SOURCE: Champion, Larry S. “Shakespeare's Henry VIII: A Celebration of History.” South Atlantic Bulletin 44, no. 1 (January 1979): 1-18.

[In the following essay, Champion analyzes the structure, characters, and themes of Henry VIII, suggesting that the play's lack of unity is outweighed by its artistic merits.]

To some degree each of Shakespeare's history plays was of political and social relevance to its original audiences. The interest in large part stemmed from the Elizabethans' fascination with their past; and, while on occasion particular contemporary political issues and problems were mirrored in an earlier historical context, in more general terms the dramatization of the preceding years of political turbulence became a means of expressing a new communal sense of identity stemming from present unity and national power. Nowhere, however, do these plays so directly celebrate the contemporary age as in The Famous Victory of the Life of King Henry the Eighth. What provoked Shakespeare's return to the theme of British history well over a decade after the composition of Henry V¹ and precisely how much he contributed to the writing of the play² are points of continuing debate. To be sure, the popularity of the chronicle play had long since waned; whereas seventy plays based directly on British history were written between 1590 and 1604, only nineteen appear between 1605 and the closing of the theaters (seven, more specifically, between 1605 and Shakespeare's death).³ In some respects, also, Henry VIII is decidedly inferior to the best of Shakespeare's earlier histories; even the repetitive pattern of action in 1 Henry VI and the dominance of particular characters (Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York) in 2 Henry VI provide more effective dramatic cohesion than one perceives, at least initially, in this stage world. On the other hand, no one questioned Shakespeare's authorship in the seventeenth century; Heminge and Condell apparently did not cavil at including the piece in the first folio, and there is no mention of the play in the collected works of Beaumont and Fletcher (F₁ 1647). Even more significantly, whatever the degree of its dramatic merits, Henry VIII does seem to grow directly out of the techniques of structure and of characterization developed in Shakespeare's histories in the 1590's, techniques combining the detachment of a documentary necessary for a broad intellectual view of history and the engagement between character and spectator without which no drama can be profoundly and emotionally effective.

Specifically, the various structural devices utilized with increasing sophistication in the earlier histories assure a broad historical perspective for this play as well. While the scenes are confined to London and the palace, thirty-eight characters representing the full social spectrum crowd the stage, in addition to an undetermined number of mute scribes, officers, guards, attendants upon the Queen, and figures in various dumb shows. Sixteen individuals have substantial speaking parts, none delivering more than 16.5٪ (Henry) and five others speaking over 5٪ of the total lines (Wolsey, 15.8٪; Katherine, 13.5٪; Norfolk, 7.6٪; Buckingham, 7٪; and the Lord Chamberlain, 5.5٪). Similarly, the total number of soliloquies and asides—101 lines, 3.6٪ of the total lineation—is remarkably low in comparison with those of Shakespeare's highly internalized tragedies; indeed, excepting Henry V, it is the smallest number to be found in the history plays themselves. Hence there is little tendency to involve the spectators emotionally at a personal level. And, even these internal lines are divided among nine figures. Most of these passages, moveover, merely transmit information to the spectator rather than invite emotional involvement at a moment of critical decision, and, with the exception of King Henry, who speaks six lines in Act II and two lines in Act V, no individual delivers private lines in more than one act. In a word, since there is no dominant figure throughout the play, the spectators' interest perforce focuses upon the nexus of events which precipitates, on the one hand, Henry's break with Rome and the establishment of Protestantism and, on the other, the divorce from Katherine, the ascension of Anne, and the birth of Elizabeth.

The breadth of focus is reinforced through the use of choric figures in eight separate scenes, fully half of those in the play as divided in F_1. At one moment various characters deplore the foreign fashions that are all the rage shortly after Wolsey concludes his treaty with the French: “they keep state so”; “they have all new legs”; “their clothes” have a “pagan cut”; “A French song and a fiddle has no fellow” (I, iii, 10, 11, 13, 41). At another, they point to the color and excitement of events of state—whether it be a gala dinner party hosted by the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, and graced by the presence of Henry himself as one of a party of “maskers, habited like shepherds” (I, iv) or the report of the Field of the Cloth of Gold where “Those sons of glory, those two lights of men, / Met in the vale of Andren” (I, i, 6-7); in this incomparable “view of earthly glory, … The two kings, / Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst / As presence did present them” (14, 28-30). Similarly, the description of the coronation of Anne comes exclusively through the conversation among these gentlemen: this period of “general joy” is filled with “shows, / Pageants, and sights of honor” (IV, i, 7, 10-11); the royal procession features in Anne the “sweetest face I ever look'd on, … an angel” (43, 44); “I am stifled / With the mere rankness of their [the crowd's] joy” (58-59). So, too, the altercation between the Porter, his man, and the Lord Chamberlain reflects the national excitement surrounding the christening of the infant Elizabeth. The mob “take[s] the court for Parish Garden. … We may as well push against Powle's as stir 'em” (V, iii, 2, 16); “Mercy o' me, what a multitude are here! / They grow still too; from all parts they are coming, / As if we kept a fair here!” (67-69). On three occasions the choric figures discuss political matters, in particular the fortunes and misfortunes of Cardinal Wolsey: “All the commons / Hate him perniciously” (II, i, 49-50); they perceive Katherine's fall as his manipulation to gain revenge on Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, for not bestowing the archbishopric of Toledo upon him (161-64); this “imperious man” dives into “the King's soul, and there scatters / Dangers, doubts, wringing of the conscience” (II, ii, 46, 26-27). And with obvious delight they report the imminent fall of the Lord Chancellor; the Cardinal's letter to the Pope concerning the divorce and an inventory of his own material possessions, both of which strangely miscarried to the King, constitute “Matter against him that forever mars / The honey of his language” (III, ii, 21-22). As for Buckingham's arrest and subsequent execution, the events will bring, “I fear, too many curses on their heads / That were the authors” (II, i, 138-39).

