longer kneel; I am a suitor" (I.ii.9). Henry's response, "Arise, and take place by us" (1. 10), seems to imply that she rises and joins him on the dais; however, the repetition of his invitation more than one hundred lines later ("Sit by us," 1. 124) strongly suggests that she holds her course and protests Wolsey's taxes from a position independent of the King.¹⁵ Verbally, she is all humility and courtesy:

 I am much too venturous
In tempting of your patience; but am bold'ned
Under your promis'd pardon.

(I.ii.54-56)

Nonetheless, in both word and action, she interrupts the expected course of events and imposes her own agenda on the Council meeting. The announced matter for consideration, the allegations of Buckingham's surveyor, is taken up only after Katherine has accomplished her purpose and Henry has ordered the onerous taxes revoked.

In fact, Katherine's presence at the Council meeting is unexpected, an interruption, as a review of the stage directions makes clear. Henry enters with a flourish of "cornets" (S.D.I.ii) and orders the proceedings to begin: "Let be call'd before us / That gentleman of Buckingham's .. . / And point by point the treasons of his master / He shall again relate" (11. 4-8). Only then does Katherine enter, with considerably less ceremony and more urgency: A noise within, crying, 'Room for the Queen!' [who is] usher'd by the Duke of Norfolk. Enter the Queen [Katherine], Norfolk, and Suffolk . . ." (S.D.I.ii.8). Howard Davies, director of the 1983 Stratford production, interpreted Katherine's entrance with the Dukes as evidence of her political role as a member of a Court party opposed to Wolsey's Church party.¹⁶ In any case, Katherine's importance as a political force is clearly established through her actions as well as her words, and, while displaying deference to Henry, she radically influences court business.

Our initial view of Katherine thus establishes her as a noble and compassionate consort, respectful of her husband and of decorum, but willing to defy the forms of order in her pursuit of justice. The only woman in the Council, a condition that enhances her visual prominence, she actively participates in the affairs of state, mediating between king, chancellor, and people. Kneeling, standing, or sitting, she dominates this part of the scene visually as well as verbally, and she does so on her own terms.

By contrast, Anne Bullen is introduced as one decorative woman among many at Wolsey's banquet: "enter Anne Bullen and divers other Ladies and Gentlemen as guests" (S.D.I.iv). The Lord Chamberlain, appointed "comptroller" of the revels, greets the guests with a courteous invitation: "Sweet ladies, will it please you sit?" (1. 19). He then lightheartedly oversees the seating arrangements:

 Sir Harry,
Place you that side, I'll take the charge of this.
. . . Nay, you must not freeze,
Two women plac'd together makes cold weather.
My Lord Sands, you are one will keep 'em waking;
Pray sit between these ladies.

(I.iv. 19-24)

As in the case of Katherine, Anne's entrance is associated with an invitation to be seated in a place, if not of honor, then of courteous welcome. The due placement of guests at a banquet reflects social harmony as much as the order of seating in the Council, but the Chamberlain's seating plan is determined by gender and a desire for lively flirtation rather than by merit or degree. The ensuing conversation reveals the extent to which the decorum of the banquet hall is a holiday from that of the council chamber:

San.  By your leave, sweet ladies.
If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me;
I had it from my father.
Anne. Was he mad, sir?
San. O, very mad, exceeding mad, in love too;
But he would bite none. Just as I do now,
He would kiss you twenty with a breath.
 [Kisses her.]

(I.iv.25-30)

When the King arrives, he chooses Anne as his dancing partner (S.D.I.iv.74). That he takes her by the hand in doing so is emphasized by the text:

The fairest hand I ever touch'd! O Beauty,
Till now I never knew thee!

(I.iv.75-76)¹⁷

Later in the scene he kisses her and toasts the assembly:

 Sweet heart,
I were unmannerly to take you out
And not to kiss you. A health, gentlemen!

(I.iv.94-96)

His gestures—taking her by the hand and kissing her—parallel those the King has exchanged with Katherine in the Council scene, but in this festive context they take on quite a different significance. They heighten the disparity between the seriousness of the King's partnership with the mature Katherine and the flirtatiousness of his attraction to the beautiful young Anne.

Though enfranchised by the freedom of the occasion, Anne is relatively self-effacing. True, she bandies words with Lord Sands, even interrupting him with a witty remark (1. 48). But unlike Katherine, who dominates the first half of the Council scene speaking freely and moving at her will, Anne speaks only three lines at the banquet, and she moves only in response to the invitations and instructions of others. She sits with the other ladies at the Chamberlain's bidding, she accepts Sands's kiss and that of the King, and she rises to dance at the invitation of the latter. Her compliance is in no way surprising given her position at court (the "Queen's gentlewoman . . . a knight's daughter" [III.ii.93]), but it contrasts vividly with Katherine's insistence on being her own mistress in word and action.

