Lines 413–477: Alone on stage, Wolsey speaks a moving “farewell” soliloquy. He reflects on “the state of man” and the transient nature of earthly glory, which he now turns his back on feeling his “heart new opened.” He pities those dependent on “princes’ favours” who fall “like Lucifer / Never to hope again.” Cromwell enters amazed at the news of Wolsey’s downfall but Wolsey reassures him that he feels “A peace above all earthly dignities” of which the king has “cured” him. Cromwell’s glad and tells him that “Sir Thomas More” has been chosen to replace him as Lord Chancellor, Cranmer has returned and been made Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lady Anne, to whom the king has been “in secrecy long married” is now openly acknowledged as queen. All the talk is about her coronation.
Lines 478–533: Wolsey believes that it was the king’s marriage to Anne Bullen that finally brought him down. He advises Cromwell to leave him and seek service with the king. He has told him of his loyalty. Cromwell weeps to leave his master. Wolsey confesses that he didn’t expect to weep for his miseries but losing Cromwell has made him “play the woman.” He hopes that out of his fall Cromwell may rise and advises him to “fling away ambition,” to “Love thyself last” and “cherish” his enemies. He should be just and honest and then if he falls, he falls “a blessèd martyr.” He tells Cromwell to make an inventory of his goods, all of which belong to the king and bids “Farewell” to the court; his “hopes in heaven do dwell.”
ACT 4 SCENE 1
The two Gentlemen meet again, this time to discuss Anne’s coronation. The First Gentleman has a list of all the nobles’ ceremonial duties. He relates how Katherine is now divorced and ill. The other pities her but then the magnificent coronation procession passes by. They discuss the participants and Anne’s beauty. A Third Gentleman joins them and describes the ceremony and the enthusiasm of the crowd for their new queen. Afterward the procession passed on to Whitehall, formerly called York Place before Wolsey’s fall. They discuss the rise of Stephen Gardiner, who was the king’s secretary and is now Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Cranmer, now Archbishop of Canterbury, and the enmity between the two men. Thomas Cromwell has been made “Master o’th’Jewel House.”
ACT 4 SCENE 2
Lines 1–88: Katherine, now ill, is led between her servants, Griffith and Patience. She sits down and asks about Cardinal Wolsey’s death. Griffith explains how after his arrest he became ill and died on his way to London three nights later, “full of repentance, / Continual meditations, tears, and sorrows” and departed in peace. Katherine pities him but offers a harsh analysis of his character. Griffith in reply offers an assessment of his virtues, of his rise, his learning and generosity, and the good death he made. Katherine praises Griffith, wishing no one but “such an honest chronicler” as him to speak about her. She thinks she has not long to live and asks for music while she meditates on “that celestial harmony” she goes to. They sit by her as Katherine sleeps.
Lines 88–192: While she sleeps, Katherine has a vision of heaven in which the six “personages, clad in white robes” dance before her and offer her a garland. When she wakes, Katherine calls for the “Spirits of peace” but neither Griffith nor Patience have seen anything. They think she has changed, though, and looks near to death. A messenger arrives with Caputius, an ambassador from her nephew the Spanish Emperor Charles V. He greets her and explains he has been sent by the king to tell her to “take good comfort.” She says it’s too late for that and asks after the king and wishes him well. She gives Caputius a letter for Henry in which she requests him to take care of their daughter, Mary, and to recompense her faithful servants. She asks to be remembered to the king and retires, asking to be “used with honour” after her death and buried, “although unqueened, yet like / A queen and daughter to a king.”
ACT 5 SCENE 1
Lines 1–64: It’s late and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, meets Sir Thomas Lovell, who tells him that the new queen is in labor. While the bishop hopes the baby will thrive, he regrets that the situation will not be right while Cranmer, Cromwell, and Anne live. Lovell warns him to be careful: Cranmer is Archbishop of Canterbury and Cromwell has now been made Master of the Rolls, as well as the Jewel House and the king’s secretary. Gardiner has told the Privy Council that Cranmer’s “A most arch-heretic” and they have spoken to the king. As Gardiner leaves, Henry and Suffolk enter.
Lines 65–183: Henry tells Suffolk he doesn’t want to play cards any more and asks Lovell how the queen is. He says she asks him to “pray for her”; her woman says she’s suffering greatly. Henry sends Suffolk away and Lord Denny arrives with Cranmer. Henry sends Denny and Lovell away. He tells Cranmer of the complaints made against him that the Privy Council are going to examine in the morning. Cranmer thanks Henry: he knows he has enemies who speak ill of him. Henry is surprised, believing that the archbishop would have demanded to meet with his accusers. Cranmer trusts to his “truth and honesty,” without those he is nothing and doesn’t care what’s said about him. Henry believes in his virtue and gives him a ring to produce at the council if he is in need. Cranmer weeps and Henry sends him away.
