From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 539-41. [Prepared and proofread by Deborah Hill.]
HENRY VIII
1613
Now let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what happened at the Bankside. The king's players had a new play, called "All is True," representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry V III., which was 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 a while to make greatness very familiar if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's House and certain canons being shot off at his entrance, some of the paper, or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did lighten the thatch, where being thought at first but an 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 grounds. WOTTON, SIR HENRY, 1613, Epistles.
London this last of June 1613.
No longer since then yesterday, while Bourbege his companie were acting at ye Globe the play of Hen: 8, and there shooting of certayne chambers in way of triumph; the fire catch'ed & fastened upon the thatch of ye house and there burned so furiously as it consumed the whole house & all in lesse then two houres (the people having enough to doe to save themselves). LORKINS, THOMAS, 1613, Letter to Sir Thomas Puckering. Harl. MS. 7,002, fo. 268.
January 1. -- Went to the Duke's house, the first play I have been at these six months, according to my last vowe, and here saw the so much cried-up play of "Henry the Eighth;" which, though I went with resolution to like it, is so simple a thing made up of a great many patches, that, besides the shows and processions in it, there is nothing in the world good or well done. -- PEPYS, SAMUEL, 1663-4, Diary and Correspondence.
It was no easy task for an author to compose a dramatic piece which should comprehend several transactions of a monarch recently dead, who had rendered himself so odious to his subjects. To bring upon the stage, before the reigning queen his daughter, a character so doubtful, at least, as her royal father; to present a strong resemblance of many of his most striking features, without alarming his sovereign, or disgusting the spectators, was an undertaking worthy the genius of Shakspeare; and in which, notwithstanding the apparent difficulty, he has admirably succeeded. -- DAVIES, THOMAS, 1784, Dramatic Micellanies, vol. I, p. 338.
The character of Henry VIII. is drawn with great truth and spirit. It is like a very disagreeable portrait, sketched by the hand of a master. His gross appearance, his blustering demeanour, his vulgarity, his arrogance, his sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of common decency and common humanity are marked in strong lines. His traditional peculiarities of expression complete the reality of the picture. The authoritative expletive, "Ha!" with which he intimates his indignation or surprise, has an effect like the first startling sound that breaks from a thunder-cloud. He is of all the monarchs in our history the most disgusting: for he unites in himself all the vices is of barbarism and refinement, without their virtues. -- HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69. Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, p. 170.
"Henry VIII" has for us a literary interest, on account of its style, which the poet has certainly been careful to bring into conformity with the language of the court, as spoken in his own time, or a few years previously. In no other of his works is the style so elliptical; the habits of conversation seem to introduce into the construction of its sentences that economy and abbreviation which, in English pronunciation, deprive words of nearly half their syllables. Moreover, we find in it scarcely any play upon words, and excepting only in a few passages, very little poetry. -- GUIZOT, FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME, 1821-52, Shakspeare and His Times, p. 340.
Poetical art perhaps never flattered a monster with such palpable likeness, and yet with such impalpable and cunning mitigation. He suborns his guilty love itself to seduce our sympathy by the beauty of its object. -- CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1838, ed. Shakspeare's Plays, Moxon ed., Life.
QUEEN KATHARINE. In spite of the great virtues which I have to acknowledge in her, I have an insurmountable dislike to this princess. As a married woman she was a pattern of social fidelity. As a queen she was most dignified and majestic. As a Christian she was virtue personified. But she inspired Dr. Samuel Johnson with a voice to sing her highest praise, and of all the women described by Shakespeare she is his special favourite. He mentions her with tender pathos and this is insufferable. Shakespeare did his best to idealise the good woman but this is in vain, when we perceive that this beer-barrel Dr. Johnson is overcome by tender delight at her sight and runs over in her praise. Were she my wife I could make such praise a ground of separation. -- HEINE, HEINRICH, 1838-95, Notes on Shakespeare Heroines, tr. Benecke, p. 100.
The opening . . . seemed to have the full stamp of Shakspere in his latest manner; the same close-packed expression; the same life and reality and freshness; the same rapid and abrupt turnings of thought, so quick that language can hardly follow fast enough, the same impatient activity of intellect and fancy which, having once disclosed an idea, cannot wait to work it orderly out; the same daring confidence in the resources of language which plunges headlong into a sentence without knowing how it is to come forth: the same careless metre which disdains to produce its harmonious effects by the ordinary devices, yet is evidently subject to a master of harmony; the same entire freedom from book-language and commonplace. -- SPEDDING, JAMES, 1850, Who Wrote Shakspere's Henry VIII.? Gentleman's Magazine, August.
In "Henry VIII." I think I see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his own finer stratum was laid. The first play was written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. See Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell, where instead of the metre of Shakspeare, whose secret is that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm, -- here the lines are constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play contains through all its length unmistakable traits of Shakspeare's hand, and some passages, as the account of the coronation, are like autographs. What is odd, the compliment to Queen Elizabeth is in the bad rhythm. -- EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, 1850-76, Shakspeare; or, the Poet, Representative Men.
We admit, then, that this play offers us in some not unimportant passages the single instance of a style not elsewhere precisely or altogether traceable in Shakespeare, that no exact parallel to it can be found among his other plays, and that if not the partial work it may certainly be taken as the general model of Fletcher in his tragic poetry. On the other hand, we contend that its exceptional quality might perhaps be explicable as a tentative essay in a new line by one who tried so many styles before settling into his latest; and that, without far stronger, clearer, and completer proof than has yet been or can ever be advanced, the question is not solved but merely evaded by the assumption of a double authorship. -- SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 93.
I have no doubt that much of "Henry VIII." also is not Shakespeare. It is largely written by Fletcher, with passages unmistakeably by Shakespeare, notably the two first scenes in the first Act 1, which are sane and compact in thought, expression and simile. -- TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD, 1883, Some Criticisms on Poets, Memoir by his Son, vol. II, p. 291.
If Katharine is a little disappointing, Anne is an unmitigated failure. . . . Turning to the character of Henry VIII. we find a showy figure, who plays his part of king not without effect. Looking deeper, we discover that there is nothing deeper to discover. The Henry of history is a puzzling character, but the Henry of a play should be adequately conceived and intelligibly presented. Whatever disguise he may choose to assume towards the men and women who walk beside him on the boards, to us he must be without disguise. As it is, we know no more than after reading Holinshed whether the Henry of the play believed or did not believe -- or what partial belief he had -- in those "scruples," for instance, to which he refers, not without a certain unction. He is illogical, insubstantial, the merely superficial presentment of a deeply interesting historical figure, who would, we may be sure, have had intense interest for Shakespeare, and to whom Shakespeare would have given his keenest thought, his finest workmanship. -- SYMONS, ARTHUR, 1887-90, Henry Irving Shakespeare, vol. VIII, pp. 162, 163.
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