And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.
ALONSO I long
To hear the story of your life, which must
Take the ear strangely.
PROSPERO
I’ll deliver all,
And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,
And sail so expeditious that shall catch
Your royal fleet far off. (Aside to Ariel) My Ariel, chick,
That is thy charge. Then to the elements
Be free, and fare thou well.
Exit Ariel
Please you, draw near.
Exeunt ⌈all but Prospero⌉
Epilogue
PROSPERO
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint. Now ’tis true
I must be here confined by you
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got,
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so, that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
He awaits applause, then exit
CARDENIO
A BRIEF ACCOUNT
MANY plays acted in Shakespeare’s time have failed to survive; they may easily include some that he wrote. The mystery of Love’s Labour’s Won is discussed elsewhere (pp. xxxvii, 337). Certain manuscript records of the seventeenth century suggest that at least one other play in which he had a hand may have disappeared. On 9 September 1653 the London publisher Humphrey Moseley entered in the Stationers’ Register a batch of plays including ‘The History of Cardenio, by Mr Fletcher and Shakespeare’. Cardenio is a character in Part One of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, published in English translation in 1612. Two earlier allusions suggest that the King’s Men owned a play on this subject at the time that Shakespeare was collaborating with John Fletcher (1579-1625). On 20 May 1613 the Privy Council authorized payment of £20 to John Heminges, as leader of the King’s Men, for the presentation at court of six plays, one listed as ‘Cardenno’. On 9 July of the same year Heminges received £6 13s. 4d. for his company’s performance of a play ‘called Cardenna’ before the ambassador of the Duke of Savoy.
No more information about this play survives from the seventeenth century, but in 1728 Lewis Theobald published a play based on the story of Cardenio and called Double Falsehood, or The Distrest Lovers, which he claimed to have ‘revised and adapted’ from one ‘written originally by W. Shakespeare’. It had been successfully produced at Drury Lane on 13 December 1727, and was given thirteen times up to 1 May 1728. Other performances are recorded in 1740, 1741, 1767 (when it was reprinted), 1770, and 1847. In 1770 a newspaper stated that ‘the original manuscript’ was ‘treasured up in the Museum of Covent Garden Playhouse’; fire destroyed the theatre, including its library, in 1808.
Theobald claimed to own several manuscripts of an original play by Shakespeare, and remarked that some of his contemporaries thought the style was Fletcher’s, not Shakespeare’s. When he himself came to edit Shakespeare’s plays he did not include either Double Falsehood or the play on which he claimed to have based it; he simply edited the plays of the First Folio, not adding either Pericles or The Two Noble Kinsmen, though he believed they were partly by Shakespeare. It is quite possible that Double Falsehood is based (however distantly) on a play of Shakespeare’s time; if so, the play is likely to have been the one performed by the King’s Men and ascribed by Moseley in 1653 to Fletcher and Shakespeare.
Double Falsehood is a tragicomedy; the characters’ names differ from those in Don Quixote, and the story is varied. Henriquez rapes Violante, then falls in love with Leonora, loved by his friend Julio. Her parents agree to the marriage, but Julio interrupts the ceremony. Leonora (who had intended to kill herself) swoons and later takes sanctuary in a nunnery. Julio goes mad with desire for vengeance on his false friend; and the wronged Violante, disguised as a boy, joins a group of shepherds, and is almost raped by one of them. Henriquez’s virtuous brother, Roderick, ignorant of his villainy, helps him to abduct Leonora. Leonora and Violante both denounce Henriquez to Roderick. Finally Henriquez repents and marries Violante, while Julio (now sane) marries Leonora.
Some of the motifs of Double Falsehood, such as the disguised heroine wronged by her lover and, particularly, the reuniting and reconciliation of parents with children, recall Shakespeare’s late plays. But most of the dialogue seems un-Shakespearian. Though the play deserved its limited success, it is now no more than an interesting curiosity.
ALL IS TRUE
(HENRY VIII)
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND JOHN FLETCHER
ON 29 June 1613 the firing of cannon at the Globe Theatre ignited its thatch and burned it to the ground. According to a letter of 4 July the house was full of spectators who had come to see ‘a new play called All is True, which had been acted not passing two or three times before’. No one was hurt ‘except one man who was scalded with the fire by adventuring in to save a child which otherwise had been burnt’. This establishes the play’s date with unusual precision. Though two other accounts of the fire refer to a play ‘of’—which may mean simply ‘about’—Henry VIII, yet another two unequivocally call it All is True; and these words also end the refrain of a ballad about the fire. When the play came to be printed as the last of the English history plays—all named after kings—in the 1623 Folio it was as The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth. We restore the title by which it was known to its first audiences.