Lines 184–207: The Old Lady enters, despite Lovell’s protests, to tell Henry the good news. Henry assumes Anne has had a “boy.” The Old Lady reassures him that “a girl / Promises boys hereafter” and that she looks like him. He rewards her with a “hundred marks”; as they exit, she’s determined to try and get more out of him.
ACT 5 SCENE 2
Lines 1–148: Cranmer arrives to see the Privy Council but finds the door shut against him. The king’s physician passes and informs the king. Henry views the scene from above, displeased by this treatment of the archbishop. A table is brought in and the council members take their seats before Cranmer is finally called in. The Lord Chancellor accuses him of teaching “new opinions, / Divers and dangerous, which are heresies.” When Cranmer asks to see his accusers face-to-face, he’s told that’s impossible because of his position as a member of the Privy Council. Gardiner says the king and the council intend to commit him to the Tower where as a “private man again,” he may face his accusers. Gardiner is his severest critic, but Cromwell thinks he’s “too sharp” and that they should treat the archbishop with respect. The Chancellor calls them to order and all agree that Cranmer should be taken to the Tower as a prisoner until they know the king’s wishes.
Lines 149–250: The Guard is called and when Cranmer is assured there is no alternative, he produces Henry’s ring, taking his case out of their hands and placing it directly before the king. They recognize the ring and the implication that Cranmer enjoys the king’s support and try to blame each other for starting the action against him. Cromwell tells them it serves them right for trying to manufacture a case against Cranmer, whose “honesty” is well known. Henry enters and Gardiner immediately flatters his wisdom and religious sense and tries to win him to their side. Henry, however, tells him he has “a cruel nature” and that he thought better of them than to leave the archbishop waiting outside the door like a servant. He commands them to embrace Cranmer and treat him with respect in future. Henry then asks him to stand as godfather to the new princess before insisting once more that they all embrace Cranmer, starting with Gardiner, who does so. This causes Cranmer to weep, thereby confirming his virtue in Henry’s mind. He tells them to hurry to the baby’s christening. Now he has made them friends, they must remain so, which will strengthen him and honor them.
ACT 5 SCENE 3
An enthusiastic crowd has gathered outside the gate of the royal court for the christening. The people are noisy and restless and the Porter and then the Lord Chamberlain try to calm them and make way for the procession.
ACT 5 SCENE 4
A magnificent procession enters for the christening. The Garter King-at-Arms asks heaven to “send prosperous life, long, and ever happy, to the high and mighty Princess of England.” Cranmer wishes the king and queen the same and goes on to prophesy that the princess wil
l become “A pattern to all princes.” She will be virtuous and learned: “She shall be loved and feared” and bring the nation peace, which will be continued by her successor. He foretells her long life and eventual death, “yet a virgin.” Henry is delighted and announces the day shall be a “holiday.”
EPILOGUE
The Epilogue fears the play won’t have pleased everyone. Those who come to rest and sleep will have been woken by the trumpets, while others who come to hear the city abused will also have been disappointed. So the play must be left to the judgment of good women, since they’ve shown them one (although her identity is ambiguous). If they smile and judge the play a success, then the men will too, since it’s bad luck not to do so when their ladies “bid ’em clap.”
HENRY VIII
IN PERFORMANCE:
THE RSC AND BEYOND
FOUR CENTURIES OF HENRY VIII: AN OVERVIEW
Shakespeare and Fletcher’s late play about the reign of Henry VIII enjoyed great popularity historically and hence has a complete and continuous stage history. Originally designed perhaps to celebrate the marriage of James I’s daughter, another Princess Elizabeth, to Frederick V, the Elector Palatine, in the summer of 1613, it has been regularly revived for spectacular royal occasions ever since. Evidence of its early performance and reception exists in several accounts recording the disastrous performance on 29 June 1613, when one of the cannons set the Globe’s thatch alight. Sir Henry Wotton’s letter of 2 July 1613 offers a detailed account of its staging, as well as voicing his concerns about its manner of representing “greatness” on stage, making it “very familiar, if not ridiculous”:
I will entertain you at the present with what happened this week at the Banks side. The King’s players had a new play called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like: sufficient in truth within awhile to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making a Masque at the Cardinal Wolsey’s house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff, wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but idle smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrick, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with a bottle of ale.64
Despite this setback, the play remained popular, due to its combination of the treatment of relatively recent history and gorgeous spectacle. It was revived at the rebuilt Globe at the request of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, on 29 July 1628.
After the Restoration and reopening of the theaters in 1660, Henry VIII was one of the few Shakespearean plays to be regularly staged. Bookseller and actor Thomas Davies records how Thomas Betterton was coached in the part of Henry by William Davenant, a godson of Shakespeare’s, who had been instructed by John Lowin, a member of the King’s Men. John Downes, Davenant’s company bookkeeper records that Betterton was “all new Cloath’d in proper Habits” for the role.65 According to William Winter, “Betterton’s performance was accounted essentially royal, and the example of stalwart predominance, regal dignity, and bluff humour thus set has ever since been followed.”66 He was succeeded in the part by Barton Booth, Charles Macklin, and James Quin, suggesting that Henry was regarded as the star part, although Colley Cibber’s Wolsey was noted and praised.
