[In the following excerpt, Halio offers a brief overview of the critical history of Henry VIII, accompanied by an analysis of the main action of the play.]

THE PLAY

Whether because of the authorship question, or because the play is, like King John, eccentric to the two great history cycles Shakespeare wrote earlier, critics have tended to slight King Henry VIII.¹ This is unfortunate, for the play is fascinating in its own right, and as its performance history shows (see below), it can be most impressive on the stage. Many of the standard critical studies of Shakespeare's work fail to include it, preferring to end their discussions with an analysis and evaluation of The Tempest, as if it were the author's final work.² When critics deign to consider King Henry VIII, they often dismiss it as almost an irrelevance. Even so astute a critic as Norman Rabkin, while recognizing that it is ‘in many respects a fine play’, regards its structure as ‘cynically arbitrary’, and damns it accordingly. He does not think Shakespeare took his subject seriously (otherwise, it could have been another great chronicle play), but instead he made it into ‘a half-hearted and unconvincing piece’.³

Rabkin could not be more wrong. The play's structure is far from merely arbitrary and its themes are important. King Henry VIII has too often been regarded as a pageant play, designed to provide spectacle and colour for London's crowds at the time of Princess Elizabeth's marriage to the Elector Palatine in 1613. While it does provide these attractions, like Shakespeare's other work its value does not lie chiefly or only there.⁴ The play, moreover, can be performed effectively with very little pageantry, as the BBC television production demonstrates (see below). But for all its pomp and splendour, King Henry VIII focuses mainly on the use and abuse of power. In this respect, it has links to the earlier histories and to the tragedies as well.

Some previous studies have seen in the presentations of Buckingham, Katherine, and Wolsey a throwback to the de casibus tradition of medieval tragedy, as in Chaucer's ‘Monk's Tale’ or later in The Mirror of Magistrates.⁵ Without question, the fall of these great personages is central, and they are tragic, one way or another. But that is only part of the story. They do not all fall the same way or for the same reason; and in Act 5, when it looks as if another is about to fall, Cranmer is saved by the King.⁶

The key to understanding what King Henry VIII is about and the way it is structured is to see how the various episodes relate to each other and build to a climax at the end. Shakespeare begins the dialogue with Buckingham and the other lords discussing the Field of the Cloth of Gold in France. Although historically Buckingham was present on the occasion, here he says he was absent because of an ‘ague’, giving Norfolk the opportunity to describe the ‘view of earthly glory’ that he missed. The point of this passage (1.1.14-38) is not the magnificence of the occasion, but its excess and cost. That leads directly into the conflict between Wolsey, the upstart prelate who arranged it, and Buckingham, the nobly descended aristocrat, who despises him. The competition between the two continues until first one and then the other falls by over-reaching himself, the besetting fault of many powerful figures even before Marlowe's tragic heroes took the stage decades earlier.

Norfolk's counsel to Buckingham to exercise temperance falls on deaf ears (1.1.124-45); by the end of the scene Buckingham and his son-in-law are under arrest and sent to the Tower. Buckingham knows too much and speaks too freely: dramatically, this is the function of his speeches before his arrest and the explanation for his imprisonment (1.1.157-97). The Cardinal's brief appearance and few lines of dialogue demonstrate his awareness of Buckingham's threat and the means he will use to deal with it; Wolsey shows he can exercise power ruthlessly to gain his ends far better than the high-minded, intemperate Buckingham.

The stage directions for the next scene are symbolically very significant, as the King enters ‘leaning on Cardinal Wolsey's shoulder’. This is Henry's first appearance on stage,⁷ and his dependence upon Wolsey is conspicuous. As the scene unfolds, it is clear that Henry knows little of what is happening in his realm.⁸ Unexpectedly, Katherine enters and appeals to Henry on behalf of his subjects, who are being taxed to the point of rebellion. She says they blame not only Wolsey, but also the King (1.2.19-30). With the best and most compassionate intentions, Katherine thus dares to intervene in the dangerous game of power politics, and wins—up to a point. Henry demands that the taxes be withdrawn: that is her victory. Squeezing out of major responsibility for the uproar, Wolsey has his minions spread the word that the relief comes from his (not Katherine's) intercession with the King (106-8): that is his victory.