Anne's chiefly visual presence in this scene allies her with the King, however. Since the King and his fellow masquers purport to be foreigners who "speak no English" (I.iv.64), pantomime becomes for a time the order of the evening. The quiet demeanor of Anne and the ladies, for which Sands teases both them and their dinner partners ("Ladies, you are not merry. Gentlemen, / Whose fault is this?" [11. 41-43]) is paralleled by the silence of the mysterious visitors.¹⁸ The fact that Anne and Henry dance together unites them even more emphatically in the viewer's eye. Long before Henry's conscience troubles him regarding his marriage, the attraction between Anne and the King is firmly established visually as well as verbally.

The gestures and movements of the trial scene (II.iv), the scene in which Katherine next appears (a scene with no parallel for Anne), make painfully evident the deterioration of the relationship between the King and Katherine. The entrance of the court into Blackfriars recalls the procession into the Council (I.ii), though the later entrance is grander (the stage direction specifies by station twenty-two members of the procession). As before, the King and Queen enter separately, but this time there is no greeting or exchange of courtesies. The King "takes place under the cloth of state" and the Queen, no longer so protected, "takes place some distance from the King" (S.D.II.iv). Once again, Henry orders the proceedings to begin, though in this case he is impatient and dispenses with some initial formalities (11. 2-5). The weight of ritual is far greater than in the Council scene, however, and from this point on Henry submits to it, perhaps because he believes it will serve his interests. (When it does not, he, like Katherine, uses his prerogative to "Break up the court" [1. 241]). The Scribe instructs the Crier, "Say, Henry King of England, come into the court" (1. 6-7). The Crier does his part, and Henry responds, "Here" (1. 9).¹⁹ When Katherine is called, she responds not with the expected word, but with eloquent silence and movement: "The Queen makes no answer, rises out of her chair, goes about the court, comes to the King, and kneels at his feet. . . " (S.D.II.iv.12). In contrast to the Council scene, the King does not raise her or grant her suit before she names it; he does not even answer her lengthy impassioned appeal to him. In the banquet scene his silence united him with Anne; here it signals an irrevocable break with Katherine.

Recognizing, perhaps, that she has lost direct access to the King, Katherine turns to Wolsey with a line made famous by Mrs. Siddons, who pointed at him with her arm extended, while turning her face away:²⁰

Q. Kath. Lord Cardinal,
To you I speak.
Wol Your pleasure, madam?
Q. Kath. Sir,
I am about to weep; but thinking that
We are a queen (or long have dream'd so), certain
The daughter of a king, my drops of tears
I'll turn to sparks of fire.
Wol. Be patient yet.
Q. Kath. I will, when you are humble; nay, before,
Or God will punish me.

(11. 68-75)

Although Mrs. Siddons's gesture now seems melodramatic, her emphasis—"To you I speak"—seems right. If Katherine cannot move Henry, she will have words with none but the man she takes to be her enemy, whose role in the proceedings, she feels, makes a mockery of them. Her passion is high, but she does not rely on "mere words," as some feel the women in the histories must;²¹ her words formally indict Wolsey as an unfit "judge" (11. 80-84), and they constitute a legal maneuver of her own: "I do . . . here, / Before you all, appeal unto the Pope" (11. 118-19). Her exit makes a fine distinction between the ceremonies she will observe and those she rejects: "She curtsies to the King and offers to depart" (S.D. 1. 121). Henry (attempting to maintain decorum regardless of what he may be feeling) tersely instructs the Crier: "Call her again" (1. 125). But Katherine's silence has, by the force of events, become outright defiance. She must now behave according to her own sense of justice:

Gent Ush. Madam, you are call'd back.
Q. Kath. What need you note it? pray you keep your way;
When you are call'd, return. . . .
I will not tarry; no, nor ever more
Upon this business my appearance make
In any of their courts.
Exeunt Queen and her Attendants

(II.iv.127-34)

We learn later that her actions have matched her words; though subsequently called into court, she "appear'd not" (IV.i.24-29).

As in the Council scene, but to a greater degree, Katherine's words and actions show her respect for right order, her spirited rejection of corrupt or hollow ceremony, and her ability to manipulate social and judicial forms when necessary. Though she is sometimes celebrated for patience in adversity, she is no passive victim or Patient Grissil; she takes an active role in her own defense. She is ultimately unsuccessful, but her fall can in no way be ascribed to a lack of vigor or intelligence in attempting to secure justice for herself within the law.