Cibber mounted productions at Drury Lane between 1721 and 1733. His 1727 revival included a notable coronation procession at the beginning of Act 4, designed to coincide with the coronation of George II. David Garrick’s 1762 staging for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane was similarly spectacular, boasting a cast of more than a hundred and thirty for the coronation scene. Emphasis on the pageantry of the play necessitated cuts to the text, a practice that continued as elaborate spectacle came to dominate productions. At the same time, criticism of the play’s language and structure were voiced.67 In a discussion of John Philip Kemble’s 1811 production, the Times’ critic suggests that Shakespeare had been called on to create a piece of hackwork, designed to “palliate … adultery,” and “obscure” Katherine’s memory and Henry’s “gross caprices”:
Processions and banquets find their natural place in a work of this kind; and without the occasional display of well-spread tables, well-lighted chandeliers, and well-rouged maids of honour, the audience could not possibly sustain the accumulated ennui of Henry the Eighth.68
The reviewer adds that “The banquet deserved all the praise that can be given to costly elegance. It was the most dazzling stage exhibition that we have ever seen,” and goes on to praise the performances of Kemble and his sister, Sarah Siddons: “If Mrs. Siddons and Mr. Kemble desired to show the versatility of their powers, they could not have chosen more suitable parts than Katherine and Wolsey.”69 It became one of Siddons’ best-known and loved roles:
The grandeur of the actress as Queen Katherine, her air of suffering and persecution, enlisted a new order of sympathy, and the well-known denunciation of the Cardinal, like her famous scene in Macbeth, became inseparably associated with herself.70
Katherine and Wolsey were now seen as the leading roles and the first three acts alone were performed. Edmund Kean’s Wolsey was highly praised in his 1822 and 1830 revivals. William Charles Macready played Wolsey from 1823 to 1847 in productions notable for the great actresses who played Katherine, including Helen Faucit, Charlotte Cushman, and Fanny Kemble. For the royal “command” performance of Acts 1–3 at Drury Lane on 10 July 1847, Macready played Wolsey to Charlotte Cushman’s Katherine and Samuel Phelps’s Henry, in the presence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Phelps himself played Wolsey in his stagings at Sadler’s Wells in 1845 and 1848, after which date he included Act 4: the staging on 16 January 1850 was given to help raise funds for the Great Exhibition of 1851. He revived the play another four times between 1854 and 1862. By far the most successful Victorian production, however, was Charles Kean’s 1855 spectacular with himself as Wolsey and his wife, Ellen Tree, as Katherine. The twenty-three-year-old Lewis Carroll recorded in his diary that it was “the greatest theatrical treat I ever had or ever expect to have—I had no idea that anything so superb as the scenery and dresses was ever to be seen on the stage.”71 Kean retained most of the first three acts, “but to allow time for the many processions and tableaux, which included an actual coronation, Acts 4 and 5 contained little else.”72 It was Katherine’s vision of Act 4 Scene 2 that seems to have produced the most striking effect:
But oh, that exquisite vision of Queen Catherine! I almost held my breath to watch; the illusion is perfect, and I felt as if in a dream all the time it lasted. It was like a delicious reverie, or the most beautiful poetry. This is the true end and object of acting—to raise the mind above itself, and out of its petty everyday cares—never shall I forget that wonderful evening, that exquisite vision—sunbeams broke in through the roof and gradually revealed two angelic forms, floating in front of the carved work of the ceiling: the column of sunbeams shone down upon the sleeping queen, and gradually down it floated a troop of angelic forms, transparent, and carrying palm branches in their hands: they waved these over the sleeping queen, with oh! such a sad and solemn grace.— So could I fancy (if the thought be not profane) would real angels seem to our mortal vision …73
The top angel in the vision was Ellen Terry.74 Kean’s last performance on the London stage was as Wolsey on 29 August 1859. Phelps too made his final appearance in the part in the revival at the Royal Aquarium in 1878 when he “all but collapsed at the end of his final speeches” and had t
o be “helped off stage when the curtain fell.”75
In his stage history, George C. D. Odell suggests that Henry Irving’s production at the Lyceum in 1892 was “Undoubtedly the greatest—if not the only—Shakespearian ‘spectacle’ that Irving ever attempted.”76 The richness and accuracy of costumes and sets were much admired, as were the performances of the strong cast. Irving’s was an “original conception” of Cardinal Wolsey that “differed radically from that of most of his famous predecessors, and constantly challenged attack and admiration. Certainly it was not the Wolsey of tradition, but forceful intellect was in every fiber of it.”77 Ellen Terry’s Katherine was similarly admired: “It had not the somber touch of tragedy that should ennoble it, but it was womanly to the core and thoroughly royal in deportment.”78
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