But not his sole victory. By skilfully manipulating Buckingham's Surveyor to testify against his master, he wins again, this time defeating Katherine. Although she suspects the Surveyor is perfidious, she can only appeal piously to Wolsey for ‘charity’ (144) and warn the Surveyor of the danger to his soul (174-6). Neither appeal carries any force or weight. Here and in the conflicts that follow, Wolsey shows himself far more capable than the Queen or her supporters. But through it all, the King is present and observant. This is crucial. By the end of the play, he has learned from his erstwhile servant how to play the power game—and win—better than anyone else.⁹

The next two scenes help to reinforce Wolsey's position of power and influence while at the same time building aspects of ambiguity and ambivalence that become increasingly important in the complementary design of this play. The French who had been apostrophized along with the English in the first scene are here satirized along with their English imitators. Wolsey, the evident villain in 1.2, gets praise now for his liberality, shown to excess in the following episode, the feast at York Place.¹⁰ Rearranging history, Shakespeare introduces Anne to Henry at the feast years ahead of their actual meeting. The occasion complicates his motives shortly afterwards when he contemplates his separation and eventual divorce from Katherine and thereby justifies the dramatic compression. Shakespeare alters history also by having Wolsey guess correctly that the mysterious guest is the King.¹¹ A minor matter, perhaps, but alterations are never insignificant in the dramatist's treatment of source material. The incident underscores the closeness between Henry and Wolsey, who can penetrate through the King's disguise and knows very well how and when to defer to his master.

Shakespeare does not dramatize Buckingham's trial in Act 2, but only describes it to show how ineffectual the nobleman is against the Cardinal's superior power (2.1.1-30, 40-6). As against the praise for Wolsey in 1.3, here is denigration of him by the commons (50-2) in favour of the noble and ‘bounteous’ Duke.¹² Buckingham's valediction of more than seventy lines is a model of patient resignation, humility, and charity. In winning compassion and sympathy, it nevertheless reminds us that this is a defeat, and not the defeat of any man—the defeat of the most potent nobleman in England. Only Katherine's last speeches surpass Buckingham's moving rhetoric, and she too is defeated—a defeated Queen. The stakes in the power politics of empire are high, none higher, and loser Buckingham pays with his life. That is the point his long valediction—like Wolsey's later—most emphatically makes.¹³

And where is Henry in all this? Not present. He is not with the losers, and never is, although the losers typically invoke his presence, if only to bless him (2.1.89-95, 3.2.415-16, 4.2.164-5).

Hard upon Buckingham's disgrace preparations follow for Katherine's trial, as much a trial of her power against Wolsey's and the King's as of her worthiness to remain Queen. But well before it begins we get a glimpse of Wolsey's overreaching in the letter that the Lord Chamberlain reads (2.2.1-8). Whereas the Cardinal, or the Cardinal's man, may lord it over others, he cannot lord it over Katherine. That battle of wills ends in a draw, which is the beginning of the end for Wolsey. Henry counts on Wolsey to succeed, and when he does not get Katherine to knuckle under, the King loses confidence in him as well as his fellow legate, Campeius.

The dialogue between Suffolk and the Lord Chamberlain in 2.2 explains why Shakespeare introduced Anne earlier in the play:

LORD Chamberlain
It seems the marriage with his brother's wife
Has crept too near his conscience.
SUFFOLK
                                                  No, his conscience
Has crept too near another lady.

