DRAMATIS PERSONE KING HENRY the Eighth CARDINAL WOLSEY CARDINAL CAMPEIUS CAPUCIUS, Ambassador from the Emperor Charles V CRANMER, Archbishop of Canterbury DUKE OF NORFOLK DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM DUKE OF SUFFOLK EARL OF SURREY Lord Chancellor GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester LORD ABERGAVENNY SIR HENRY GUILDFORD CROMWELL, Servant to Wolsey GRIFFITH, Gentleman-usher to Queen Katharine Three Gentlemen DOCTOR BUTTS, Physician to the King Garter King-at-Arms Surveyor to the Duke of Buckingham BRANDON, and a Sergeant-at-Arms Door-keeper at the Council-chamber. Porter, and his Man QUEEN KATHARINE, wife to King Henry, afterwards divorced An old Lady, friend to Anne Bullen PATIENCE, woman to Queen Katharine Several Lords and Ladies in the Dumb Shows; Women attending upon the Queen; Scribes, Officers, Guards, and other Attendants Spirits SCENE: London, Westminster; Kimbolton SYNOPSIS By J. ELLIS BURDICK ACT I Henry VIII has returned from France and from his interview with the king of that country on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The Duke of Buckingham quarrels with Cardinal Wolsey, the lord chancellor, and the cardinal has the Duke arrested, charged with high treason. A great court supper is given by Wolsey at his palace in York place. The king and his lords attend in masks and habited like shepherds. The beauty, grace, and wit of Anne Bullen, maid of honor to Queen Katharine, greatly attracts the king. ACT II Buckingham is tried, and from the testimony of bribed witness, is found guilty of high treason and condemned to death. The king's conscience begins to trouble him, for he had married his brother's widow, and he consults Wolsey as to whether he should divorce her. The queen is brought to public trial, with Wolsey and another cardinal as judges. She refuses to accept Wolsey as her judge, believing the king's desire to divorce her to be a scheme of Wolsey's to rid himself of her influence over the king. She appeals to the Pope. ACT III Suddenly Wolsey sees why Henry wishes to put away Katharine- -he desires to marry Anne Bullen. The cardinal writes a letter to the Pope, which miscarries and falls into the king's hand, along with an inventory of Wolsey's property, most of which he had accumulated by appropriating to himself a great deal of the money raised by taxation. The king, angry at Wolsey's treachery, takes from him all of his civil offices and declares all his goods, lands, tenements, chattels, and whatever to be forfeited. In the meantime, the king has obtained from Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, an opinion on his divorce favorable to his own views, has put away the queen, and has secretly married Anne Bullen. ACT IV Cardinal Wolsey is arrested charged with high treason, but dies before his trial. Shortly after Queen Katharine dies. The coronation of Anne takes place with great pomp and magnificence. Cranmer anoints her queen. ACT V Cranmer's favor with the king arouses the jealousy of some powerful nobles. They plot his downfall and bring him to trial. They are about to send him to the Tower when the king enters and orders his release and asks him to christen Anne's daughter, Elizabeth. This he does and prophesies that "peace, plenty, love, truth, terror," shall all be servants of this royal infant in the days to come. THE FAMOUS HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF KING HENRY VIII THE PROLOGUE I come no more to make you laugh: things now, Sad, high and working, full of state and woe, see Only a show or two, and so agree 10 The play may pass, if they be still and willing, In a long motley coat guarded with yellow, 3. "high and working"; Staunton reads "and high-working.”— I. G. 12. "shilling"; the usual price for a seat on or next the stage.— I. G. 16. "a long motley coat"; the professional garb of the fool or jester.-I. G. Will be deceived; for, gentle hearers, know, 21 Will leave us never an understanding friend. The first and happiest hearers of the town, As they were living; think you see them great, sweat 19. "As fool and fight"; "This is not the only passage," says Johnson, "in which Shakespeare has discovered his conviction of the impropriety of battles represented on the stage. He knew that five or six men, with swords, gave a very unsatisfactory idea of an army; and therefore, without much care to excuse his former practice, he allows that a theatrical fight would destroy all opinion of truth, and leave him never an understanding friend." The Prologue, partly on the strength of this passage, has been by some ascribed to Ben Jonson. It certainly accords well with what he says in the prologue to Every Man in his Humour, though this nowise infers the conclusion some would draw from it: "Though need make many poets, and some such And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.—H. N. H. 21. The line is either to be taken as a parenthesis, "that" referring to "opinion" (= reputation); or as following directly on “opinion,” i. e. "the reputation we bring of making what we reprent strictly in accordance with truth."-I. G. |