THERE WERE several earlier plays on the reign of Henry VIII. Shakespeare himself had contributed at least one scene to Sir Thomas More. Another play, belonging to Henslowe, was performed in 1598;1 three years later he commissioned Chettle to write a play about Wolsey: and this was popular enough for him to commission Chettle, along with three other playwrights, to follow it up with a play on the early life of the Cardinal.2 Finally, in 1604, Samuel Rowley’s play, When You See Me, You Know Me, was performed at the Fortune Theatre, published in 1605, and reprinted in 1613, the year when Shakespeare’s play was first performed. We do not know if Henry VIII owed anything to the Henslowe group of plays, for they are lost; but as it was sub-titled ‘All is true’, and as the prologue deplores the frivolity of some other treatment of the subject, it seems likely that Henry VIII was written as a counterblast to Rowley’s play which deviates from historical truth more than Shakespeare ever did.
Henry VIII was included as Shakespeare’s in the First Folio; but since the middle of the eighteenth century a number of critics have argued that the play was written in collaboration with John Fletcher. It was noticed that the versification of much of the play resembled that of Fletcher’s, and that the spelling differences in the alleged shares of the two dramatists cannot be accounted for by the habits of the three compositors who set up the Folio text.3 Some colour was lent to the theory of collaboration by the fact that two plays, excluded from the First Folio – Cardenio and The Two Noble Kinsmen – were allegedly written by Shakespeare and Fletcher. The alternative theory, that Shakespeare wrote the whole play, but that he had picked up some of Fletcher’s mannerisms and rhythms, is attractive to those who hold a high opinion of the play. My own tentative view is that the play is substantially Shakespeare’s, but that when the manuscript arrived from Stratford it was handed over to Fletcher, who did a bit of tidying up and added the prologue and epilogue.
It is certain that Shakespeare made use of at least three sources,4 namely Holinshed’s Chronicles, Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (i.e. the Book of Martyrs), and Speed’s History of Great Britaine (1611). The last of these only provided two images in Wolsey’s speeches after his fall – both, incidentally, in passages often ascribed to Fletcher:
Certaine it is, that Cardinall Wolsey, fell likewise in great displeasure of the King, though hee sought to excuse himselfe with want of sufficient authority: but now his Sunne hauing passed the Meridian of his greatnesse, began by degrees againe to decline, till lastly it set vnder the cloud of his fatall eclipse. Formerly wee haue spoken of the rising of this man, who now being swolne so bigge by the blasts of promotion, as the bladder not able to conteine more greatnesse, suddenly burst, and vented foorth the winde of all former fauours. Vaine glorious he was, in state, in diet, and in rich furniture.
Although R. A. Foakes points out5 that there is a passage about Wolsey in Holinshed’s Chronicles, which refers to the ‘spirit of swelling ambition, wherwith the rable of popes haue beene bladder like puffed and blowne vp’, the juxtaposition of the two images in Speed’s History makes it certain (as Foakes would agree) that this was the source of the two speeches in the play.
I have touch’d the highest point of all my greatness,
And from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting. I shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
And no man see me more.
(III. ii. 223–7)
I have ventur’d
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 for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye.
(III. ii. 358–65)
It will be noticed that the effectiveness of the two echoes is enormously increased by the poet’s additions. The ‘bright exhalation in the evening’ is a splendid reinforcement of the first; and in the second the bursting of the bladder does not merely let out the air of promotion, it is attached to a boy swimming beyond his depth. It may be mentioned, too, that Wolsey in Churchyard’s poem in A Mirror for Magistrates says that he ‘did swim, as dainty as a ducke’ and confesses his great pride, ‘For which offence, fell Lucifer from skyes’. The first line may have been the link between bladders and boys; and the second may have suggested the reference to Lucifer’s fall in the second speech.
The influence of Foxe is apparent only in the Cranmer-scenes of Act V. Neither Hall nor Holinshed records the attempt to arrest Cranmer for heresy, his being kept waiting outside the councilchamber, or the King’s protection of him. Shakespeare – if it was Shakespeare – appears to have overdone the saintly humility of the Archbishop, which was presumably meant to contrast with the arrogance of Wolsey and the malice of Gardiner, and to prepare the way for his prophetic utterance at the christening of Elizabeth.
The first four acts of the play are based on Holinshed but, as Foakes and Bullough have demonstrated,6 individual scenes are often indebted to widely separate passages in the Chronicles. The first scene incorporates facts from between pages 853 and 872; the second scene from between 852 and 922; Act II scene i from between 850 and 906; and Act III Scene ii from between 796 and 930. As with all the previous Histories, Shakespeare telescoped the facts to obtain a greater unity. The Field of the Cloth of Gold took place in 1520; Buckingham was executed in 1521; the fall of Wolsey took place in 1529; Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1532; Henry married Anne in 1533 and Elizabeth was born in the same year; Katherine died in 1536. The actual period covered by the play was therefore sixteen years. Shakespeare takes many liberties. He places Katherine’s death, for example, before the birth of Elizabeth. He ascribes to Wolsey a mistake made by the Bishop of Durham who accidentally gave to Wolsey a book treating of his private affairs and of the £100,000 he had managed to acquire by dubious means.