More so than in any previous history, then, Shakespeare has utilized the choric figures to provide a detached perspective for the spectators. It may well be true that, in practical terms, the playwright through such a structure is able to narrate particular scenes and situations that would be extremely difficult to dramatize directly. The multiple pointers may also represent the continuation of a device utilized extensively in the final tragedies to create a profound sense of ambivalence concerning both the protagonist and the ethical values operable in his society.⁴ Certainly, too, however, relating numerous events through minor and relatively impersonal characters has the direct result of blocking the spectators from the development of a significant emotional rapport with the principal figures and hence of maintaining a broad historical perspective. Given the cumulative weight of the various structural devices which contribute to the broad focus in this particular work and, as well, the progressive development of such a perspective in the earlier histories, it would be naive to assume that Shakespeare was oblivious of the effect upon the audience's relationship to the action.

Two additional features reinforce the detachment—scenes which directly dramatize the pomp and ceremony of the kingship and a prologue-epilogue figure who specifically emphasizes the theatricality of the occasion. Eight different scenes visually address the audience in such a manner; though all of the romances include mask or mask-like elements and though earlier histories depict momentous battles and various events of significance for the monarch and the nobility, no previous play is so pervasively given to spectacular visual effects.⁵ In Act I, for example, following the description of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the spectators directly view the state entrance of the Lord Chancellor. Five lines of stage directions specify that Wolsey is to be preceded by one bearing the Great Seal of his office and accompanied by several members of the guard and two secretaries. This lavishly dressed group has barely departed from the stage when Henry himself enters. Again Shakespeare specifically notes the cornets and the grandiloquent royal train in a scene rendered emblematic as well by Henry's leaning upon the shoulder of Wolsey, who—once Henry is seated on a raised and canopied area—“places himself under the King's feet on his right side” (I, ii, s.d.). Two scenes later Wolsey stages an elaborate dinner dance at York Place. Guests, including Anne Bullen, are sumptuously attired for the occasion, which reaches new heights of splendor with hautboys announcing the arrival of the shepherd maskers. Altogether different in tone, though equally appealing to the eye, is Katherine's state trial in Act II. Again Shakespeare carefully arranges the scene through an eighteen-line blocking direction, and the stage is literally crowded with officials of varying degrees of importance. Vergers with silver wands, scribes capped and gowned as doctors of law, the Bishops of Lincoln, Ely, Rochester, and Saint Asaph, a gentleman bearing the Great Seal and a cardinal's hat, priests carrying silver crosses, a Sergeant at Arms with a silver mace, gentlemen bearing Wolsey's silver insignia, cardinals, noblemen with a sword and mace—in all at least twenty mute figures create a remarkable backdrop for Wolsey, Henry, and Katherine. Whatever the nature of the trial itself, the spectators can only be dazzled by the pageantic display of lavish costumes and the impressive physical props of royalty and aristocracy. Similar visual brilliance is evidenced in Act IV where, prior to a choric description of Anne's coronation at Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare elaborately stages the royal procession in ten individually itemized progressions. So, too, Elizabeth's christening in the final act (iv) is accompanied by an impressive ritual involving at least nineteen “richly habited” nobles, only three of whom have speaking roles. Cranmer's trial in the council chamber (V, iii) and Katherine's mask-like vision of paradisal bliss shortly before her death are further illustrations of the lavish pageantic display. All told, Shakespeare devotes ninety-nine lines in the First Folio text of Henry VIII to such staging effects, quite exclusive of lineation for the traditional directions of characters on and off stage. Certainly no other play in the canon even approaches the number. The Tempest, for instance, has twenty-nine lines; The Winter's Tale, three; Hamlet, with the description of the dumb show and the elaborate staging of the dueling scene and its multiple murders, twenty-nine lines; among the earlier histories, Henry V has five lines: Richard III, eight lines; 1 Henry IV, twenty-five lines. As is the case with multiple choric figures, Shakespeare could hardly have been oblivous of the impact of this dramaturgical device which virtually quadruples the visual effects present in any of his previous plays. There is no argument whatever that history can be captured in color, ritual, and pageantry; clearly, in fact, these are methods of strengthening the historical perspective, of maintaining the spectators' interest in the broad pattern of events rather than the fortunes or misfortunes of particular characters central to the dramatic design.

While Shakespeare through pageantic effects continues to experiment as a chronicle playwright, he repeats in his Prologue and Epilogue a device used effectively in Henry V. Again the intention is self-consciously to call attention to the play qua play, if not to the inadequacies of the playhouse in staging particular historical events then to the goal of staging a “weighty and serious” theme and the realization that the spectator who willfully misperceives can destroy all dramatic integrity. The Prologue figure proclaims that these “noble themes” are “high, and working, full of state” (4, 3); they may well provoke a tear in delineating “How soon this mightiness meets misery” (30), but they will not please the spectator anticipating merry bawdry, the “noise of targets,” and the fool dressed in “a long motley coat guarded with yellow” (15, 16). Similarly, the Epilogue deplores the spectators who come only to “take their ease, / And sleep an act or two” (2-3) and those, as well, who expect to “hear the city / Abused extremely” in the name of wit (5-6). These “first and happiest hearers of the town” (Prologue, 1. 24) are encouraged, instead, to use the mind's eye to imagine “the very persons of our noble story / As they were living” (26-27). The play both opens and closes, in a word, with a call for the discriminating spectator who is willing to use drama as a means of exploring present values and traditions in the context of the earlier, more turbulent years in which they were formulated.