The scenes immediately before and after the trial contrast Katherine and Anne at the turning points of their destinies. Each is seen in a private moment receiving visitors with important news from the court. In II.iii, Anne enters conversing with "an Old Lady" who has been "sixteen years in court" (1. 82), and who seems, like Anne, to be an attendant to the Queen. Neither the stage direction nor the text indicates the precise location of the scene or the postures and movements of the two women. They could be sitting in some private chamber in the palace or strolling in a courtyard or garden. The text establishes only that they are temporarily free of their duties and are at liberty to discuss the Queen's plight. They are met by the Lord Chamberlain, who informs them that Henry has honored Anne with a title and a stipend of a thousand pounds a year. The non-specificity of the setting captures the ambiguity and fertility of the moment for Anne. Her days of obscurity are about to end. Even though the trial has yet to be held and Katherine is still her queen and mistress, Anne will depart from the scene with a new identity as the Marchioness of Pembroke and with the prospect of further advancement.

Verbally, this is Anne's most important scene; it contains most of her lines and our only glimpse of her in private. The scene seems designed to complicate our impression of her. On the one hand, everything she says is exemplary. She echoes the universal admiration of Katherine, who "never knew harm-doing" (1. 5); she pities her mistress's imminent loss of the honor that has been hers for "So many courses of the sun" (1. 6); and she concludes her statements of sympathy for Katherine with the words, "By my troth and maidenhead,/! would not be a queen" (11. 23-24). In addition, in the company of the older woman, Anne's youth and beauty are likely to strike us even more forcibly than in the banquet scene, where she was presumably surrounded by other beauties.

On the other hand, the bawdiness and worldly wisdom of the Old Lady, like that of Lord Sands in the banquet scene, set Anne once more in a sexual light. The Old Lady suggests that Anne is naive or self-deceived rather than innocent of ambition when she says she would not be a queen, and her bawdiness animates the latent pun queen/quean (prostitute):

 Beshrew me, I would,
And venture maidenhead for't, and so would you
For all this spice of your hypocrisy.
You, that have so fair parts of woman on you,
Have, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet
Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty;
Which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts
(Saving your mincing) the capacity
Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive
If you might please to stretch it.

(II.iii.24-33)

After the Chamberlain has delivered his news, the Old Lady teases Anne:

There was a lady once ('tis an old story)
That would not be a queen, that would she not,
For all the mud in Egypt. Have you heard it?

(II.iii.90-92)

To a degree, the Old Lady functions in this scene much as the Nurse does in relation to Juliet, or Emilia in relation to Desdemona; her earthiness points up the youth and innocence of her companion. But neither the Nurse nor Emilia accuses Juliet or Desdemona of outright "hypocrisy" or predicts, correctly, that her "cheveril conscience" would "stretch" to accept an offer of status previously rejected. To be sure, Anne resolutely dissociates herself from her companion's sauciness and on receiving the Chamberlain's news maintains that "it faints me / To think what follows" (11. 103-4). Suddenly mindful of her duties, she chides herself and her companion: "The Queen is comfortless, and we forgetful / In our long absence" (II.iii. 105-6). But prudence and compassion seem mixed in her final line: "Pray do not deliver / What here y' have heard to her [i.e., the Queen]" (11. 106-7).

Ultimately, Anne seems extraordinary only in her beauty, which has attracted the notice of the King and thus given her unexpected prominence in the affairs of state. She is a young woman of intelligence and virtue, but she is not endowed with either exceptional self-knowledge or deep feeling. She pities Katherine chiefly for the loss of "pomp," in which Anne herself, for all her protests, clearly has great interest. Katherine, it must be granted, holds her honors dear; when pressed by the Cardinals, she vows "Nothing but death / Shall e'er divorce my dignities" (III.i. 141-42). But Anne's view of Katherine's situation appears shallow and naive compared to Katherine's awareness of the responsibilities that accompany her status and her reasons for refusing to "give up willingly that noble title" that Henry conferred upon her by marriage (III.i.140-41). 22

In III.i, we see Katherine in a similarly private moment. While the text is vague regarding the setting and stage business of Anne's scene, it is specific regarding Katherine's. After the high drama of the trial, she is at home with her women "as at work" (S.D.III.i).²³ In the hope of easing her sadness, she asks one of her women to sing, and we hear the lovely lyric "Orpheus with his lute." In Holinshed, Shakespeare's source for this scene, the women are occupied with various kinds of needlework, a traditional emblem of female virtue, 24 and Katherine is described as having a skein of white thread about her neck.²⁵ Shakespeare seems to follow Holinshed in envisioning the staging of the opening of the scene. In contrast to Anne's leisure and new-found honors, the scene stresses Katherine's industry and her reduced circumstances. Whereas Anne, contemplating the transience of earthly honor, is elevated to a higher station, Katherine self-consciously embraces a lower one—or, as perhaps we are to infer, maintains the humble and virtuous activities she engaged in even as Queen. When she greets the Cardinals who come to persuade her to place herself in Henry's and their hands, she styles herself "part of a huswife" (1. 24), occupied with domestic affairs rather than affairs of state. Bevington asserts that "the business of needle and thread" creates an alternative feminine world but also conveys, especially in the histories, women's "vulnerability to male stratagems."²⁶ If so, the image of Katherine "at work" may prepare us for her apparent capitulation to the Cardinals at the end of the scene.