No surviving account of the fire says who wrote the play that caused it. In 1850, James Spedding (prompted by Tennyson) suggested that Shakespeare collaborated on it with John Fletcher (1579-1625). We have external evidence that the two dramatists worked together in or around 1613 on the lost Cardenio and on The Two Noble Kinsmen. For their collaboration in All is True the evidence is wholly internal, stemming from the initial perception of two distinct verse styles within the play; later, more rigorous examination of evidence provided by both the play’s language and its dramatic technique has convinced most scholars of Fletcher’s hand in it. The passages most confidently attributed to Shakespeare are Act 1, Scenes 1 and 2; Act 2, Scenes 3 and 4; Act 3, Scene 2 to line 204; and Act 5, Scene 1.
The historical material derives, often closely, from the chronicles of Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall, supplemented by John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563, etc.) for the Cranmer episodes in Act 5. It covers only part of Henry’s reign, from the opening description of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, of 1520, to the christening of Princess Elizabeth, in 1533. It depicts the increasing abuse of power by Cardinal Wolsey; the execution, brought about by Wolsey’s machinations, of the Duke of Buckingham; the King’s abandonment of his Queen, Katherine of Aragon; the rise to the King’s favour of Anne Boleyn; Wolsey’s disgrace; and the birth to Henry and Anne of a daughter instead of the hoped-for son.
Sir Henry Wotton, writing of the fire, said that the play represented ‘some principal pieces of the reign of Henry 8, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty’. It has continued popular in performance for the opportunities that it affords for spectacle and for the dramatic power of certain episodes such as Buckingham’s speeches before execution (2.1), Queen Katherine’s defence of the validity of her marriage (2.4), Wolsey’s farewell to his greatness (3.2), and Katherine’s dying scene (4.2). Though the play depicts
a series of falls from greatness, it works towards the birth of the future Elizabeth I, fulsomely celebrated in the last scene (not attributed to Shakespeare) along with her successor, the patron of the King’s Men.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
All Is True
Prologue Enter Prologue
PROLOGUE
I come no more to make you laugh. Things now
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe—
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow
We now present. Those that can pity here
May, if they think it well, let fall a tear.
The subject will deserve it. Such as give
Their money out of hope they may believe,
May here find truth, too. Those that come to see
Only a show or two, and so agree
The play may pass, if they be still, and willing,
I’ll undertake may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours. Only they
That come to hear a merry bawdy play,
A noise of targets, or to see a fellow
In a long motley coat guarded with yellow,
Will be deceived. For, gentle hearers, know
To rank our chosen truth with such a show
As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting
Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring
To make that only true we now intend,
Will leave us never an understanding friend.
Therefore, for goodness’ sake, and as you are known
The first and happiest hearers of the town,
Be sad as we would make ye. Think ye see
The very persons of our noble story
As they were living; think you see them great,
And followed with the general throng and sweat
Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, see
How soon this mightiness meets misery. 30
And if you can be merry then, I’ll say
A man may weep upon his wedding day.
Exit
1.1 ⌈A cloth of state throughout the play.⌉ Enter the Duke of Norfolk at one door; at the other door enter the Duke of Buckingham and the Lord Abergavenny
BUCKINGHAM (to Norfolk)
Good morrow, and well met. How have ye done
Since last we saw in France?
NORFOLK
I thank your grace,
Healthful, and ever since a fresh admirer
Of what I saw there.
BUCKINGHAM
An untimely ague
Stayed me a prisoner in my chamber when 5
Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,
Met in the vale of Ardres.
NORFOLK
’Twixt Guisnes and Ardres.
I was then present, saw them salute on horseback,
Beheld them when they lighted, how they clung
In their embracement as they grew together,
Which had they, what four throned ones could have
weighed
Such a compounded one?
BUCKINGHAM
All the whole time
I was my chamber’s prisoner.