In any number of dramaturgical ways, then, Shakespeare in Henry VIII creates for the spectators an inclusive angle of vision. Not so easily addressed is his manner of achieving their emotional involvement in the play. Demonstrably one of Shakespeare's consistent efforts throughout his histories is to combine the detachment inherent to a broad perspective with the engagement arising from characters possessed of sufficient emotional credibility to be dramatically interesting. In the Henry IV plays, for instance, while the characterization is essentially static, each of the principal figures (Henry, Hal, Hotspur, Falstaff, Northumberland) is depicted in widely divergent situations, at times sharing private thoughts or critical moments with the spectators; as a consequence they exhibit an ambivalent human dimension which belies a simplistic response. So, too, in Henry V, while the king is a static figure, he shares with the spectators a significant moment of human sensibility in his soliloquies the evening before Agincourt, and the focus is constantly upon the complexity of his personality as a result of the diverse ways in which the surrounding characters view him; the basically stylized patriotic theme, moreover, is riddled with moments of realistic insights which qualify the abstract design and help to establish the interest in character and human interaction on which drama depends.

Henry VIII, on first reading and (unless the visual pageantry numbs the normal dramatic expectations) on first viewing, seems to lack narrative coherence. And certainly the critics have been quick to condemn. The structure is “cynically arbitrary,”⁶ “conspicuously lacking in unity”⁷; the play is “a stream of declamation,”⁸ “not only episodic but also repetitious.”⁹ The King himself is the sole figure who participates in the action throughout all five acts, but, unlike Henry V in a similar structure, he is central neither to the narrative nor to the emotional concerns of the spectators. The action seems to ramble from character to character with little cohesive forward movement; Cardinal Wolsey's machinations, for example, may appear initially to provide narrative continuity, but he last appears in III, ii, and his death is reported in IV, ii.

If the play lacks visible architectonic unity, however, it does on hindsight hold together remarkably firmly. For it becomes obvious in the final act that the central thrust of the play is the birth of Elizabeth and the prophecy of the culmination of Tudor greatness and that the early acts depict the particular decisions and events of Henry's reign which produce Elizabeth's Protestant rule, more particularly the divorce of Katherine, the fall of Wolsey, and the break with Rome. In her reign and that of her successor James I England shall prosper as a nation:

She shall be, to the happiness of England,
An aged princess. …
His honor and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations.

(V, iv, 56-57, 51-52)

The play envisions, then, a unified Protestant England beyond the turbulent years of the power struggle between Somerset and Northumberland during Edward's reign and the bloody Catholic persecutions of Mary, an idealized England on which God showers blessings as the frame of colonial power begins to take shape. Admittedly the view is extreme that it “binds and clasps [Shakespeare's] massive life-work into a single whole,”¹⁰ that no other play “has a more decided character of unity,”¹¹ but the point is well taken that the drama effectively reflects the cyclic process of history.¹² It depicts the “human context of political crashes,”¹³ and the “importance of each character depends—as usual in the histories—on the relation between that character and the king.”¹⁴

Shakespeare is obviously concerned that the spectator be in fundamental sympathy with the ultimate fate of these historical figures. At the same time, if the play is to be dramatically compelling, they must command at least a limited emotional rapport. And, as in his most successful earlier histories, he achieves this quality in Henry VIII through characters (in this instance Buckingham, Katherine, Wolsey, and Cranmer) who, though essentially static, are depicted in genuinely ambivalent situations.

Katherine, more specifically, is destined to marital misery, and no upwelling of pity and concern could normally be anticipated from the largely anti-Catholic English audiences of the early seventeenth century.¹⁵ To offset this bias, however, Shakespeare depicts the Spanish princess as an innocent creature victimized by the Machiavellian English cardinal; and, though she appears in only four scenes, she is strongly sympathetic in each instance.¹⁶ In I, ii, she warns the King of the grievous taxations that have been imposed upon each citizen, and she expresses sorrow for the King's incarceration of Buckingham, warning that his accusers charge a noble and innocent person; in both cases the spectators, fully aware of Wolsey's villainous role, perceive Katherine as the voice of right reason. She is on trial in her next appearance, asserting that she has been a “true and humble wife” (II, iv, 23); and she flatly refuses to have Wolsey as a judge: “You are mine enemy. … [Y]our heart / Is cramm'd with arrogancy, spleen, and pride. … / You tender more your person's honor than / Your high profession spiritual” (77, 109-10, 116-17). In the following scene, she bravely faces the Cardinal in her apartment, refusing to withdraw with him into her private chamber (“Speak it here; / There's nothing I have done yet, o' my conscience, / Deserves a corner” [III, i, 29-31]) and—like Webster's Vittoria—disdaining the use of Latin for legal charges brought against her:

          O, good my lord, no Latin;
.....A strange tongue makes my cause more strange, suspicious;
Pray speak in English.

