Henry VIII

As scholars generally believe the play to have been written by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, it’s perhaps best to refer to the authors as the playwrights. 

1/ Henry VIII is one of the weakest plays in the Shakespeare canon, but I will (try to) resist complaining about it—what’s the point? There are interesting bits in it, such as Norfolk’s warning to Buckingham: 

“NORFOLK Be advised. 

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot

That it do singe yourself. We may outrun 

By violent swiftness that which we run at, 

And lose by overrunning. Know you not

The fire that mounts the liquor till’t run o’er 

In seeming to augment it wastes it? Be advised. 

I say again there is no English soul 

More stronger to direct you than yourself, 

If with the sap of reason you would quench, 

Or but allay, the fire of passion.” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

Even more interesting is Buckingham’s speech before his execution. The man who has had to be told to calm down is now calm the moment before death: he understands that friends “when they once perceive/ The least rub in your fortunes, fall away/ Like water from ye, never found again/ But where they mean to sink ye” (Act 2 scene 1), and accepts it.

G. Wilson Knight says: 

“… no earlier hero has left such scalding tears on Shakespeare's page as Buckingham's, the more burning for that universal forgiveness we had thought established in his soul, and the religious faith that still lights it…” (The Crown of Life) 

Later: 

“Buckingham is successor to many past heroes, their aura is on him, in him they are all but lifted to a nobler status; and yet in him they are, for the first time, accused. Timon scorns to forgive; Prospero forgives, coldly, knowing it 'the rarer action' (The Tempest, v. i. 27). But Buckingham, I think, fingers in his convulsive passion a cross worn on his breast; and it is this that accuses not only him, but all his predecessors in passion, Richard II, Hamlet, Troilus, Lear, Othello, Timon, Prospero of what? Of wounded pride. There is silence, as he realizes his new, and deeper, fall. Then, after a pause:

All good people 

Pray for me. (n. i. 131)

There is now no fine Christian posture, no spiritual pride, left; but merely the humility of a broken, and ordinary, man:

I must now forsake ye: the last hour 

Of my long weary life is come upon me. 

Farewell:

And when you would say something that is sad, 

Speak how I fell. I have done; and God forgive me. (n. i. 132)” (ibid.) 

I don’t get much out of Buckingham’s final speech but that’s to be expected: I’m no G. Wilson Knight. I would however say that I think the speech’s written by Fletcher. 

2/ I’m just going to poke at the play from different angles. 

“ANNE […] Verily, 

I swear, ’tis better to be lowly born 

And range with humble livers in content

Than to be perked up in a glist’ring grief 

And wear a golden sorrow.” 

(Act 2 scene 3) 

I like that. 

Anne, despite the old lady’s entreaties, refuses to marry the King. And yet a few scenes later, we’re told about the marriage, and some time afterwards the coronation takes place—what happened between the scenes? 

The play is about the downfall of Buckingham, then Queen Katherine, then Cardinal Wolsey. 

“WOLSEY […] I do beseech 

You, gracious madam, to unthink your speaking 

And to say so no more.” 

(Act 2 scene 4) 

That’s the scene of her trial. Katherine in the scene and in a later one with the cardinals has a dignity that reminds me of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, though the poetry isn’t as good. I like the “unthink your speaking” bit. 

Cardinal Wolsey’s speech before (or during?) his downfall is one of the best, if not the best speech, in the play.

“WOLSEY […] This is the state of man: today he puts forth 

The tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms, 

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him. 

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, 

And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 

His greatness is aripening, nips his root, 

And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, 

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 

This many summers in a sea of glory, 

But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride 

At length broke under me and now has left me, 

Weary and old with service, to the mercy 

Of a rude stream that must forever hide me…” 

(Act 3 scene 2) 

I’m leaving a long passage because it’s packed with metaphors: moving from tree imagery (“leaves”, “blossoms”, “frost”, “aripening”, “root”…) to water imagery (“swim”, “sea of glory”, “beyond my depth”, “stream”…). The poetry in Henry VIII, generally speaking, doesn’t often have metaphors. 

It’s also impossible not to notice “little wanton boys”: “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods/ They kill us for their sport.” 

I however don’t like Cardinal Wolsey’s “conversion” speech at the end of the scene. It feels contrived. 

“WOLSEY […] Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition. 

By that sin fell the angels. How can man then, 

The image of his Maker, hope to win by it? 

Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee; 

Corruption wins not more than honesty. 

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace

To silence envious tongues. By just, and fear not. 

Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, 

Thy God’s, and truth’s…” 

(ibid.) 

When you look at Buckingham’s final speech and then this one from Wolsey, Henry VIII appears to be a very Christian play, perhaps the most Christian play in the Shakespeare canon. 

3/ The trial of Cranmer in the council chamber has some good bits in it. 

“CHANCELLOR […] But we are all men, 

In our own natures frail and capable 

Of our flesh; few are angels; out of which frailty 

And want of wisdom, you, that best should teach us, 

Have misdemeaned yourself…” 

(Act 5 scene 3)

“Capable of our flesh”, according to my notes, means “susceptible to the weaknesses of [our flesh]”.

“GARDINER […] My noble lords; for those that tame wild horses

Pace ’em not in their hands to make ’em gentle, 

But stop their mouths with stubborn bits and spur ’em

Till they obey the manage…” 

(ibid.) 

The rhetoric, the metaphor sounds Shakespearean? 

“CRANMER […] Men that make 

Envy and crookèd malice nourishment

Dare bite the best…” 

(ibid) 

King Henry VII didn’t lift his hand to help Buckingham, nor Queen Katherine, nor Cardinal Wolsey, but in the end helps Cranmer. That perhaps is the only thing I can say about the King. 

The final scene is propaganda. 

4/ Why does Jane Austen have Henry Crawford read out loud Henry VIII in Mansfield Park? It is the only time in her novels when the characters discuss Shakespeare, and she picks this play—is it only because the King divorces Katherine to marry Anne? 

5/ I like that Tony Tanner picks out this line: 

“KING […] He has strangled 

His language in his tears.” 

(Act 5 scene 1) 

And says: 

“That is a line, I venture to say, that only Shakespeare could have written.” (Introduction) 

Overall, I don’t quite understand the enthusiasm of William Hazlitt and G. Wilson Knight—I think I share Tony Tanner’s confusion about the play: 

“There is simply no real drama in the play. So what is it? Festivity, celebration, nostalgia—a dream of history as it might-have-been, as it ought-to-be? Or is there a deep sadness and irony running inerasably through it all? I, myself, tend to register the sadness and irony; but there will always be individual variation (predisposition?), and presumably a Hazlitt and a Foakes would never agree. And why Shakespeare wrote it—to the extent that he did write it—is simply beyond the reach of informed conjecture.” (ibid.)