(2.2.15-17)

While Norfolk blames Wolsey for this, he adds that the ‘King will know him one day’ (l. 20). So he must: ‘He'll never know himself else’, Suffolk replies. Knowing oneself is another important theme and relates closely to the knowledge and use of power. For without knowing oneself, one is powerless.¹⁴ Ironically, Wolsey also has further to go on the journey to self-knowledge, and when he arrives there, he is joyful even though defeated (3.2.379).¹⁵ This is another ambivalence Shakespeare weaves into the fabric of his design.

Wolsey of course is not responsible for Henry's qualms of conscience. The divorce was not his idea, and he is unjustly maligned by Norfolk (2.2.18-20, 22-9); yet he must bear responsibility for carrying out his sovereign's will. Henry is not ready to take full charge of affairs himself, though he will do so eventually. For the present, Wolsey is the ‘quiet of my wounded conscience … a cure fit for a king’ (2.2.74-5). Nevertheless, the King has sent Cranmer abroad to canvass the universities on behalf of his divorce. Wolsey reassures Henry that between them, he and Campeius will conduct a ‘just and noble’ trial (2.2.91), and he appears optimistic about the results. Before this composite scene ends, while the King talks apart with his new secretary, Gardiner (avowedly a tool of Wolsey's), Campeius asks Wolsey about Dr Pace, Gardiner's predecessor. The dialogue, which otherwise seems superfluous, again shows how ruthless Wolsey can be in the exercise of his power (2.2.121-35).

By contrast to Wolsey's machiavellianism, Anne's behaviour in the next scene is utterly naive. Her professions of concern for Katherine ring sincere,¹⁶ but her insistence that she would not change places with her does not. The Old Lady undercuts her repeatedly and successfully, as Emilia does not with Desdemona (Othello 4.3). Of course history supports the Old Lady; but if Anne protests too much, she also reflects an ambivalence that, however tinged with insincerity, fits into the overall pattern of ambivalence or complementarity that the play insistently develops.¹⁷

The announcement that the King has made Anne the Marchioness of Pembroke (2.3.63) is a prelude to the climactic scene of Act 2, the Blackfriars trial. Anne's rise harbingers Katherine's fall. The thousand pounds a year that Henry gives Anne promises more thousands: ‘Honour's train / Is longer than his foreskirt’ (98-9). Evidently oblivious to all this (she never mentions Anne, nor do they ever meet¹⁸), Katherine nonetheless puts on a spirited defence of herself in 2.4. Like Buckingham's, it wins sympathy and compassion, but it does not prevail. Nor does the Cardinals' effort to persuade her against delaying the proceedings. If Katherine errs in blaming Wolsey for what is happening to her (2.4.73-82), she does not miss by much, in so far as Wolsey has been the willing instrument of Henry's wishes. Furthermore, she goes beyond the immediate to the general, reproaching him for his ‘arrogancy, spleen, and pride’ (108) and for his preoccupation more with personal honour than his ‘high profession spiritual’ (115). While this attack gains her nothing, it affects the atmosphere of the trial, the audience's attitude, and doubtless Henry's, who in the next act finds tangible evidence of Katherine's truth.

When Katherine abruptly exits from the trial, retaining her dignity if not much else, she wins a heartfelt tribute from Henry, the man about to divorce her (130-40). It is by no means insincere; again, it is a reflection of the ambivalence prevalent in the play and, historically as well as dramatically, consistent with what Henry truly feels. Wolsey's appeal for exoneration from the charges Katherine has laid against him gives the King an opportunity to explain why he is proceeding as he is (164-227). He sounds convincing; but only a few moments before in actual playing time we heard how he bestowed title and riches upon Anne. The juxtaposition is of course deliberate, not so much to undercut Henry's position as to indicate its complexity and his own ambivalence.¹⁹ By the time he finishes, we are almost persuaded that he means what he says:

Prove but our marriage lawful, …
… we are contented
To wear our mortal state to come with her,
Katherine, our queen, before the primest creature
That's paragoned o'th' world.

(2.4.223-7)

But on reflection we know that he really does not want this proof. He wants Anne, and will have her.