(41, 45-46)

A dying woman in her final scene, she has outlived Wolsey, yet there is no bitterness. She knew him as “a man / Of an unbounded stomach” who made “His own opinion … his law” (IV, ii, 33-34, 37). But in his death she pities him and bids him peace (75); similarly with her final words she wishes the King continued good health and implores him to love and protect their daughter Mary (160-70). In her brief time on stage, then, Katherine is more than a stylized figure who acts out her role allotted by history. She is firmly and unswervingly Catholic and as such arouses the immediate animosities of an audience that considers the Pope a veritable anti-Christ. But she is also a dramatic human figure through whom Shakespeare commands an ambivalent response and consequently through whom he moves history beyond abstract design.

Similar victims who gain a sympathetic rapport with the spectators are the Duke of Buckingham and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the one destroyed and the other saved by Henry's intervention. Early in the play the Duke is the main figure of concern, a vocal obstacle to Wolsey's greed for political power. He is quick to denounce the Cardinal's “ambitious finger” in the pageantry of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, an extravagance which issued in nothing of productive and permanent political value (I, i, 23 ff.). Aware of Wolsey's personal hatred and of his inordinate influence over the king, Buckingham threatens to “quite cry down / This Ipswich fellow's insolence” (137-38). His ultimate charge is treason, that the Cardinal “Does buy and sell his honor as he pleases / And for his own advantage” (192-93). Specifically he claims that Wolsey has accepted a bribe from Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor, in return for drawing up an agreement between the French and the English kings that will not result in unity since neither will be able to honor it for long. Despite the apparent accuracy of his perceptions, however, Buckingham is possessed of a passionate nature which lends color to the otherwise static characterization. A minor alteration in history provides the opportunity for Shakespeare to establish this dominant trait at the outset of the play. Buckingham, historically present at the events of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in Henry VIII remains in England indisposed and consequently must question Norfolk later concerning the ceremonious meeting between Henry and Francis. The moment he is informed that Wolsey staged the affair, his entire manner is altered as he hurls verbal abuses at the ambitious “butcher's cur” (I, i, 120). Norfolk, while affirming Wolsey's villainy, bluntly warns Buckingham to “let [his] reason with [his] choler question” (130), to quench the “fire of passion” with the “sap of reason” (149, 148); “Ask God for temp 'rance, that's the appliance only / Which your disease requires” (124-25). Buckingham admits his “flow of gall” (152) but insists nontheless that he will assert his charges before the King himself. Moments later, even though the question of Buckingham's guilt or innocence is never definitely answered, Shakespeare establishes strong bonds of sympathy with the spectators as he is arrested through Wolsey's manipulation on the charge of conspiring against the life of the monarch. Buckingham claims that his surveyor, the chief witness against him, has been bribed with the Cardinal's gold, and Queen Katherine asserts the Duke's innocence before both the king (I, ii, 109-10) and the accuser (171-76); similarly, as we noted earlier, a choric figure implicates the Cardinal, acknowledging that “the commons / Hate him perniciously” and “love and dote on” the Duke (II, i, 39, 49-50, 52). At the trial itself, according to reports, Buckingham initially “spoke in choler, ill, and hasty” (34) but quickly regained his composure and “show'd a most noble patience” (36). In his final remarks to those gathered on the street before Westminister as he makes his way toward his execution, he speaks with the calm assurance and conviction of a martyr. Again he proclaims his innocence, yet in the same breath he forgives his enemies; he implores his friends to go with him “like good angels” and to pray that his soul be lifted to heaven even “as the long divorce of steel falls” upon him (75, 76). His parting words ominously caution those in earshot to be liberal, but not careless, of their “loves and counsels,” lest they be felled by those they love most (126 ff.).

While both Katherine and Buckingham, then, are static, they are made dramatically compelling figures through their genuinely human traits, in Katherine a fierce—if short-lived—determination to protect her marriage and her dignity and sense of compassion in a masculine world of conniving intrigue, in Buckingham a passionate nature which bursts out almost uncontrollably on several occasions. Thomas Cranmer is an altogether more passive character. Totally innocent as the play projects him, he too is indirectly Wolsey's victim. Not only does the Cardinal denounce Cranmer as “An heretic, an arch-one … [who] / Hath crawl'd into the favor of the King” (III, ii, 102-03); he also is directly responsible for the appointment of Gardiner—Cranmer's later adversary—as Henry's secretary. The relationship between the churchman and his sycophant is ominously clear in Gardiner's aside that he is “to be commanded / For ever by [his] Grace, whose hand has rais'd me” (II, ii, 118-19); even more bluntly, Wolsey remarks of Doctor Pace, the secretary's predecessor:

                    He was a fool—
For he would needs be virtuous. That good fellow [Gardiner],
If I command him, follows my appointment;
I will have none so near else.

(131-34)

Not surprisingly, then, in Act V Gardiner (now Bishop of Winchester) strongly opposes Cranmer, who has replaced the fallen Wolsey as Archbishop of Canterbury. He asserts that conditions in England “will ne'er be well” until Cranmer, along with both Queen Anne and Cromwell, is dead (i, 29 ff.), and he openly accuses him in the King's council of being an “arch-heretic, a pestilence / That does infect the land” (45-46). At the hearing itself Gardiner proclaims that the Archbishop's heretical teachings must be stopped forcefully and suddenly; he would have him divested of office and committed to the Tower as a “sectary” (ii, 105).