In adapting Holinshed, Shakespeare modifies the setting of the rest of this scene so as to stress both Katherine's farewell to ceremony and her independence. In Holinshed, when the Cardinals arrive, Katherine rises from her work and meets them in the formal presence chamber. In Shakespeare, on being informed that they await her "in the presence" (1. 17), she invites them into her private apartment. When the Cardinals attempt to withdraw to another room and to conduct the conversation in Latin, Katherine refuses, insisting that they meet her on her own unceremonial terms:²⁷

O, good my lord, no Latin. . . .
The willing'st sin I ever yet committed
May be absolv'd in English.

(III.i.41, 49-50)

 Speak it here;
There's nothing I have done yet, o' my conscience,
Deserves a corner.

(11. 29-31)

As she parries with the two princes of the Church, she skillfully alludes to her reduced circumstances as a pretext to gain time:

 I was set at work
Among my maids, full little, God knows, looking
Either for such men or such business.

(11. 74-76)

She has abandoned external forms of ceremony, but not her customary assertiveness and political skill.

As the scene progresses, however, we see her fall. She reacts to the Cardinals' advice with outrage and a remark that comes close to criticizing the King:

Q. Kath. Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon ye!
Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge
That no king can corrupt.
Cam. Your rage mistakes us.
Q. Kath. The more shame for ye! Holy men I thought ye,
Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
But cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye.

(11. 99-104)

From here to the end of the scene, her speeches focus increasingly on herself as "a wife," "a constant woman," a "wretched lady," friendless and comfortless; these personal and emotional appeals contrast with her shrewd self-defense in the trial scene. While this may be a ploy to deceive or move the Cardinals, in the end she resigns herself to the fate they have prepared for her:

Do what ye will, my lords; and pray forgive me;
If I have us'd myself unmannerly,
You know I am a woman, lacking wit
To make a seemly answer to such persons.
Pray do my service to his Majesty. . . .
Bestow your counsels on me. She now begs
That little thought, when she set footing here,
She should have bought her dignities so dear.

(11. 175-79, 182-84)

Even if these lines are spoken with irony, Katherine does yield. Like Anne in the parallel scene, though with infinitely greater reluctance, she accepts the inevitability of what Henry and his law have decreed.

The two women are contrasted for the last time in Act IV, as Katherine's star sets and Anne's reaches its height. Here the contrasting images are created in the mind's eye as well as on the stage. In IV.i, the coronation scene, Anne is once again associated with festivity. The people, the Second Gentleman reports, have put on "shows, / Pageants, and sights of honor" (IV.i. 10-11) to celebrate her elevation. The descriptions of Anne stress her physical beauty and her sexuality:

Our king has all the Indies in his arms,
And more and richer, when he strains that lady.
I cannot blame his conscience.

(IV.i.45-47)

.. . she is the goodliest woman
That ever lay by man. . . .

(IV.i.69-70)

After the coronation procession has swept across the stage with all its pomp and circumstance, the Third Gentleman describes how, before the ceremony, Anne

 sate down
To rest awhile, some half an hour or so,
In a rich chair of state, opposing freely
The beauty of her person to the people.

(IV.i.65-68)

The crowd reacted with a joyous outburst of animal spirits:

 Hats, cloaks
(Doublets, I think) flew up, and had their faces
Been loose, this day they had been lost. Such joy
I never saw before. Great-bellied women,
That had not half a week to go, like rams
In the old time of war, would shake the press
And make 'em reel before 'em. No man living
Could say, "This is my wife" there, all were woven
So strangely in one piece.

(IV.i.73-81)

The emphasis on the display of Anne's beauty and the crowd's response is Shakespeare's own; Holinshed mentions only that she rested a while "in a rich chair." 28 To be sure, Anne's piety is also stressed: "she kneel'd, and saint-like / Cast her fair eyes to heaven, and pray'd devoutly" (11. 83-84). But the emphasis is clearly on her youth, beauty, and the wild, sensual joy she inspires in the people. A final detail in this scene recalls Anne's first appearance at Wolsey's banquet. The Gentlemen mention that the coronation feast is to be held at Whitehall, formerly York Place, Wolsey's palace; its title, like Anne's (and Katherine's [III.ii.69-71]), has been "lately alter'd" (1. 98). So we leave Anne where we first saw her, amid feasting and revelry.²⁹

The contrast between this scene and the scene of Katherine's deathbed vision, which follows immediately, has often been noted. In the coronation procession, Anne enters "crowned, " and her hair is "richly adorned with pearl "³⁰ The attendant nobility wear coronets and carry scepters of gold (S.D.IV.i.36). These details are matched almost point for point in the simpler beauty of Katherine's heavenly vision. Six "personages, clad in white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays" and holding "branches of bays or palm" crown the dying Queen with a garland (S.D.IV.ii.82) and invite her to a heavenly "banquet" (1. 88). Although some productions have reversed the order of these scenes (e.g., Tree's 1910 production³¹), the textual order of the scenes ensures that Anne's rise is bounded on both sides by Katherine's fall. Before the procession passes, the Gentlemen discuss the divorce, Katherine's illness, and her remove to Kimbolton (IV.i.22-35). Ninety lines later, their image of Katherine is realized on the stage.

