During a performance of this play on 29 June 1613 the cannon fired to salute the King’s entry in 1.4 set alight the Globe theatre’s thatch, and the whole building was destroyed. According to one letter about the disaster, this was at most the play’s fourth performance, and stylistic examination confirms that this must have been a new play in 1613.
Text: Three out of five surviving accounts of the fire refer to the play by what was clearly its original title, All Is True (a ballad on the subject even has the allusive refrain ‘All this is true’), while the other two cite only its subject matter, calling it ‘the play of Henry 8’. A decade later the compilers of the First Folio adopted the latter procedure (as they did with the other English histories), publishing the play’s only authoritative text as The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight (abbreviated to The Life of King Henry the Eight for the running title: the *Oxford edition, 1986, was the first to restore the title by which Shakespeare knew the play). The text (to judge, in part, from its unusual number of brackets) was probably set from a scribal transcript of authorial papers, possibly annotated for theatrical use.
Although there is no external evidence to confirm what many students of the play’s versification have believed since the mid-19th century, All Is True was probably written in collaboration with John *Fletcher, as were two other plays from this final phase of Shakespeare’s career, The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613–14) and the lost Cardenio (1613). Based on a variety of linguistic and stylistic criteria (particularly the frequency and nature of rare vocabulary, usage of colloquialisms in verse passages, and the use of certain grammatical constructions), the Prologue, 1.3–4, 3.1, 5.2–4, and the Epilogue are most commonly attributed to Fletcher, who may also have revised Shakespeare’s 2.1–2, much of 3.2, and all of 4.1–2.
Sources: The playwrights’ principal sources for their account of the middle years of Henry’s reign—from the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520) to the christening of Princess Elizabeth (1533)—were the chronicles of Raphael *Holinshed and Edward *Halle. *Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) supplied material for Cranmer’s scenes in Act 5, and Samuel Rowley’s earlier play on Henry’s reign, When You See Me, You Know Me (c. 1603–5), may have influenced the depiction of Wolsey’s fall. The dramatists’ principal alterations to their material consist in the compression of events, and the sometimes cosmetic alteration of their sequence. Despite the impression given by the play, Queen Catherine was still alive when Princess Elizabeth was born (hence the Catholic view that she was illegitimate), and despite the impression of an achieved harmony at the play’s close, Cranmer’s troubles with the Council, dramatized in 5.1–2, still lay seven years ahead when she was christened.
Synopsis: A prologue promises a serious play which will depict the abrupt falls of great men.
1.1 The Duke of Norfolk tells the Duke of Buckingham about the spectacular recent meeting in France between King Henry VIII, his French counterpart, and their respective courts, arranged by Cardinal Wolsey. As Buckingham marvels at Wolsey’s influence, Lord Abergavenny joins the conversation, and the three lament the Cardinal’s power, noting that the spurious peace he negotiated with France has already been broken. When Wolsey enters he and Buckingham exchange disdainful stares before the Cardinal, questioning his secretary about a pending interview with Buckingham’s Surveyor, leaves, confident the Duke will soon be humbled. As Buckingham informs Norfolk of his intention to denounce Wolsey, officials arrest him for high treason.
1.2 Queen Katherine, seconded by Norfolk, speaks against Wolsey’s special taxations: surprised by what he hears, the King orders them to be repealed and their defaulters pardoned, a decision Wolsey quietly instructs his secretary to credit to his own intercession. Despite the Queen’s scepticism, the allegations made at Wolsey’s instigation by the surveyor are sufficient to persuade the King of Buckingham’s treason.
1.3 The Lord Chamberlain, Lord Sands, and Sir Thomas Lovell deplore the influence of French fashions before leaving for a lavish supper at Wolsey’s palace.
1.4 During Wolsey’s feast, the King and his party arrive disguised as shepherds and choose dancing partners: the King takes Anne Boleyn, in whose company he withdraws after his identity is revealed.
2.1 Two gentlemen discuss Buckingham, just condemned to death: under guard, Buckingham speaks to his sympathizers, forgiving his enemies and comparing his downfall to that of his father, also unjustly condemned on a corrupted servant’s evidence. The gentlemen lament his fate and speak of a rumour that Wolsey has incited the King to initiate divorce proceedings against Katherine, to be heard before the newly arrived Cardinal Campeius.
2.2 The Lord Chamberlain, Norfolk, and the Duke of Suffolk deplore Wolsey’s machinations against the Queen. The pensive King dismisses Norfolk and Suffolk but welcomes Campeius and Wolsey, and confers with Wolsey’s secretary Gardiner: meanwhile Wolsey assures Campeius of Gardiner’s complete obedience. The King sends Gardiner to Katherine: their case will be heard at Blackfriars.
2.3 In conversation with an old lady, Anne Boleyn pities Katherine the sorrows of queenship, and is ribaldly accused of hypocrisy, especially when the Lord Chamberlain arrives to tell Anne that the King has made her Marchioness of Pembroke.