By the end of the scene that much is clear. Wolsey is all but finished, though he does not know it: ‘I may perceive’, Henry says,

These cardinals trifle with me. I abhor
This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome.

(2.4.232-4)

He is impatient for Cranmer's return with the proof he needs—that his marriage to Katherine is unlawful and he is free to marry Anne. He has begun to know himself and those around him and to take charge at last.

He therefore sends the Cardinals in 2.4 using bribes as well as threats to induce Katherine to accept a divorce (3.1.92-6). Outraged, she refuses and continues the dressing down she began at her trial along with a renewed defence of her position (97-136). Henry's knowledge of others has not yet extended so far as to understand his own wife. Although at the end of the scene she yields to Wolsey's blandishments and consents to listen to their counsels, nothing evidently results from their unreported conversation.

Katherine's defeat at her trial signals Wolsey's, just as Buckingham's signalled hers. But whereas Buckingham and Katherine feel their innocence deeply and assert it to the end,²⁰ Wolsey at length sees the folly of his ambition and repents. The perception does not come easily, but it does come. The cabal of the nobility that opens 3.2 actually has little to do with his fall, except dramatically to prepare for it. What fuels the nobles' growing antagonism is the knowledge that Henry has evidence against Wolsey that will undo him (3.2.20-40). We also learn—before Wolsey—that Henry has already married Anne and has given order for her coronation (41-6). Moreover, Cranmer has ‘returned in his opinions’, having satisfied Henry for his divorce, and is made Archbishop of Canterbury (64-5, 73-4). Henry has indeed taken charge of his own affairs and no longer depends on Wolsey, whom he now knows—and knows he cannot trust.

When Wolsey enters and meditates on whom the King should marry—the French King's sister, not Anne Boleyn—he unwittingly becomes a object of derision. Henry soon enlightens him, toying with him as he does so, and as he does so, Wolsey becomes alarmed and tries to deflect Henry from his predetermined purpose. Although there is much truth in what Wolsey claims he has done on the King's behalf (170-5, 191-200), it is not enough to counter the good he has done for himself. For that he is doomed. Briefly he thinks he can finesse the situation—until he reads the second paper Henry has given him (210-23). Then he knows certainly that it is all over. He has touched the highest point of all his greatness, he says, and from that meridian of his glory he hastes now to his setting (224-6).

Symbolic of the ‘bright exhalation’ of his fall, Wolsey at first fiercely opposes the lords who come for the Great Seal. But they are too much for him, listing his offences—the ‘articles’ collected from his life (294-5)—now in the King's hands. After his profession of innocence (301-3) and his defiance of their ‘objections’ (307-9), Wolsey stands silently as the lords itemize his misdeeds—until the Lord Chamberlain intervenes, imploring moderation. The confrontation ends with the demand that the Cardinal forfeit all his worldly possessions to the King. He has by now been thoroughly humbled and has nothing more to say as the lords scornfully depart.

Wolsey's farewell—not to the lords, but to his greatness—shows that he has at last come to know himself and his folly. He has been like ‘little wanton boys’ who swim on bladders far beyond their depth and now finds his ambition break under him, leaving him ‘Weary and old with service to the mercy / Of a rude stream’ (364-5). His is the old story of someone who ‘hangs on princes' favours’, though as churchman he recognizes that he should have known better.²¹ Seeing clearly what he is and what he has been, he can honestly say to Cromwell that he is well and ‘Never so truly happy’, for the King has cured him of his ambition. Knowing himself, he is now at peace (377-81).