While Cranmer lacks the passion which humanizes both Katherine and Buckingham, he is made dramatically interesting through the genuine consternation registered in his asides. Called to the palace to confront the council, he is fearful of the King's frown: “‘Tis his aspect of terror” (V, i, 88); awaiting the council's pleasure outside the door and aware of the disrespectful and insulting treatment he is receiving, he is terrified of the plots laid by his enemies to “quench [his] honor,” and he prays that God will “turn their hearts! I never sought their malice” (ii, 16, 15). The trump card in this affair is Henry's assumption of Cranmer's innocence and his personal intervention into the council's proceedings at the critical moment; nontheless, yet another moment of history has been transformed into engaging drama through the brief human interactions between the spectators and the historical character.

Certainly the most compelling figure in this stage world is Cardinal Wolsey. A religious adaptation of the steely self-determination of Richard III, his villainy literally pervades and motivates the action of the first three acts. Like his Machiavellian forebears on the Shakespearean stage, he commands an awesome fascination through his ability to subordinate everything to his ambitious design. Methodically he eliminates Buckingham when the latter too overtly voices opposition to his foreign policy, and only reluctantly does he agree at Henry's insistence to abrogate a tax claiming one-sixth of the substance from each of the citizens; the clear implications are that the Archbishop is handsomely lining his own private coffers. Interestingly, when Henry orders the tax removed, Wolsey whispers to his secretary to noise it about that “through our intercession this revokement / And pardon comes” (I, ii, 106-07); the use of the royal pronoun is surely an indication of his unbounded ambition rather than a slip of his tongue or Shakespeare's pen. A similar arrogance is observed in II, ii, when the Lord Chamberlain receives a letter informing him that his horses “by commission and main power” have been claimed by the Lord Cardinal, who will “be serv'd before a subject, if not before the King” (6, 7-8). Norfolk mockingly proclaims him a “king-cardinal,” an “imperious man [who] will work us all / From princes into pages” (19, 46-47); and Suffolk acknowledges the slavery of the court, wishing the Cardinal would go to the devil—“him that made him proud, the Pope” (43, 55). To be sure, he operates not only “holily” (23) but also socially. His dinner-dance at York Place for the lords and ladies of the court is a grand and noble affair. It also, of course, provides him the opportunity to ingratiate himself among those whose support is vital. At the height of his power he moves directly against the Queen herself, not to accommodate Henry's desire to wed Anne Bullen but in order to achieve an even more secure place in the power structure of the English throne. After pressing the King to admit the possible sin in marrying his brother's widow, Wolsey introduces Campeius as the Pope's personal voice in the necessary trial. Katherine's refusal to sit through the hearing merely plays into his hands; and, when she accuses him of “tender[ing] more [his] person's honor than / [His] high profession spiritual” (II, iv, 116-17), he persuades Henry publicly to defend his character by proclaiming his innocence of any self-serving motive; moreover, presumably with Henry's knowledge and consent, Wolsey relentlessly pursues the attack upon Katherine during a visit to her private apartment.

Wolsey's fall from such a lofty perch is sudden and devastating when Henry discovers both a communication urging the Pope to postpone any action on the King's divorce and a paper listing the Cardinal's not inconsiderable material possessions; the divorce he would delay so that he can arrange a royal wedding with the Duchess of Alencon, and the wealth he has amassed to “fee [his] friends in Rome” in seeking the popedom (III, ii, 213). Acknowledging that he “shall fall / Like a bright exhalation in the evening” (225-26), he is nonetheless reluctant to render up the Great Seal to Henry's courtiers. Moments later, however, he utters a poignant soliloquy to which even his sternest critics among the spectators must respond. The mutability of his fortune typifies the very “state of man” (352), and he fully admits the “high-blown pride” which now, broken under him, has left him “weary and old with service” (361, 363). His parting words with Cromwell are even more affecting. He asserts that he now possesses the peaceful comfort of “a still and quiet conscience” (380). Cromwell he urges to flee from him, “a poor fall'n man, unworthy now / To be thy lord and master” (413-14), and to use his ruin as a grim reminder of ambition's folly:

Love thyself last, cherish those hearts that hate thee;
          … Be just, and fear not;
          … O Cromwell, Cromwell.
Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal
I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.
          … my hopes in heaven do dwell.

(443, 446, 454-57, 459)

Wolsey, in essence, is sharply depicted within the play as villain and regenerate. In both roles he commands the spectators' interest and concern; in both he assumes a dramatic credibility and a human dimension which move beyond that of a stylized, monolithic figure. Nonetheless, since the two roles are kept distinctly separate, he is fundamentally simplistic.¹⁷ That is, in five scenes he is the conniving and ambitious Machiavel for whom conscience is a toy and a heady sense of power and authority is an unquestioned summum bonum; in one he is a morose figure who privately acknowledges his present misery and the vanity of all earthly glory. What the spectators pointedly do not see is a scene of transformation from one face to another, a scene which would lend a genuinely dynamic quality to the characterization. The dramatic benefits are considerable, to be sure, because there are moments of an emotional rapport provoked by the spectators' reaction to Wolsey's suffering and his acute awareness of his misery. At the same time the emotional attachment is limited and carefully controlled; in the final analysis, as with Falstaff, Prince Hal, or Henry V, we are seeing two angles of vision so distinctly different that they seem to suggest a growth of development in character. But with no indication whatever of the least moral sensitivity during the period of the Cardinal's political success, the spectators simply cannot be convinced that his anguish represents more than a keen sensitivity toward his loss of power and possession.