Katherine enters "sick, led between Griffith, her gentleman usher, and Patience, her woman" (S.D.IV.ii). Her physical dependence on her intimates contrasts with Anne's grand circuit of the stage in the preceding scene, though it also recalls Henry's first entrance leaning on Wolsey's shoulder. The first words she speaks are a call for further aid: "Reach a chair. / So; now, methinks, I feel a little ease" (IV.ii.3-4). She remains seated for the rest of the scene. At line 76, she asks to be "set . . . lower," and Patience presumably responds, perhaps by adjusting a pillow as one does for an invalid. When she asks for music and sleeps, Griffith and Patience "sit down quiet" (1. 81), keeping watch over her and creating an intimate "deathbed" tableau, the old Queen dozing in her chair with her servants at her feet. The "sad and solemn music " that accompanies the scene (S.D. 1. 80) contrasts with the hautboys and "great flourish of trumpets" (S.D.IV.i.36) that accompanied the coronation procession. 32

Since the two scenes are juxtaposed, it seems likely that the attentive spectator or reader would recall the description of Anne resting in "a rich chair of state, opposing freely / The beauty of her person to the people" and the crowd's wild response. Shakespeare sets this bold public display against Katherine's enforced seclusion and spiritual introspection. She sits alone with her household, "meditating / On that celestial harmony I go to" (IV.ii.79-80). Just as the sexually charged portrait of Anne is balanced by references to her piety, so Katherine's otherworldly frame of mind is rendered more human by an incident in which she insists on deference from others. She rebukes a messenger who fails to kneel while addressing her: "You are a saucy fellow, / Deserve we no more reverence?" (IV.ii. 100-101). When she still occupied a place of power, she knelt on behalf of the people and herself; now, sick and abandoned, she clings to her pride, commanding reverence from her subordinates. The visual imagery of this scene thus brings many motifs, involving both small gestures and grand processional movements, to closure; it echoes, reverses, and juxtaposes both intimate and spectacular stage images in characteristically Shakespearean ways.

A study of the visual imagery associated with Anne and Katherine yields several conclusions. In Katherine's case, gesture and movement confirm what we know of her from her words; visual imagery emphasizes the coherence and integrity of her character. Her behavior includes the vigorous exercise of royal authority, but it also suggests she might have agreed with Bevington's observation that, in the world of Shakespeare's plays, ceremony is "frequently hollow in performance, [and] more often desecrated than properly fulfilled."³³ In Anne's case, however, words and actions are sometimes at odds, and often, as in IV.i, we must rely upon visual images alone. Except for her conversation with the Old Lady in II.iii, we have no access to her thoughts; and in this scene her action (accepting honors at Henry's hand) conflicts with her assertion that she has no wish for greatness. On public occasions, she is a wordless icon, an object of admiration and desire, a symbol of woman's dynastic role rather than a fully realized individual or a participant in the day-to-day business of the court. Although, in the play, Anne benefits from the ceremonies to which she acquiesces, Jacobean audiences knew, as do modern ones, that political expedience and royal desire eventually forced her to submit to ceremonies of a very different kind.

However much weight is given to the at least superficially positive portrait of Anne, mother of the Protestant Elizabeth, Katherine earns a larger share of respect and sympathy. It is true that Katherine remained a sympathetic figure to many Elizabethans, while other Catholic figures of the period, such as Wolsey, were vilified.³⁴ Nonetheless, the degree of sympathy that Katherine elicits in this play is remarkable. Shakespeare ensures this sympathy by orchestrating visual and nonverbal details that express the subtle (and not so subtle) differences between the characters and situations of the two Queens.