Despite his fall, Wolsey is still interested in the ‘news abroad’ (the Old Adam does not easily or quickly vanish).²² Cromwell tells him that Sir Thomas More is now Lord Chancellor, that Cranmer has returned and is Archbishop of Canterbury, and that Henry and Anne have long been married in secret and she is about to be crowned (406-7). Wolsey is probably wrong in thinking that Anne was the ‘weight’ that pulled him down, though he is right that Henry has now gone beyond him (408-9). In exhorting Cromwell to ‘Seek the King’ (415), Wolsey still involves himself in power politics, but no longer for his own benefit. He knows where Cromwell's best advantage lies, and to his credit he has already put in a good word with Henry. If Wolsey was ‘Lofty and sour to them that loved him not’, as Griffith later says, yet to those who sought him out he was ‘sweet as summer’ (4.2.53-4), as this scene shows. It also shows what Griffith further says:

His overthrow heaped happiness upon him;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself
And found the blessedness of being little.

(4.2.64-6)

The mixed view we have of Wolsey both here and later in 4.2, as Katherine and Griffith speak of him, is the strongest indication that Shakespeare was not interested in emphasizing one side or another of his character but in revealing both, the ‘mingled yarn’—good and ill together—that comprises the ‘web’ of human life.²³ Both the length and the centrality of 3.2 indicate the importance of Wolsey's moral regeneration, as Lee Bliss says,²⁴ and anticipate the movement toward political transcendence in Katherine's last scene. It also serves as a prologue to Anne's coronation: the gentlemen's reminiscence of Buckingham's fall enhances the juxtaposition of joy and sorrow (4.1.5-6). Inasmuch as 3.2 and 4.2 frame the coronation with expressions of disillusionment and rejection, they put into significant perspective the pomp and glory of monarchs and further encourage an ambivalent attitude.

Though his presence is invoked by others talking about him, Henry does not appear in Act 4. As elsewhere in Shakespeare's plays—Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, for example—when the protagonist remains off-stage for a considerable time, his absence prefigures a change. Henry's next appearance, at 5.1.56, shows a difference, as his character has fully evolved.²⁵ Throughout this act, he is absolutely in charge of everything that happens, no longer dependent upon anyone for advice or counsel or acting in his place. He does not merely foil Gardiner's plot to undo Cranmer; in the process he demonstrates a consummate ability to engage with others in power politics and win at the odds. In the midst of it all, he is also preoccupied with the difficult labour of his queen and his hope for a viable male heir.

Aware of what the lords are planning against Cranmer, Henry goes along with them for a while. In the interim he lectures Cranmer on the ways of the world, in particular the ways of the political world in which the Archbishop is, willy-nilly, a player. Astonished at the man's innocence, Henry warns Cranmer how dangerous his ‘state’ stands; how powerful and numerous his enemies are; and how ‘not ever / The justice and truth o'th' question carries / The dew o'th' verdict with it’ (5.1.130-2). These words may recall Buckingham's fate, especially as Henry goes on to warn Cranmer about ‘corrupt minds’ that may suborn knaves to swear against him. ‘Such things have been done’, he says, possibly alluding consciously or otherwise to the Surveyor's testimony, although his more direct allusion is to Christ's indictment and execution (134-9). At the end, he reassures his friend and ‘brother’ (107) that he will not allow these enemies to prevail, giving Cranmer his ring as earnest of his protection.

And protect him he does. Outraged at the humiliation to which Gardiner and the others of the Council subject Cranmer, Henry first gives them enough rope, figuratively, to hang themselves. But he is nonetheless astonished at their behaviour (5.2.25-31). After they finally summon Cranmer to the Council chamber, they accuse him of heresy, although (in keeping with the dramatist's evident intention to eschew theological controversy) the forms of his heresy are not specified. Cranmer's eloquent defence avails him nothing, nor does his demand to face his accusers (66-82). At this point he catches on to what is happening and starts responding with calculated irony, particularly against his chief antagonist, Gardiner—again to no avail. When Cromwell presumes to intervene on his behalf, he too becomes the target of Gardiner's accusations, until the Lord Chancellor puts an end to the quarrels.