Structurally, then, Henry VIII—with its “complicated but symmetrical balance of themes and of modes of presentation”¹⁸—represents an extension of the dramaturgical techniques fully developed in King John, 1, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V. The absence of a dominant central figure, the minimal use of soliloquies and asides and the distribution of these few internalizing lines among several individuals, the extensive utilization of choric figures (including the Prologue and Epilogue), the frequency of pageantic scenes in which spectacle supplements narrative in depicting crucial moments of Henry's reign—all such devices distance the spectators from particular events and personalities and thereby encourage the broad view vital for the historical perspective. At the same time, certain characters are sketched in sufficient detail to command a limited emotional appeal and thus to provide the interest in character on which any drama this side of pageant is predicated. These characters, in other words, are essentially static, but they do possess a human dimension which extends beyond the intellectual interest in historical design. The play, of a piece with its predecessors, is one final example of the complex structural pattern Shakespeare evolved for the history plays, a dramatic perspective distinct from that of comedy or tragedy.

Moreover, overriding the focus on a series of individuals whose rises and falls provoke ambivalent responses from the spectators is a larger pattern which establishes the fundamental rhythm of the play. The action, more precisely, is arranged as a diptych, Acts I-III characterized by tyranny, oppression, and misjudgment; Acts IV-V reflecting the celebration of justice and the joyous anticipation of a period of national prosperity and happiness.¹⁹ This larger structural pattern, unique among the histories through basic to the design of The Winter's Tale, is the principal device by which the play becomes a festive glorification of the reigns of Elizabeth and James. In the first movement horror methodically follows horror—the political folly of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the falls of Buckingham and Abergavenney, oppressive taxation, an all-too-obvious trial of convenience against Katherine, the rise of the political sycophant Gardiner, and the collapse of Cardinal Wolsey's world in lamentation and self-reproach. The England visualized through this pattern of action is a land of political corruption and personal insecurity. The last two acts provide a diametrically opposite experience. The new day is signaled by a reference to Queen Anne's coronation as a time of “general joy” (IV, i, 7); the citizens will spend the day “In celebration” (10); an observer is “stifled / With the mere rankness of their joy” (58-59); the later christening of the infant Elizabeth creates a “Holy-day” for all Englishmen (V, iii, 76). If the first three acts look backward to the incessant and turbulent political struggles of Shakespeare's previous histories, the last two provide an idealized vision of England's golden age.

Aside from the events of state (the coronation and the christening), three specific events sharply distinguish the tone of the latter half of the play from that of the first—Henry's dramatic intervention on Cranmer's behalf at the council meeting, Katherine's beatific vision, and Cranmer's prophetic description of England's future years. Cranmer produces the King's ring in the face of Gardiner's peremptory order for the guards to imprison him in the Tower, after which Henry himself enters, taking his seat and “frowning on them.” In stark contrast to Henry's inability or unwillingness to see through Wolsey's self-interested manipulations, here his judgment is perceptive and his leadership firm. He “come[s] not / To hear such flattery now. … You play the spaniel, / And think with wagging of your tongue to win me” (V, iii, 123-24, 126-27):

I had thought I had men of some understanding
And wisdom of my Council; but I find none.
.....          my lord of Winchester [Gardiner], I charge you.
Embrace and love this man.

(170-71, 204-05)

Katherine's vision is visible only to her and to the spectators. Obviously Shakespeare cannot mitigate her tragedy on the public level; Katherine's fall, after all, is the path to Anne's ascension and Elizabeth's belated legitimacy. But on a private level he does produce a sense of peaceful resolution for her difficult life. Six figures dressed in white and “wearing on their heads garlands of bays,” a symbol of triumph, move across the stage, bowing before her and two by two holding a garland over her head. It is probably futile to search for extensive allegory in the mask;²⁰ Katherine herself describes it as merely “a blessed troop / Invit[ing her] to … eternal happiness” (IV, ii, 87-88, 90). Her remaining words to the King, delivered through Capucius, an ambassador from Emperor Charles V, reflect no trace of continued agitation; now she would simply invoke God's blessings on Henry and commend to him their young daughter and her household staff. Altogether different in form, though functioning as a similar point of joyous resolution, is the public proclamation at Elizabeth's christening by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Led by heaven, Cranmer prophesies that Elizabeth “promises / Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings” (V, iv, 18-19); she is destined to be a glass of royal fashion, a “pattern to all princes” (22):

                                                  Truth shall nurse her,
Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her.
She shall be lov'd and fear'd. …
In her days every man shall eat in safety
Under his own vine what he plants, and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors.
God shall be truly known.

(28-30, 33-36)

Like the phoenix she will “leave her blessedness to one” who shall rise “from the sacred ashes of her honor” (43, 45). His reign shall also be characterized by the qualities of prosperity, mercy, and control—“Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror”—and the “honor and the greatness of his name” shall “make new nations” and bless “Our children's children” (47, 51, 54).