The visual imagery of Henry VIII also has a bearing, I believe, on the much debated question of the play's genre. Its claim to be considered among the histories seems indisputable: with allowance for dramatic license, it follows its chronicle sources with a high degree of fidelity; the events dramatized were not only familiar but of crucial national and religious significance to its contemporary audience; and alone of the plays listed as "Histories" in the Folio, its title contains the word "History."³⁵ At the same time, Henry VIII has affinities with the other late plays, and many critics have shown that it is shaped by the themes, dramatic techniques, and norms of romance.36 While romance and history have often been viewed as antithetical modes, Paul Dean has recently argued that from the Henry VI trilogy onwards, "Shakespeare's career as an historical dramatist may be seen as a series of progressively complex interfusions of 'chronicle' and 'romance' materials and techniques" culminating in the "perfect articulation of double plot in 1 and 2 Henry IV."37 Henry VIII, in Dean's view, contains "a dialectical movement from romance to chronicle history," juxtaposing these two forms of historical perception so as to call into question "our trust in the existence of 'truth' or 'fact.'" 38 In the end, however, he feels that Katherine's vision, like her acceptance of Griffith's praise of Wolsey (IV.ii.69 ff.), is a "gesture towards Romance" and that together they "tip the balance of the play toward the 'celestial harmony' and 'eternal happiness' . . . which are emphasized at its close" in Cranmer's prophecy. 39

To the extent that the visual imagery associated with the two Queens emphasizes their opposite and complementary qualities, it reinforces romance features of the play—the presence of opposing female archetypes, a love triangle, and a glimpse of the supernatural in Katherine's vision. Paradoxically, however, these romance elements are themselves in the chronicle sources. The portraits of the two Queens are faithful to history: Anne was twenty-two years younger than Katherine, and she was as well known for her wit and beauty as Katherine was for her virtue and religious piety. The royal love triangle is far from being a romantic invention, as it is in George a Greene or Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, two romance histories discussed by Dean. Even the conflicting portraits of Wolsey in IV.ii are both true to the historical record, and Katherine's praise of Griffith as "an honest chronicler" (IV.ii.72) is an acknowledgment of the complexity of historical truth, and not merely a charitable concession. Katherine's vision similarly maintains rather than upsets the play's balance of romance and chronicle modes; it locates her reward not in this world, like the happy endings of romance, but in the next. Following the splendor of Anne's coronation, it provides an unromantic reminder of the transience of all earthly glory and of the price of Anne's (and Elizabeth's) ascent to greatness. In short, these features support the play's claim to being more chronicle history than romance, although in this case the chronicles themselves seem deeply imbued with romance elements.

The "orchestration" of movement and gesture (to use Jean Howard's phrase) is an aspect of the play that must be taken into account. A complete exposition of all the visual effects remains to be done, but this analysis suggests the subtlety with which this play is addressed to the viewer's eye. Knowledge of the play's stage history heightens our awareness of its performance potential, but the visual and nonverbal effects are available to a reader (no less than to a spectator) through careful attention to the text.

Notes

1 See Maurice Charney, Style in Hamlet (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969); J. L. Styan, Shakespeare 's Stagecraft (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967); Alan Dessen, Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer's Eye (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1977); Sidney Homan, Shakespeare 's "More Than Words Can Witness" (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1980); Anne Slater, Shakespeare the Director (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1982); Alan Dessen, Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984); Jean Howard, Shakespeare's Art of Orchestration (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1984); and Philip McGuire, Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1985). David Bevington's Action Is Eloquence: Shakespeare's Language of Gesture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984) provides the most complete taxonomy to date of the visual "languages" of the plays: gesture and expression; costumes and hand properties; theatrical space; and the "ceremonies" associated with the state, the judicial system, and daily social life.

2 "Visual Patterns and Linking Analogues in Troilus and Cressida," Shakespeare Quarterly, 37 (1986), 440-50.

3 See, e.g., Ann Shaver, "Structure and Ceremony: A Case for Unity in King Henry VIII, " Selected Papers from the West Virginia Shakespeare and Renaissance Association, 1 (1977), 1-23; Edward I. Berry, "Henry VIII and the Dynamics of Spectacle," Shakespeare Studies, 12 (1979), 229-46; and Eugene M. Waith, "Shakespeare and the Ceremonies of Romance," Shakespeare 's Craft: Eight Lectures, ed. Philip H. Highfill, Jr. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Univ. Press for the George Washington Univ. Press, 1982), esp. pp. 121-24.

4 See John H. Long, Shakespeare's Use of Music, Vol. III (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 1978), 242-62.

5 The affinities between Henry VIII and the masque are discussed by Lee Bliss, "The Wheel of Fortune and the Maiden Phoenix of Shakespeare's King Henry the Eighth," English Literary History, 42 (1975), 1-25; Northrop Frye, "Structural Affinities Between the Masque and Shakespearean Romance," Shakespeare's Romances Reconsidered, eds. Carol McGinnis Kay and Henry E. Jacobs (Lincoln and London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1978), pp. 29-39. Shakespeare's care in using the masque within the play itself (in the banquet scene) is discussed in Clifford Leech, "Masking and Unmasking in the Last Plays," Shakespeare 's Romances Reconsidered, pp. 40-59; Catherine Shaw, "The Masque in History Plays," 'Some Vanity of Mine Art': The Masque in English Renaissance Drama, Vol. 2 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Americanistik, 1979), 477-521 and (also by Shaw) "The Visual and Symbolic in Shakespeare's Masques," Shakespeare and the Arts, eds. Cecile Williamson Cary and Henry S. Limouze (Washington, D.C.: Univ. Press of America, 1981), pp. 21-34; and Ralph Berry, "The Masque of Henry VIII, " Shakespeare and the Awareness of the Audience (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), pp. 128-41.