2.4 After ceremonious preliminaries, the divorce hearing begins with Katherine pleading eloquently for the validity of her marriage and her own status as a loyal wife: she denies the authority and impartiality of the court, which has her enemy Wolsey as one judge, appeals to the Pope, and walks out. The King explains his grounds for seeking the divorce: since Katherine was formerly married to his elder brother, his conscience tells him their marriage is incestuous, although if the court decrees otherwise he will accept its decision. Prevaricating, Campeius adjourns the case, and the King places his hopes instead in his adviser Thomas Cranmer.
3.1 Katherine, among her women, listens to a song before Wolsey and Campeius arrive to urge her to accept the divorce: angrily insisting that they speak English rather than Latin, she defends her position with spirit before subsiding into a more biddable despair.
3.2 Norfolk, Suffolk, Lord Surrey, and the Lord Chamberlain muster their opposition to the now vulnerable Wolsey: the King has intercepted letters to Rome in which the Cardinal, opposing the King’s wish to marry Anne Boleyn, advised the Pope to refuse the divorce, and with Cranmer’s support he has secretly married Anne already. They watch as a discontented Wolsey is called to the King, who has been reading an inventory of the Cardinal’s personal wealth accidentally enclosed with some state papers. Sarcastically praising Wolsey’s selfless devotion to duty, the King leaves with his nobles, giving Wolsey two papers to read as he goes—the inventory and the letter to the Pope. The nobles return in triumph to announce the Cardinal’s arrest for high treason and the confiscation of his property. Left alone, Wolsey bids farewell to his glory, before a commiserating Thomas Cromwell confirms his utter defeat: Sir Thomas More will replace Wolsey as Chancellor, Cranmer is Archbishop of Canterbury, and Anne Boleyn will shortly be crowned. The humbled Wolsey, weeping at Cromwell’s loyalty, urges him to forsake him and serve the King faithfully.
4.1 The two gentlemen watch Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession, after which a third describes the ceremony itself, and reports the enmity between Cranmer and Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester.
4.2 The ailing Katherine hears of Wolsey’s death from her usher Griffith, who speaks of Wolsey’s virtues and assures her that he died a penitent. Falling asleep, Katherine has a vision of six white-robed figures who hold a garland over her head: both Griffith and her woman Patience are sure she is near death. Caputius, ambassador from her nephew the Holy Roman Emperor, arrives, and Katherine gives him a letter to the King asking him to look after their daughter and her attendants, before she is carried away to bed.
5.1 Gardiner, in response to Lovell’s news that Anne is in labour, says he would be glad if she, Cranmer, and Cromwell were dead: he has moved the Council against Cranmer, whom they will interrogate next morning. The King speaks privately with Cranmer, whom he warns against his enemies’ malice and to whom he gives a ring as a sign of his protection. The Old Lady announces the birth of a daughter.
5.2 Cranmer is kept waiting outside the council chamber: seeing this, Doctor Butts places the King where he can secretly watch the Council’s proceedings. The Lord Chancellor, seconded by Gardiner, accuses Cranmer of spreading heresies, and though defended by Cromwell the Archbishop is sentenced to the Tower. Cranmer’s enemies are discomfited when he produces the King’s ring, and more so when the King enters, reprimanding Gardiner, whom he forces to embrace Cranmer, and further showing his support for the Archbishop by inviting him to be his daughter’s godfather.
5.3 A porter and his man are unable to control the mob trying to see the state christening, and are rebuked by the Lord Chamberlain.
5.4 At the grandly ceremonial baptism of Princess Elizabeth, Cranmer is inspired to prophesy that both her reign and that of her successor will be golden ages. An epilogue hopes the play may at least have pleased female spectators by its depiction of a good woman.
Artistic features: As its title suggests, All Is True is unusually interested in historical verisimilitude, although the history it narrates between its elaborate recreations of Tudor royal pageantry (described in the longest and most detailed stage directions in the canon) is one which counsels against putting any faith in specious appearances. Compared to the earlier histories it is episodic, resembling an anthology of morality plays in its successive depictions of the falls of Buckingham, Wolsey, and Katherine (each given memorable rhetorical set pieces rather than sustained characterization), and its version of history has a strong tinge of the non-realistic late romances. The wronged Katherine’s self-defence at her trial is reminiscent of Hermione’s in The Winter’s Tale, and her husband too will perhaps ultimately be redeemed, according to Cranmer’s concluding prophecy, by his infant daughter.
