TH KIN The F Eight w accuracy a probably its historic Wotton to you at the the Guards sufficient in very famili making a 1 and certain THE FAMOUS HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF KING HENRY THE EIGHTH INTRODUCTION The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight was first printed-and with comparative accuracy of text-in the folio, 1623. The Prologue, probably written by the dramatist, John Fletcher, prepares the spectators for a play of sad and serious import, concerned mainly with the fall of persons of high estate; if any have paid their shilling to witness a splendid show, they will not be disappointed; but fool and fight' and unbecoming mirth must not be expected; the history aims at 'truth' (1. 9), chosen truth' (1. 18); and a third time (1. 21) the plea on behalf of the play as 'true' is reiterated. We might well believe that as Twelfth Night had a second title, What you Will, so Henry VIII had originally added to its historical name the sub-title, All is True. 6 'Now, to let matters of State sleep,' wrote Sir Henry Wotton to his nephew on July 2, 1613, ‘I will entertain you at the present with what hath happened this Week at the Banks side. The Kings Players had a new Play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the 8th, 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 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 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.' On 'the last of June' Thomas Lorkin writes that 'yesterday', while 'Bourbage his companie were acting at ye Globe the play of Hen: 8,' the building was consumed. Other testimony to the like effect may be found in a letter of Chamberlaine, and in Howes's continuation of the Chronicle by Stow. Doubts have been raised on the slenderest grounds as to the identity of the play which Wotton describes as 'new' and that which we find in the folio. The probability that the Globe Theatre was burnt down on the occasion of a first or early performance of the play before us seems to me to amount almost to certainty. No one questioned that the play was wholly of Shakespeare's authorship for more than two centuries. But Johnson remarked that the genius of Shakespeare comes in and goes out with Katharine', and the Cambridge scholar Roderick noticed peculiarities of versification, and especially the large number of lines in the play which close with a redundant syllable. It may be added here that the redundant syllable is not always glided over, as happens so often with Shakespeare, but is sometimes emphatic, as we find it not infrequently with Fletcher. Some years before 1850 Tennyson, whose ear was of the finest quality, observed, with James Spedding as a listener, that many passages in Henry VIII were very much in the manner of Fletcher'. Tennyson's mature opinion is recorded by his son (Life, chap. xxxvii): 'I have no doubt that much of Henry VIII is not Shakespeare. It is largely written by Fletcher, with passages unmistakably by Shakespeare, notably the two first scenes in the first Act, which are sane and compact in thought, expression, and simile. I could swear to Shakespeare in the Field of the Cloth of Gold: |