⁶ For some directors' choices (or restrictions) regarding the play's chief spectacles, see Muriel St. Clare Byrne on Tyrone Guthrie's production, "A Stratford Production: Henry VIII, " Shakespeare Survey, 3 (1950), 120-29; Richard Foulkes, "Herbert Beerbohm Tree's King Henry VIII: Expenditure, Spectacle, and Experiment," Theatre Research International, 3 (1977), 23-32; J. C. Trewin on Trevor Nunn's production, "A Birthday Flourish from the RSC," Illustrated London News, 2 January 1971, p. 33; and my essay, "Margaret Webster's Henry VIII: The Survival of 'Scenic Shakespeare' in America," TRI, 11 (1986), 213-22.

⁷ Though some scholars believe on the basis of internal evidence that Fletcher collaborated with Shakespeare on Henry VIII, for the purposes of this essay I shall refer to Shakespeare as sole author. My text is The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), with square brackets indicating emendations or variations from the F1 copy-text, unless otherwise noted.

⁸ For the most thorough study of the ambiguity of Henry's character see Judith H. Anderson, Biographical Truth: The Representation of Historical Persons in Tudor-Stuart Writing (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 128-30 and passim.

⁹ E. K. Chambers found "almost ethical obtuseness" in the play's emphasis on Katherine, as a result of which the closing scenes, instead of winning sympathy for Anne, "assume an air of irrelevant and superfluous pageant" (Shakespeare: A Survey [London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1925], pp. 319-20). Reviewing Howard Davies's 1983 Stratford production, Philip Brockbank observed that the problem inherent in Shakespeare's historical materials is that Katherine's integrity under fire is "an inescapable indictment of the king, the Church, the law and even the divine will" ("Shakespeare: Henry VIII, " Times Literary Supplement, 24 June 1983, p. 665). Critics who subordinate Katherine's role, arguing that the central action of the play is Henry's political coming of age, nonetheless concede that Henry's motives for the divorce are murky at best and that the sacrifice of Katherine can be accepted only if one allows the outcome (the reduced influence of Rome and the glorious reign of Elizabeth) to justify the means. See, e.g., Frank Kermode, "What is Shakespeare's Henry VIII About?" Durham University Journal, n.s. 9 (1948), 51-55; King Henry VIII, ed. R. A. Foakes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1957), pp. lx-lxi; Howard Felperin, Shakespearean Romance (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972), p. 20; and Howard B. White, Antiquity Forgot: Essays on Shakespeare, Bacon, and Rembrandt (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978), pp. 86-87.

¹⁰ Roy Walker, "The Whirligig of Time: A Review of Modern Productions," ShS, 12 (1959), 122-30, esp. p. 124.

¹¹ A spectator's remark at the August 1985 New Jersey Shakespeare Festival production directed by Paul Barry.

¹² "The Feminism of Shakespeare's Henry VIII," Essays in Literature, 6 (1979), 11-20, esp. p. 14.

¹³"King Henry the Eighth: History and Romance," English Studies, 48 (1967), 112-21, esp. p. 119.

¹⁴Shakespeare the Director (note 1, above), p. 63.

¹⁵ It is possible that the stage directions are meant to be observed to the letter before Katherine speaks. If so, having taken her seat, she would have to rise and resume her suppliant posture. On stage this would be extremely awkward, so it seems more likely that her first line and Henry's are meant to accompany, not follow, the actions specified. It is also possible that Katherine sits at line 10 and that the repetition of "Sit by us" at line 124 is merely rhetorical. In Barry's production (1985), Katherine delivered her speeches while seated on the state next to Henry. This blocking is at odds with Katherine's energy; it reduces the drama of her confrontation with Wolsey and makes the scene unnecessarily static. The ambiguity of the relationship between the stage directions and the lines themselves, however, must be acknowledged here.

¹⁶ Roger Warren, "Shakespeare in England, 1983," SQ, 34 (1983), 451-60, esp. p. 453.

¹⁷ Although it is not so marked in the Riverside, this line should perhaps be taken as an aside. If spoken directly to Anne, it would mar the King's disguise as a foreigner who speaks no English. If not an aside, the line could be spoken either playfully or with sudden emotion, but in either case Anne would become aware of the King's attraction to her.