Critical history: Despite the perennial presence of its great speeches in anthologies of Shakespeare’s beauties (most famously Wolsey’s farewell to his greatness), the play was long dismissed by literary critics as a mere theatrical showpiece, notable for what *Johnson called its ‘pomp’, interesting primarily as a specimen of how far Shakespeare was prepared to depart from his historical sources in the interests of flattering King James’s views of kingship and of the dynasty which had preceded his own accession. *Gervinus, writing from outside the British engagement with this crucial passage of royal history, was one of the few 19th-century commentators to praise Shakespeare’s portrayal of Henry. Much commentary on All Is True remains inextricably bound up with the interpretation of the history it depicts, its significance to Shakespeare’s Jacobean audience, and, to a lesser degree, how far the authors intended that responses to the play should be coloured by a knowledge of the events it chooses not to dramatize (such as the imminent judicial murder of Anne Boleyn). To E. M. W. *Tillyard and others, the play upheld the ‘Tudor Myth’, showing the King’s gradual accession to maturity (and, by extension, that of his kingdom), which is signalled by his break from Wolsey and Rome and ultimately rewarded by the birth of the destined Protestant national heroine Elizabeth. More recent critics, when not sidetracked by the issue of the play’s authorship, have found the play at best sceptical about Tudor politics, if not nostalgically Catholic in its sympathies, preferring to focus on the unusually sympathetic depiction of Queen Katherine (the only Catholic character granted a heavenly vision in all of English Renaissance drama), and the downplaying, compared to other contemporary plays about the Tudors, of Reformation doctrine.
Stage history: The play enjoys the unusual distinction in the canon of being less popular on stage now than at any time in its history. Sir Henry *Wotton, reporting the Globe fire, admittedly, feared that its detailed representation of state ceremonies might be ‘sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous’, but it was still in the King’s Company’s repertoire in 1628 (when Charles I’s favourite George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, commissioned a private performance at the rebuilt Globe), and after the Restoration it established itself as a regularly revived ‘stock’ play from 1664 onwards. Thomas *Betterton played the King, coached (according to a memoir of 1708) by Sir William *Davenant, who had his view of the role from *Lowin, said to have been instructed in it by Shakespeare himself. During the 18th century the play was performed often, especially whenever public interest in royal pageantry was piqued by a real-life coronation, at ever-increasing expense: *Garrick’s production (much revived between 1742 and 1768, with Garrick as Henry) employed 140 actors for the coronation procession in 4.1. These spectacular interludes necessitated ever-greater cuts to the text as later generations of actor-managers, more usually casting themselves as Wolsey, sought to outdo their predecessors. *Kemble played the Cardinal in his own redaction, with his sister Sarah *Siddons as a much admired Queen, from 1788 to 1816: he was succeeded by Macready from 1823, and by the time Samuel Phelps first played Wolsey at Sadler’s Wells in 1845 the play was finishing at his final exit, though Phelps later restored Act 4. The vogue for spectacle reached a climax with Charles *Kean’s production, which achieved a record 100 performances at the Princess’s in 1855 and was repeated three years later (with the young Ellen *Terry as one of Katherine’s visionary angels): this featured numbers of grandly robed aldermen heading for Elizabeth’s christening in state barges, in front of a moving diorama of all London. Irving’s popular 1892 production at the Lyceum, with himself as Wolsey, also cut most of Acts 4 and 5, and Beerbohm Tree’s in 1910 (which subsequently toured the United States) ended with Anne’s coronation.
In the 20th-century theatre the play, apparently inseparable from pictorial traditions of staging which now seemed quaintly or offensively Victorian, fell into some disfavour, though still revived at intervals for major actors to measure themselves against the starring roles: Sybil *Thorndike played Katherine (Old Vic, 1918, Empire theatre, 1925), Charles *Laughton played Henry (Sadler’s Wells, 1933, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, with Flora *Robson as Katherine), and John *Gielgud Wolsey (Old Vic, 1958). Guthrie revived the play twice more, the last time in 1953, when the onlookers at Anne’s coronation held anachronistic newspapers above their heads against rain in an allusion to the recent coronation of Elizabeth II. There were two notable attempts to rebel against the dominant, Holbein-based way of designing the play, one at the Cambridge Festival Theatre in 1931, when Terence *Gray caused an uproar by using a modernist aluminium set and Lewis Carroll-influenced costumes based on playing cards (further defying expectations by having the baby doll Elizabeth thrown into the audience in 5.4), and one at Stratford in 1984, when Howard Davies offered a professedly Brechtian production full of deliberate anachronisms associating Henry’s regime with Stalin’s. The play’s last major 20th-century revival, though, directed by Greg *Doran for the RSC at the Swan in 1997, returned opulently to Tudor dress, with Jane Lapotaire as a traditionally poignant Katherine, and Gregory Thompson helmed a hauntingly spare and intimate—though, again, lavishly costumed—production in the space of *Holy Trinity church in Stratford, as part of the RSC’s *Complete Works Festival in 2006. The play staged a kind of homecoming in 2010 when Mark Rosenblatt directed it at the replica Globe in London: fortunately the thatch there is elaborately fireproofed.
Michael Dobson, rev. Will Sharpe
On the screen: Two silent versions were made, a British film featuring Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1911) and an American one from Vitagraph (1912). The only sound film is BBC TV’s Henry the Eighth (1979).
Anthony Davies