When the Councillors, refusing mercy, commit Cranmer to the Tower, he shows them the King's ring, and their whole attitude alters abruptly. A few moments later Henry takes command of the situation, scolding the lords for their behaviour and restoring Cranmer to his position of honour at the table. He reads the Councillors a lesson in humility and in the proper service of their sovereign. Through it all Henry shows them—and us—that he is now not only a king who reigns, but a king who rules. He is himself at last.²⁶

The christening scene that ends the play is the final occasion for pageantry and display, but Cranmer's prophecy is its chief dramatic justification. Lee Bliss and Alexander Leggatt have shown how his utopian or ideal vision is a fitting conclusion, recounting the rise and fall pattern we have been observing and unifying the play by the shaping power of ‘an art that coerces reality’ and thereby helps us to understand it more closely.²⁷ Or, as Bliss says:

Shakespeare offers, in the form of an ideal, a solution to the political world's sickness and corruption and an escape from the endless repetitions of history. His paean to Elizabeth and James I cannot be confined to literally ‘true’ predictions of their actual reigns (already belied by the sublunar world of the original audience), or designed merely to feel nostalgic memories of Elizabeth and satisfy the reigning monarch's taste for flattery. Rather, this praise fulfills the didactic function of panegyric in the Renaissance: idealized portraits which heighten the subject's exemplary traits in order to incite emulation.²⁸

What is the ‘solution’, the ‘ideal’ that Shakespeare offers in Cranmer's speech? It is summed up in the praise of Elizabeth:

                                                                                          Truth shall nurse her,
Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her.
She shall be loved and feared. Her own shall bless her;
Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,
And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her.
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 neighbours.
God shall be truly known, and those about her
From her shall read the perfect ways of honour
And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.

(5.4.28-38)

As Bliss says, we cannot take this as the literal ‘truth’, despite the play's alternative (or original) title ‘All is True’, nor was it intended as such. It is more an exhortation to the reigning monarch, James I (we recall that the play may have been designed for performance at court), a mirror held up to him of what a great king should be. Nor does Shakespeare sentimentalize this ideal: just as Elizabeth is both loved and feared, James too will have ‘Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror’ serve him (47-9; emphasis added). Moreover, through this account of the golden age the rhythms of time still beat.²⁹ Elizabeth must die—she must—Cranmer reiterates (59-60), though from her ashes will rise an heir ‘As great in admiration as herself’ (40-2). In this way ‘humanity's endless, profitless cycle of rise and fall can be translated into the more miraculous image of the death and rebirth of “the maiden phoenix”’.³⁰

‘O Lord Archbishop’, Henry begins his last speech,

Thou hast made me now a man. Never before
This happy child did I get anything.

(5.4.64-5)

True enough, but Henry is made a man more by his own growth and maturity than through the Archbishop's ‘oracle’, comforting as it may be. He is by no means the ideal ruler that Cranmer envisions, and may be little more than ‘a thoroughly political, self-aggrandizing monarch’.³¹ But he has become a successful and powerful king, and in the context that Shakespeare presents, that is something. Nothing further about a male heir is mentioned, the ostensible cause for the divorce, his marriage to Anne, and the break with Rome. Nor need it be. Shakespeare has history on his side, and through Cranmer's vision of the future he foretells a future that for this audience is already the past. But another future, already present, is also there and being formed, though Shakespeare like some others in his audience and among his colleagues will not live to see it completely unfold.

Notes

1. On the way the authorship question has affected critics, see H. M. Richmond, ‘Shakespeare's Henry VIII: Romance Redeemed by History’, SSt [Shakespeare Studies] 4 (1968), 334-6, and note: ‘The ultimate question for the critic about Henry VIII must surely … not be “Who wrote it?” It should be “Is this a good play, and if so, why?”’ (336).

2. To cite just two such studies, one British and one American: see Derek Traversi's An Approach to Shakespeare, 2 vols. (New York, 1969) and Harold C. Goddard's The Meaning of Shakespeare, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1951). Even books devoted entirely to the history plays, such as E. M. W. Tillyard's and Lily Bess Campbell's, exclude Henry VIII from consideration. An exception is Elihu Pearlman's more recent study, William Shakespeare: The History Plays (New York, 1992), but he dismisses King Henry VIII as ‘A Play of Spectacle’, 173-4.

3. Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (1967), 230-1. Cf. G. K. Hunter, English Drama 1586-1642: The Age of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1997), 268, who sees the play as ‘a series of brilliant rhetorical moments linked together without being attached to an overriding purpose’.

4. Cf. Kristian Smidt, Unconformities in Shakespeare's History Plays (1982), 146.

5. See, for example, Frank Kermode, ‘What Is Shakespeare's Henry VIII About?’, Durham University Journal, NS 9 (1948), 48-55; reprinted in Shakespeare: The Histories, ed. Eugene M. Waith (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1965), 168-79. Cf. Pearlman, The History Plays, 174-80.

6. Kermode thus sees the play as a late morality and tends to allegorize characters and events. Katherine, Wolsey, and Henry may appear as the ‘Good Queen’, the ‘Ambitious Prelate’, ‘Mercy’, and so forth, but they are not merely allegorical figures and have much more solid dramatic and historical significance. S. C. Sen Gupta, Shakespeare's Historical Plays (Oxford, 1964), 165, cites the de casibus tradition as lending unity to the play but sees variety in both the characters and their falls. Cf. also Howard Felperin, Shakespearean Romance (Princeton, 1972), 199-202, who notes that the falls of Buckingham, Katherine, and Wolsey are ‘romantically, rather than tragically, conceived’ and different from the falls, for example, of Hastings and Buckingham in Richard III. Like Adam in Paradise Lost, they achieve a ‘Paradise within’ as a result of their falls (203). Felperin goes on to demonstrate a connection between King Henry VIII and morality drama, especially its wavering or misguided kings (203-7).

7. In some productions, he appears at the beginning, a solitary, thoughtful figure (the BBC TV version), or gloriously resplendent in tableau (the 1996 RSC production), but the directors stage the opening to suit other purposes.

8. See Kurland, ‘Henry VIII and James I’ [Shakespeare Studios 19 (1987)], 206-7, who compares Henry's ‘distaste for administration’ to James's; both preferred private pleasures, such as their passion for hunting. Yet both maintained the primacy of authority, as Katherine recognizes when she makes her appeal directly to the King in 1.2 and during her trial in 2.4 (Kurland, 212).

9. Richmond, ‘Romance Redeemed’, 340, compares Henry's ‘hasty and extreme judgment’ regarding Buckingham (1.2.119-29) to Henry V's reaction to Scrope's conspiracy (Henry V 2.2.91ff.) and to Othello's misjudgement of Desdemona. By Act 5, according to Richmond, Henry learns how to judge and act more judiciously, tempering mercy with justice (341). He also learns how to act with greater political acumen.

10. See Lee Bliss, ‘The Wheel of Fortune and the Maiden Phoenix of Shakespeare's King Henry the Eighth’, ELH 42 (1975), 3-4, for the ‘pattern of contradiction’ in this act.

11. See 1.4.82n.

12. Cf. 1.3.55, where Lovell refers to Wolsey's ‘bounteous’ mind.

13. Cf. M. W. Wikander, The Play of Truth and State: Historical Drama from Shakespeare to Brecht (Baltimore, 1986), 42: ‘Buckingham's challenge to the process of the king's justice is not merely emotional. His definition of truth clearly conflicts with the law's.’ Wikander explores the whole notion of ‘truth’ in the play, signalled by its subtitle, and finds numerous contradictions and inconsistencies. In power politics, truth as a commodity subject to political expediency is precisely what we should expect.

14. Richmond, ‘Romance Redeemed’, 342-3, compares Henry's ‘erratic self-defence’ in 2.4 to Lear's lack of self-knowledge, and citing 2.2.25-35 he compares Wolsey's ‘subtle interventions’ regarding the divorce to Iago's effect on Othello.