The two scenes in which Shakespeare followed Holinshed most closely – because here the source was more eloquent than usual – were those concerned with Katherine’s trial (II. iv) and her interview with the two Cardinals (III. i). How closely can be seen from a comparison of Holinshed’s words with the first of these:7
And bicause shee could not come to the king directlie, for the distance seuered betweene them, shee went about by the court, and came to the king, kneeling downe at his feet, to whome she said in effect as followeth: Sir (quoth she) I desire you to doo me iustice and right, and take some pitie vpon me, for I am a poore woman, and a stranger, borne out of your dominion, hauing heere no indifferent counsell, & lesse assurance of freendship. Alas sir, what haue I offended you, or what occasion of displeasure haue I shewed you, intending thus to put me from you after this sort? I take God to my iudge, I haue beene to you a true & humble wife, euer conformable to your will and pleasure, that neuer contraried or gainesaid any thing thereof, and being alwaies contented with all things wherein you had any delight, whether little or much, without grudge or displeasure, I loued for your sake all them whome you loued, whether they were my freends or enimies.
I haue been your wife these twentie yeares and more & you haue had by me diuerse children. If there be anie iust cause that you can alleage against me, either of dishonestie, or matter lawfull to put me from you; I am content to depart to my shame and rebuke: and if there be none, then I praie you to let me haue iustice at your hand. The king your father was in his time of excellent wit, and the king of Spaine my father Ferdinando was reckoned one of the wisest princes that reigned in Spaine manie yeares before. It is not to be doubted, but that they had gathered as wise counsellors vnto them of euerie realme, as to their wisedoms they thought meet, who deemed the marriage betweene you and me good and lawfull, &c. Wherefore, I humblie desire you to spare me, vntill I may know what counsell my freends in Spaine will aduertise me to take, and if you will not, then your pleasure be fulfilled.
Sir, I desire you do me right and justice,
And to bestow your pity on me; for
I am a most poor woman and a stranger,
Born out of your dominions, having here
No judge indifferent, nor no more assurance
Of equal friendship and proceeding. Alas, sir,
In what have I offended you? What cause
Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure
That thus you should proceed to put me off
And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness,
I have been to you a true and humble wife,
At all times to your will conformable,
Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,
Yea, subject to your countenance – glad or sorry
As I saw it inclin’d. When was the hour
I ever contradicted your desire
Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends
Have I not strove to love, although I knew
He were mine enemy? What friend of mine
That had to him deriv’d your anger did I
Continue in my liking? Nay, gave notice
He was from thence discharg’d? Sir, call to mind
That I have been your wife in this obedience
Upward of twenty years, and have been blest
With many children by you. If, in the course
And process of this time, you can report,
And prove it too against mine honour, aught,
My bond to wedlock or my love and duty
Against your sacred person, in God’s name,
Turn me away and let the foul’st contempt
Shut door upon me, and so give me up
To the sharp’st kind of justice. Please you, sir,
The King, your father, was reputed for
A prince most prudent, of an excellent
And unmatch’d wit and judgment; Ferdinand,
My father, King of Spain, was reckon’d one
The wisest prince that there had reign’d by many
A year before. It is not to be question’d
That they had gather’d a wise council to them
Of every realm, that did debate this business,
Who deem’d our marriage lawful. Wherefore I humbly
Beseech you, sir, to spare me till I may
Be of my friends in Spain advis’d, whose counsel
I will implore. If not, i’th’name of God,
Your pleasure be fulfill’d!
(II. iv. 13–57)
Shakespeare used all the ideas, and much of the phrasing of Katherine’s speech, as given by Holinshed. He tightens up the syntax and adds one or two points – Katherine’s dismissal of her friends if the King did not approve of them, her forceful demand for punishment if she has sinned, and the oath with which she concludes the speech. The superiority of Hermione’s defence may partly be due to the superiority of Greene’s eloquence to Holinshed’s, partly to Shakespeare’s wish to arouse sympathy for Katherine without forfeiting our respect for Henry. He lets it be understood that Henry’s conscientious scruples about the legality of his marriage were subordinate to his wish to marry Anne, and to Katherine’s failure to produce a male heir; but these motives could not be brought into the open.
The play, as several critics have noted,8 consists of a series of ‘falls’, like those of A Mirror for Magistrates – Buckingham, Wolsey, Katherine. Frank Kermode adds a fourth, that of Cranmer, who is saved by the King’s intervention.9 The falls are loosely related to each other, but the play is nevertheless somewhat episodic. Each of the three who fall acquires a new humility. Many of Shakespeare’s audience would know that the sequence of falls continued after the end of the play: Anne, unable to produce a male heir, was executed for alleged adultery, incest, and treason not long afterwards; Cromwell, whom we see rising, was suddenly overthrown and executed; Gardiner was merely imprisoned in the reign of Edward VI; and Cranmer died at the stake in the reign of Katherine’s daughter.