With the pattern of joy and hopeful anticipation totally reversing the earlier pattern of corruption and politically motivated trials and executions, it seems short-sighted indeed to argue that Shakespeare pointedly refuses to mythologize Henry as a means of glorifying Elizabethan and Jacobean England, that any references to future greatness are undercut by the recent death of Prince Henry and the loss forever of the royal namesake. To be sure, Henry VIII is not a stage encomium of Henry's reign like that of the contemporary playwrights; indeed, it is precisely Shakespeare's refusal to create such a monolithic view that apparently leads to the dramatic diptych. Henry is clearly not without fault—nor is his reign without blemish—and Shakespeare, as one readily observes throughout his histories, is concerned not with eulogistic pageantry but with the manner in which the past can be effectively revealed through the human condition.²¹ As we noted earlier, Shakespeare in Henry VIII is relating the past to the present more overtly than in any other play, and his view of Elizabethan-Jacobean England is positive, one fundamentally compatible with his societal perceptions in the Romances. Even so, just as he utilizes two generations in those stage worlds to capture the tragedy as well as the joy of life and regeneration, so here he employs a two-part structure to capture both the reality and the romance of history. The final movement of the play may well depict an idealized view of the nation, but, considered together, the two movements capture the human agony and political conniving which ushered in the Reformation and a foreign policy based on maintaining a balance of power among the major European countries. It is left entirely to contemporary spectators to accept, qualify, or reject the edenic vision of Elizabethan-Jacobean England; the playwright on that point is silent.

Lacking the intensity of ambivalence found in the major histories, Henry VIII may easily be written off as a work of the left hand, of old age, or of collaboration. It may well be that an individual critic will insist it is all three, but clearly the fundamental perspective of the play is not unlike that of Shakespeare's earlier work in its attempt to balance the sweep of history with the psychology of character; the pattern of the diptych, moreover, suggests a playwright, rarely satisfied with repetition, who continues to probe for an artistically credible vision of life and the control vital to the effective transformation of that vision into the medium of drama. That the play was selected for performance at the Old Vic in London in 1953 to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth II is no small measure of his success.

Notes

1. Both Theobald and Malone believed that Henry VIII was Elizabethan in origin, a view more recently supported by E. K. Chambers (William Shakespeare [Oxford: Clarendon, 1930], I, 497). Critical consensus, however, dates the play around 1613—perhaps to celebrate the marriage on St. Valentine's Day of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, to Prince Frederick, the Elector Palatine; “to good patriots the anti-Catholic implications of the marriage offered the best of reasons for great rejoicing” (R. A. Foakes, ed., King Henry VIII [London: Methuen, 1957], p. xxxi). Francis A. Yates argues for a general revival in literature of “the symbols of the Elizabethan cult”; in this play Shakespeare uses “a real Tudor king, Henry VIII, to make his contemporary points about his hopes for the youngest royal generation” (Shakespeare's Last Plays [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975], pp. 74, 78).

2. Since James Spedding, responding to Tennyson's suggestion, claimed in The Gentleman's Magazine in 1850 that Henry VIII was a work of collaboration, the argument has never ceased. Principal proponents of Fletcher's hand include (as sole author) Robert Boyle and H. Dugdale Sykes and (as collaborator) A. H. Thorndike, Marjorie H. Nicolson, Robert Adger Law, F. E. Halliday, Marco Mincoff, Cyrus Hoy, Robert Ornstein, and J. C. Maxwell; those claiming sole Shakespearean authorship include Peter Alexander, Baldwin Maxwell, Hardin Craig, Thomas Clayton, Samuel Schoenbaum, Geoffrey Bullough, and R. A. Foakes. The most inclusive summaries of the diverse points of view can be found in Foakes' introduction to the Arden edition (1957) and in J. C. Maxwell's introduction to the Cambridge edition (1962). E. M. W. Tillyard argues that Shakespeare had had material on Henry VIII in mind since the earlier tetralogies but simply never been provoked to putting it into dramatic form (“Why Did Shakespeare Write Henry VIII?” CQ [The Cambridge Quarterly], 3 [1961], 26).

3. Alfred Harbage, ed., Annals of English Drama, 2nd ed., rev. Samuel Schoenbaum (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1964). As reissues of Sir Thomas Wyat, Edward IV, Thomas Lord Cromwell, Marlowe's Edward II, Shakespeare's Richard III, 1, 2 Henry IV, and Rowley's When You See Me, You Know Me would attest, however, there was renewed interest in the history plays around 1612. Felix Schelling has suggested that Shakespeare's play was written to challenge Rowley's frivolous version of Henry VIII (The English Chronicle Play [New York: Macmillan, 1902], pp. 248-49), a view endorsed by Geoffrey Bullough (Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, IV [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962], 442).

4. See my previous study, Shakespeare's Tragic Perspective (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1976), pp. 201-65, for a discussion of the significance of multiple choric figures in establishing the social dimensions of tragedy in Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra.

5. Peter Saccio frankly describes the play as “a historical pageant” (Shakespeare's English Kings [London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977], p. 210), and Eugene M. Waith calls it “a series of magnificent shows … tending to make the chronicle even more like a tragedy” (The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher [New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1952], p. 119). The “Tudor forms are Jacobeanized” (Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare [Oxford: Clarendon, 1977], p. 195), utilizing an epic movement (G. Wilson Knight, Shakespeare and Religion [New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967], p. 76) built on “narrative rather than dramatic technique” (F. David Hoeniger, ed., The Life of King Henry the Eighth, in William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, gen. ed. Alfred Harbage [Baltimore: Penguin, 1969], p. 782).

6. Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: Free Press, 1967), p. 230. Irving Ribner attributes the weakness of the play to the general decline of the history play and Shakespeare's “failure to embody an overall consistent philosophical scheme” (The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare [London: Methuen, 1957], p. 288); Frederick O. Waage, Jr., argues that Shakespeare, personally distressed with Prince Henry's death, reflects his sense of historical discontinuity (“Henry VIII and the Crisis of the English History Play,” Shakespeare Studies, 8 [1975], 299).