15. On Wolsey's self-knowledge, see note to 3.2.379.

16. Cf. Smidt, Unconformities, 151.

17. Cf. [Judith] Anderson [Biographical Truth (1984)], 130: ‘Disjunctive truths and ambivalent moral attitudes are not what the play commits but what it studies, perhaps too truly’.

18. Smidt, Unconformities, 150; he remarks that no open conflict between the two women occurs, nor are we led to expect one. Cf. Sen Gupta, Shakespeare's Historical Plays, 156, who notes also how Henry's feelings for both women co-exist: ‘they do not attract and interpenetrate each other and produce a tragic tension’.

19. On Henry's ambivalent motives, see Bliss, ‘Wheel of Fortune’, 7, who argues that ‘Henry is more complicated that he would perhaps like to appear’. Cf. Smidt, Unconformities, 150: the ordering of scenes suggests Henry's ‘double motive’ for the divorce.

20. Bliss says that it is impossible to know any political or moral truth about Buckingham, though unlike almost everyone else, Katherine remains untouched by ambiguity (‘Wheel of Fortune’, 6, 10). Yet the question of her first marriage and its consummation is never resolved.

21. Cf. Psalm 146: 3 (Geneva): ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, for there is none help in him’, and Psalm 118: 9: ‘It is better to trust in the Lord than to have confidence in princes’. Wolsey's words echo these verses.

22. Anderson notes the ‘ambiguity, the half-heartedness’, of Wolsey's previous renunciation. Although his last long speech in the scene is ‘increasingly plain and “honest”’, it does not fully resolve the ambiguity of his awareness (pp. 150-1).

23. All's Well That Ends Well, 4.3.74-5. Cf. Anderson, 151, on the ‘epitaph to Wolsey's ambiguity’ in the ‘twin characterizations, one critical and one laudatory’ in 4.2.

24. ‘Wheel of Fortune’, 12.

25. Cf. Anderson, 135: ‘If Henry grows in stature, we do not see it happen. The changes he undergoes are credible as facts on stage, but their true meaning is ambivalence’.

26. Cf. [Peter] Saccio [Shakespeare's English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama (New York, 1977)], 211; Sen Gupta, Shakespeare's Historical Plays, 166; and Alexander Leggatt, ‘Henry VIII and the Ideal England’, SS [Shakespeare Survey] 38 (1985), 137: ‘The play as a whole shows the emergence of Henry as the clear centre of authority in his kingdom, and the frustration of Wolsey's attempt to usurp that position for himself’. Cf. also Camille Wells Slights, ‘The Politics of Conscience in All Is True (or Henry VIII)’, SS 43 (1990), 59: ‘Henry appears progressively more active and responsible’. Foakes, too (p. lxiii), notes Henry's ‘growth in stature’, his ‘emergence into authority’, often neglected in performance. For a contrary view, see Robert Ornstein [Cambridge, mass., 1972], A Kingdom for a Stage, 215.

27. Leggatt, 143.

28. Bliss, ‘Wheel of Fortune’, 20. Cf. Felperin, Shakespearean Romance, 209-10, who therefore links the play with romance rather than history.

29. Leggatt, ‘Ideal England’, 142.

30. Bliss, ‘Wheel of Fortune’, 23.

31. Frank S. Cespedes, ‘“We are one in fortunes”: The Sense of History in Henry VIII’, English Literary Renaissance, 10 (1980), 414. Claiming that as early as 1.2 Henry decides for himself what is to be done, Cespedes argues that this fact ‘negates any sense of [his] “development” or “education” which culminates in his rejection of Wolsey’ (422). But his argument overlooks much else in 1.2 as well as in the rest of the play. Intent on seeing the drama as a veiled critique of the reign of James I, Stuart Kurland similarly concludes that ‘Henry VIII does not portray a monarch who excites admiration or inspires emulation’, though he admits the ‘occasional fine sentiments’ that Henry professes (‘Henry VIII and James I’, 214).