¹⁸ In Barry's production, the masquers did not speak, but they were biosterous, emitting wild sounds and pretending to menace the ladies. Anne responded, also wordlessly but boldly: it was she who sought out Henry and kissed him. Thus, though noisily rather than silently mysterious, the pantomime still united Henry, Anne, and the masquers in the spirit of the moment.

¹⁹ In the 1983 Stratford production, Henry roared this response, as if fed up with papal protocol (Warren, p. 453).

²⁰ H. C. Fleeming Jenkin, "Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth and Queen Katherine," Papers on Acting, ed. Brander Matthews (New York: Hill and Wang, 1958), p. 105.

²¹ See Margaret Ranald, "Women and Power in Shakespeare's Histories," Topic, 36 (1982), 54-65, esp. p. 55 and passim.

²² In commenting on III.i, the New Arden editor, R. A. Foakes, points out its complexity and asserts that its chief effect is to increase the "poignancy of Katherine's refusal to yield" (King Henry VIII [London: Methuen, 1957], p. xlix).

²³ For the evocative logic of "as at work" and other directions beginning "as at . . . ," see Dessen (Elizabethan Stage Conventions), pp. 93-94 and chapter 5, passim.

²⁴ Martha H. Fleischer, The Iconography of the English History Play (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprach und Literatur, Salzburg Univ., 1974), p. 119.

²⁵ See the Penguin edition, ed. A. R. Humphreys (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 226.

²⁶Action Is Eloquence, p. 49.

²⁷ Commenting on this scene, Alexander Leggatt observes that Katherine momentarily becomes "an honorary Protestant heroine," doing battle with cardinals and rejecting Latin obfuscation. See "Henry VIII and the Ideal England," ShS, 38 (1985), 131-43, esp. p. 135.

²⁸ Quoted in Humphreys, p. 241.

²⁹ This is the last scene in which Anne appears. She is named one final time in V.iv, when Henry urges nobles to visit the newly delivered Queen so she may thank them for the honor they have paid the infant Elizabeth (V.iv.73).

³⁰ Humphreys cites Holinshed to establish that Anne's hair would probably have been hanging loose, as was customary for a bride (pp. 241, 243). This provides a nice contrast if, as was the case in Barry's production, Katherine wears the confining headdress worn by several of Henry's wives (including Katherine) in portraits by Holbein, Sittow, and others.

³¹ Foulkes, p. 30.

³² John Long observes that Katherine is associated with private and religious music, while Henry and Anne are associated with ceremonial, public music such as fanfares and the dance music at the banquet (Shakespeare 's Use of Music, p. 243).

³³Action Is Eloquence, p. 172.

³⁴ This point is established by Frank V. Cespedes, "Perspectives on Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey in the English Renaissance," Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1977, pp. 45-47 and 305-7.

³⁵ In the Folio the play is called "The Famous History of the Life of Henry the Eighth." The phrase "Famous History" gives this title the slightly promotional and hyperbolic tone of several "bad" and non-Shakespearean quartos (The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster, The Famous Victories of Henry V). Such titles attest to the appeal of plots that could be marketed as both famous and factual. Ralph Berry contends that the play has a patronizing, "gossip-columnist" tone; see "The Masque of Henry VIII," Shakespeare and the Awareness of the Audience (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), pp. 128-41.

³⁶ Contributions to this discussion include Howard Felperin, "Shakespeare's Henry VIII: History as Myth," Studies in English Literature, 6 (1966), 225-46; Berman (cited in note 13); H. M. Richmond, "Shakespeare's Henry VIII: Romance Redeemed by History," ShStud, 4 (1968), 334-49; Tom McBride, "Henry VIII as Machiavellian Romance," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 76 (1977), 26-39; John F. Andrews, "Henry VIII: Shakespeare's Tragicomic Historical Romance," The Shakespeare Plays: A Study Guide (La Jolla: Univ. of California at San Diego, 1978); W. M. Baillie, "Henry VIII: A Jacobean History," ShStud, 12 (1979), 247-66; Robert W. Uphaus, "History, Romance, and Henry VIII," Iowa State Journal of Research, 53 (1979), 177-83; Frank V. Cespedes, "'We are One in Fortunes': The Sense of History in Henry VIII" English Literary Renaissance, 10 (1980), 413-38; and Leggatt (cited in note 27).

³⁷ "Shakespeare's Henry VI Trilogy and Elizabethan 'Romance' Histories: The Origin of a Genre," SQ, 33 (1982), 34-48, esp. p. 37. For a different view of the relationship between the history play, romance, and romantic comedy, see Leonard Tennenhouse, "Strategies of State and Political Plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII" in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, eds. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985). See also David Riggs, Shakespeare's Heroical Histories (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971), a work that seems to anticipate Dean's views at certain points. 38 "Dramatic Mode and Historical Vision in Henry VIII," SQ, 37 (1986), 175-89, esp. pp. 179, 186.

39 "Dramatic Mode," p. 186.