7. H. C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), I, 269). A critic of the London Times spoke in 1811 of the “accumlated ennui of Henry VIII” (quoted in Goddard, p. 270), and Lytton Strachey accused Shakespeare of being bored (Books and Characters [New York: Harbrace, 1922], p. 64).

8. C. K. Pooler, ed, Henry VIII (London: Methuen, 1915), p. xxxii.

9. Herschel Baker, “Introduction to Henry VIII” in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 978. F. E. Halliday speaks of a “series of loosely related private disasters interspersed with pageants” (The Poetry of Shakespeare's Plays [London: Duckworth, 1954], p. 190); Henry VIII fails, according to A. A. Parker, because Shakespeare was unable “to transform his historical theme into successful dramatic art” (“Henry VIII in Shakespeare and Calderón,” MLR [Modern Language Review], 43 [1948], 330).

10. G. Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life (London: Oxford, 1947), p. 326.

11. Charles Knight, Shakespeare's Works (London: Routledge, 1840), II, 398.

12. Clifford Leech, “The Structure of the Late Plays,” Shakespeare Survey, 11 (1958), 19, 29; the “total effect … of a complex tonal and thematic orchestration” (Samuel Schoenbaum, ed., The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth [New York: New American Library, 1967], p. xxxv) is an “achievement worthy of Shakespeare's maturity” (H. M. Richmond, “Shakespeare's Henry VIII: Romance Redeemed by History,” Shakespeare Studies, 4 [1968], 438).

13. Herbert Howarth, The Tiger's Heart [New York: Oxford, 1970], p. 153). The structure, “distinguished by constant and alarming shifts in its perspective on character and action” (Lee Bliss. “The Wheel of Fortune and the Maiden Phoenix of Shakespeare's King Henry the Eighth,” ELH, 42 [1975], 3), represents “true history … because in tone and temper it steers a middle course between the lightheartedness—the merry bawdiness—of comedy and the gloom of tragedy” (S. C. Sen Gupta, Shakespeare's Historical Plays [Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974], p. 153).

14. Paul Bertram, Shakespeare and the Two Noble Kinsmen (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1965), p. 159. Frank Kermode describes the structure as a pattern of tragic falls in the old “de casibus” tradition (“What Is Shakespeare's Henry VIII About?” Durham University Journal, NS9 [1948], 48-55. Rpt. in Shakespeare: The Histories, ed. Eugene W. Waith [Englewood] Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965], p. 178).

15. See, for example, D. Douglas Waters, “Shakespeare and the ‘Mistress-Missa’ Tradition in King Henry VIII,” SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly], 24 (1973), 459-62.

16. Both William Hazlitt (Characters of Shakespeare's Plays [London: Templeman, 1838], p. 222) and Anna Jameson (Shakespeare's Heroines [New York: Burt, n.d.], p. 362) rhapsodize over her patience and self-control. More to the point, as Alfred Harbage observes, Shakespeare “goes far beyond Holinshed in giving Katherine virtue and ability, and he movingly dramatizes her distress” (As They Liked It [London: Macmillan, 1947], p. 71).

17. Numerous critics have attempted to explain away this inconsistency. Marjorie Nicholson, claiming Shakespeare intended to depict a “later Iago,” is typical of those who see collaboration as responsible for the two faces of Wolsey (“The Authorship of Henry VIII,” PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association], 37 [1922], 500); Irving Ribner, on the other hand, describes “basic inconsistencies within [Shakespeare's] sources” (History Play, p. 289). Margaret Webster notes that, whatever the cause, on stage the “two sides of the man's nature … are not irreconcilable” (Shakespeare Without Tears [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1942], p. 201).

18. Ronald Berman, “King Henry the Eighth: History and Romance,” English Studies, 48 (1967), 112.

19. It is this pattern which has led various critics to describe the structural similarities with the Romances—the “sweep of life shaped in a restorative pattern” (Foakes, p. xli), the “forces of spiritual regeneration and reformation” (Howard Felperin, “Shakespeare's Henry VIII: History as Myth,” SEL, [Studies in English Literature], 6 [1966], 240) in this instance applied to the nation as a whole rather than to particular individuals. See further Peter Alexander, “Conjectural History or Shakespeare's Henry VIII,” Essays and Studies, 16 (1931), 113.

20. Yates, for example, calls it a theophany (p. 76), and John Cutts argues for Trinitarian overtones in the triple crowning (“Shakespeare's Song and Masque Hand in Henry VIII,” Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 99 [1963], 192-93). Others emphasize the juxtaposition of Katherine's spiritual with Anne's secular coronation (M. C. Bradbrook, The Living Monument [Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1976], p. 74; Foakes, p. lii).

21. Henry acts consistently throughout the play to secure his throne and establish the succession; to some critics he is a “dummy king” (Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare [Garden City: Doubleday, 1939], p. 289) or so vague as to be irritating (Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage [Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972], p. 211); to another he is one whose wisdom evolves “through a plausible series of historical errors of judgment” (Richmond, p. 347); to another he is the agent of a divine providence who must be judged only in terms of his fruits—“a great queen and the establishment of the reformed church” (Kermode, p. 179); to another he is “the political statesman par excellence” (Bliss, p. 15).