SHAKSPEARE'S HENRY THE EIGHTH. WITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES. Adapted for Scholastic or Private Study, and for those qualifying for 1 BY THE REV. JOHN HUNTER, M.A. Formerly Vice-Principal of the National Society's Training Institution, Battersea. NEW EDITION. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY FROM THE LIBRARY OF LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET G INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON SHAKSPEARE'S HENRY THE EIGHTH. I. Or the thirty-seven dramas commonly regarded as the genuine compositions of our immortal bard, and which (with the exception of Pericles) formed the first collected edition of his plays in 1623, ten are denominated Histories, or Chronicle Plays, presenting many of the most interesting features of that portion of our annals which commenced with the thirteenth century and closed about the middle of the sixteenth ;-these are King John, Richard II., Henry IV. in 2 parts, Henry V., Henry VI. in 3 parts, Richard III., and Henry VIII. II. Some of these historical plays are among the earliest productions of Shakspeare's dramatic pen, having been written when he was about 30 years of age; the last one, being descriptive of events the least remote from his own time, seems to have been deferred till he had entered upon his 50th year.* Malone, however, and others, have assigned the first production of Henry VIII. to the year 1601, about two years before the close of Elizabeth's reign; and they have accounted for the reference which Cranmer, towards the end of the play, makes to the successor of Elizabeth, by supposing that Ben Jonson, Shakspeare was born in April 1564, and died in April 1616, having just completed his 52nd year. or some other dramatist, altered the play for a revival representation in the reign of James. It certainly appears probable that this drama has in some of its parts been retouched by another than the original hand; but that the first acting of the piece, as composed by Shakspeare, was in 1613, appears equally probable from evidence preserved in some letters of the period, respecting a new play, called Henry the Eighth or All is True, brought out in June of that year at the Globe Theatre. Sir Henry Wotton, writing to his nephew, on 6th July 1613, says, "The king's players had a new play called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty. Now, King Henry making a mask 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 an idle smoke, and their eyes being more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming, in less than an hour, the whole house to the very ground."* *** If we are justified by such evidence as this in believing that the first representation of Shakspeare's Henry the Eighth is here referred to, we should, perhaps, claim for the same writer the authorship of the Prologue and Epilogue, which some of the commentators have attributed to Ben Jonson. And then we may feel that the poet probably spoke in harmony with a graver cast of thought which may have come upon him in his 50th year, when he said * The Globe and the Blackfriars were the two principal London theatres in Shakspeare's time. The former was a public theatre, the latter a private one; but both belonged to the same company of players, Shakspeare himself being for some time one of the proprietors. The Globe, built about 1596, was an hexagonal building, open in the middle over the yard or pit, where the "groundlings " stood, and thatched over the boxes. It was situated at the Bankside, Southwark, near London Bridge, and took its name from an herculean figure supporting the globe, on which were the Latin words, Totus mundus agit histrionem, i. e. All the world acts as the player; or, as Shakspeare has said, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." "I come no more to make you laugh; things now Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, III. The historical guides followed by Shakspeare in this play are-The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, by George Cavendish, The Chronicle of Raphael Holinshed, and The Acts and Monuments of the Church, by John Fox. IV. In these authorities Shakspeare found many details requiring only a very slight alteration of the language to give them a dramatic form. The poet did not feel much at liberty to vary from the acknowledged records of such recent times; and hence many portions of his "chosen truth" appear somewhat prosaic. Several passages, indeed, were they printed in the form of prose, would hardly be observed to be metrical. By no means few, however, are the instances which this play contains, of a transmutation of the plain statements of the chroniclers into poetry of the most exalted kind,—the transmutation being effected sometimes by condensation, sometimes by enlargement, and not unfrequently by mere touches of gentlest delicacy. Nor are the instances few in which the dramatist has enriched his story by the noblest original emanations of poetic sentiment and language. V. It may be requisite for many youthful readers to be guarded against an erroneous judgment as to the manner in which historical truth is presented in this drama and in Shakespeare's historical plays generally. He often antedates or postdates events. He frequently represents personages as old when they were really young, or as young when they were really old, or as alive when they were actually dead. Of the deviations from chronological truth in the present play, the following may be observed: The reversal of the decree for taxing the commons (1525), and the examination of Buckingham's surveyor (1521), are in one scene. The banqueting scene (1526) precedes that of Bucking |