NORFOLK
Then you lost
The view of earthly glory. Men might say
Till this time pomp was single, but now married
To one above itself. Each following day
Became the next day’s master, till the last
Made former wonders its. Today the French,
All clinquant all in gold, like heathen gods
Shone down the English; and tomorrow they
Made Britain India. Every man that stood
Showed like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were
As cherubim, all gilt; the mesdames, too,
Not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear
The pride upon them, that their very labour
Was to them as a painting. Now this masque
Was cried incomparable, and th‘ensuing night
Made it a fool and beggar. The two kings
Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,
As presence did present them. Him in eye
Still him in praise, and being present both,
’Twas said they saw but one, and no discerner
Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns—
For so they phrase ’em—by their heralds challenged
The noble spirits to arms, they did perform
Beyond thought’s compass, that former fabulous story
Being now seen possible enough, got credit
That Bevis was believed.
BUCKINGHAM
O, you go far!
NORFOLK
As I belong to worship, and affect
In honour honesty, the tract of ev’rything
Would by a good discourser lose some life
Which action’s self was tongue to. All was royal.
To the disposing of it naught rebelled.
Order gave each thing view. The office did
Distinctly his full function.
BUCKINGHAM
Who did guide—
I mean, who set the body and the limbs
Of this great sport together, as you guess?
NORFOLK
One, certes, that promises no element
In such a business.
BUCKINGHAM
I pray you who, my lord?
NORFOLK
All this was ordered by the good discretion
Of the right reverend Cardinal of York.
BUCKINGHAM
The devil speed him! No man’s pie is freed
From his ambitious finger. What had he
To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder
That such a keech can, with his very bulk,
Take up the rays o’th’ beneficial sun,
And keep it from the earth.
NORFOLK
Surely, sir,
There’s in him stuff that puts him to these ends.
For being not propped by ancestry, whose grace
Chalks successors their way, nor called upon no
For high feats done to th’ crown, neither allied
To eminent assistants, but spider-like,
Out of his self-drawing web, a gives us note
The force of his own merit makes his way—
A gift that heaven gives for him which buys
A place next to the King.
ABERGAVENNY
I cannot tell
What heaven hath given him—let some graver eye
Pierce into that; but I can see his pride
Peep through each part of him. Whence has he that?
If not from hell, the devil is a niggard
Or has given all before, and he begins
A new hell in himself.
BUCKINGHAM
Why the devil,
Upon this French going out, took he upon him
Without the privity o’th’ King t’appoint
Who should attend on him? He makes up the file
Of all the gentry, for the most part such
To whom as great a charge as little honour
He meant to lay upon; and his own letter,
The honourable board of council out,
Must fetch him in, he papers.
ABERGAVENNY
I do know
Kinsmen of mine—three at the least—that have
By this so sickened their estates that never
They shall abound as formerly.
BUCKINGHAM
O, many
Have broke their backs with laying manors on ’em
For this great journey. What did this vanity
But minister communication of
A most poor issue?
NORFOLK
Grievingly I think
The peace between the French and us not values
The cost that did conclude it.
Every man,
After the hideous storm that followed, was
A thing inspired, and, not consulting, broke
Into a general prophecy—that this tempest,
Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded
The sudden breach on’t.
NORFOLK
Which is budded out—
For France hath flawed the league, and hath attached
Our merchants’ goods at Bordeaux.
ABERGAVENNY
Is it therefore
Th’ambassador is silenced?
NORFOLK
Marry is’t.
ABERGAVENNY
A proper title of a peace, and purchased
At a superfluous rate.
BUCKINGHAM
Why, all this business
Our reverend Cardinal carried.
NORFOLK
Like it your grace,
The state takes notice of the private difference
Betwixt you and the Cardinal. I advise you—
And take it from a heart that wishes towards you
Honour and plenteous safety—that you read
The Cardinal’s malice and his potency
Together; to consider further that
What his high hatred would effect wants not
A minister in his power. You know his nature,
That he’s revengeful; and I know his sword
Hath a sharp edge—it’s long, and’t may be said no
It reaches far; and where ’twill not extend
Thither he darts it. Bosom up my counsel,
You’ll find it wholesome. Lo, where comes that rock
That I advise your shunning.
Enter Cardinal Wolsey, the purse containing the great seal borne before him. Enter with him certain of the guard, and two secretaries with papers. The Cardinal in his passage fixeth his eye on Buckingham and Buckingham on him, both full of disdain
CARDINAL WOLSEY (to a secretary)
The Duke of Buckingham’s surveyor, ha?
Where’s his examination?
SECRETARY
Here, so please you.
CARDINAL WOLSEY
Is he in person ready?
SECRETARY
Ay, please your grace.
CARDINAL WOLSEY
Well, we shall then know more, and Buckingham Shall lessen this big look.
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 400
