Henry VIII (play)
Anne expresses her sympathy at the Queen's troubles; but then the Lord Chamberlain enters to inform her that the King has made her Marchioness of Pembroke.
The two Gentlemen return in Act IV to observe and comment upon the lavish procession for Anne Bullen's coronation as Queen, which passes over the stage in their presence.
Afterward they are joined by a third Gentleman, who updates them on more court gossip – the rise of Thomas Cromwell in royal favour, and plots against Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
As usual in his history plays, Shakespeare relied primarily on Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles to achieve his dramatic ends and to accommodate official sensitivities over the materials involved.
Other material was sourced or adapted from the 1570 edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs, for example Catherine of Aragon's plea to Henry before the Legatine Court.
The play implies, without stating it directly, that the treason charges against the Duke of Buckingham were false and trumped up; and it maintains a comparable ambiguity about other sensitive issues.
The disgrace and beheading of Anne Boleyn (here spelled Bullen) is carefully avoided, and no indication of the succeeding four wives of Henry VIII can be found in the play.
Most modern scholars date Henry VIII to 1613, the year in which the Globe Theatre burned down during one of the play's earliest known performances.
[13] Rowe was writing before the discovery of the document on the 1613 fire, which was first published by the 18th century scholar Thomas Tyrwhitt and seemed to confirm his view.
However, several 18th- and 19th-century scholars, including Samuel Johnson, Lewis Theobald, George Steevens, Edmond Malone, and James Halliwell-Phillipps, dated the play's composition to before 1603.
Malone suggested that the brief passage in praise of James was probably added for a performance during his reign but that the extended glorification of Elizabeth implies that it was intended for her ears.
Plays offering positive portrayals of major Tudor figures like Henry VIII (When You See Me You Know Me) and Queen Elizabeth (If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody by Thomas Heywood, 1605) were in fact performed, published, and re-published throughout the Stuart era.
The play was published as the work of Shakespeare, and was accepted as such by scholars until 1850, when the possibility of collaboration with John Fletcher was first raised by James Spedding, an expert on Francis Bacon.
Spedding and other early commentators relied on a range of distinctive features in Fletcher's style and language preferences, which they saw in the Shakespearean play.
In 1966, Erdman and Fogel could write that "today a majority of scholars accept the theory of Fletcher's partial authorship, though a sturdy minority deny it.
[12] The King's Men were able to continue performances at the Blackfriars Theatre, their indoor playhouse, a venue having particular significance for contemporary audiences as it was the real location of the powerful trial scene in the play.
In his Roscius Anglicanus (1708),[25] Downes claims that the role of Henry VIII in this play was originally performed by John Lowin, who "had his instructions from Mr. Shakespeare himself.
A revival produced by Charles Calvert, who also played Wolsey, at the Theatre Royal in Manchester, opening on 29 August 1877, premiered music for the fifth act composed by Arthur Sullivan.
Tree's production was notable for its elaborate exploitation of the play's pageantry, typical of the expensive and spectacular staging of the era.
The play's popularity has waned since the mid-twentieth century, although Charles Laughton played Henry at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1933 and Margaret Webster directed it as the inaugural production of her American Repertory Company on Broadway in 1946 with Walter Hampden as Wolsey and Eva Le Gallienne as Katherine.
