And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand
Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear,
And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s,
And many an orphan’s water-standing eye –
40
Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’,
Orphans for their parents’ timeless death –
Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born.
The owl shriek’d at thy birth – an evil sign;
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;
45
Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempests shook down trees;
The raven rook’d her on the chimney’s top,
And chattering pies in dismal discords sung;
Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain,
And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope,
50
To wit, an indigest deformed lump,
Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree.
Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born,
To signify thou cam’st to bite the world;
And if the rest be true which I have heard,
55
Thou cam’st –
RICHARD I’ll hear no more: die, prophet, in thy speech.
[Stabs him.]
For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain’d.
KING HENRY Ay, and for much more slaughter after this.
O God, forgive my sins and pardon thee! [Dies.]
60
RICHARD What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster
Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted.
See how my sword weeps for the poor King’s death.
O, may such purple tears be alway shed
From those that wish the downfall of our house!
65
If any spark of life be yet remaining,
Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither –
[Stabs him again.]
I that have neither pity, love, nor fear.
Indeed ’tis true that Henry told me of:
For I have often heard my mother say
70
I came into the world with my legs forward.
Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste
And seek their ruin that usurp’d our right?
The midwife wonder’d, and the women cried
‘O Jesu bless us, he is born with teeth!’
75
And so I was, which plainly signified
That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog.
Then, since the heavens have shap’d my body so,
Let hell make crook’d my mind to answer it.
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
80
And this word ‘love’, which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another,
And not in me: I am myself alone.
Clarence, beware; thou keep’st me from the light,
But I will sort a pitchy day for thee;
85
For I will buzz abroad such prophecies
As Edward shall be fearful of his life;
And then, to purge his fear, I’ll be thy death.
King Henry and the Prince his son are gone;
Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest,
90
Counting myself but bad till I be best.
I’ll throw thy body in another room,
And triumph, Henry, in thy day of doom.
Exit, with the body.
5.7 Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, QUEEN ELIZABETH, GEORGE, RICHARD, HASTINGS, a nurse with the young Prince and attendants.
KING EDWARD
Once more we sit in England’s royal throne,
Repurchas’d with the blood of enemies.
What valiant foemen, like to autumn’s corn,
Have we mow’d down in tops of all their pride!
Three Dukes of Somerset, threefold renown’d
5
For hardy and undoubted champions;
Two Cliffords, as the father and the son;
And two Northumberlands – two braver men
Ne’er spurr’d their coursers at the trumpet’s sound;
With them, the two brave bears, Warwick and Montague,
10
That in their chains fetter’d the kingly lion
And made the forest tremble when they roar’d.
Thus have we swept suspicion from our seat
And made our footstool of security.
Come hither, Bess, and let me kiss my boy.
15
Young Ned, for thee thine uncles and myself
Have in our armours watch’d the winter’s night,
Went all afoot in summer’s scalding heat,
That thou might’st repossess the crown in peace;
And of our labours thou shalt reap the gain.
20
RICHARD [aside]
I’ll blast his harvest, and your head were laid;
For yet I am not look’d on in the world.
This shoulder was ordain’d so thick to heave,
And heave it shall some weight, or break my back:
Work thou the way, and that shall execute.
25
KING EDWARD
Clarence and Gloucester, love my lovely Queen;
And kiss your princely nephew, brothers both.
GEORGE The duty that I owe unto your Majesty
I seal upon the lips of this sweet babe.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Thanks, noble Clarence; worthy brother, thanks.
30
RICHARD
And, that I love the tree from whence thou sprang’st,
Witness the loving kiss I give the fruit.
[aside] To say the truth, so Judas kiss’d his master
And cried ‘All hail!’ when as he meant all harm.
KING EDWARD Now am I seated as my soul delights,
35
Having my country’s peace and brothers’ loves.
GEORGE
What will your Grace have done with Margaret?
Reignier, her father, to the King of France
Hath pawn’d the Sicils and Jerusalem,
And hither have they sent it for her ransom.
40
KING EDWARD
Away with her and waft her hence to France.
And now what rests but that we spend the time
With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows,
Such as befits the pleasure of the court?
Sound drums and trumpets! Farewell, sour annoy!
45
For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy. Exeunt.
King Henry VIII
King Henry VIII, also known as All Is True, can be dated with unusual precision because it was being performed at the Globe on 29 June 1613 when the firing of cannon set light to the thatched roof and the theatre was burnt to the ground – fortunately without loss of life or injury. Several contemporary accounts of the fire refer to King Henry VIII as a new play at the time, so scholars agree in dating it 1613, though some would put it back to the beginning of that year, arguing that it would have been appropriate for performance at Court during the wedding celebrations of James I’s daughter Elizabeth and Frederick, the Elector Palatine. Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, did perform six of his plays as contributions to the festivities but there is no definite proof that King Henry VIII was one of them.
It was printed as the last of Shakespeare’s English history plays in the First Folio in 1623, and its historical material derives in part from the chronicles of Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall – sources Shakespeare had used for his earlier histories – but it was composed some fourteen years after Henry V, the latest in the sequence of nine history plays Shakespeare had written between 1590 and 1599, and in some ways it is a different kind of play, having as many affinities with the late tragicomedies or ‘romances’ such as Th
e Winter’s Tale and The Tempest as it has with the histories. It comes no nearer to a battlefield than a description of the ceremonial ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’, where Henry VIII met Francis I to inaugurate a peace treaty between England and France; and it presents its main political events, which provide an implicit history of the Reformation, as a series of set-pieces on the fall from greatness of some characters (the Duke of Buckingham, Katherine of Aragon, Cardinal Wolsey) and the rise of others (Anne Bullen, Thomas Cranmer). It ends with a celebration of the birth of the future Elizabeth I and a tribute – which, in context, can be read as backhanded – to her supposedly even more glorious successor, James I. It imbues its historical events with a degree of myth or symbolism and presents Henry as an intemperate monarch, repeatedly upstaged by his subjects, notably the prelates, Wolsey and Cranmer.
Most editors and scholars believe that this play, like Cardenio (now lost) and The Two Noble Kinsmen, was a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher. All three plays date from the period 1612-13 when Shakespeare was scaling down his level of participation in the King’s Men’s activities; Fletcher succeeded him as the chief dramatist of the company, and seems to have preferred to work collaboratively, writing plays with Francis Beaumont and Philip Massinger as well as with Shakespeare. The scenes in the play generally attributed to Shakespeare are 1.1, 1.2, 2.3, 2.4, 3.2 to line 203 and 5.1, although to separate out the work of one participant in a collaboration is, in a sense, to miss the point.
The play was revived during the Restoration and remained popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, partly because of the opportunities it afforded for lavish spectacle and pageantry; it tends to be performed at times of coronation. The roles of Wolsey and Katherine came to dominate productions and were performed by leading actors from John Philip Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons in 1806 to Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in 1892; much of the play used to be cut in order to focus attention on these roles. Twentieth-century productions restored Henry to a central position and aimed for a more thoughtful and serious reading of the play, finding ironies and contradictions in it as well as theatrical display.
The 2000 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
PROLOGUE
Duke of NORFOLK
Duke of BUCKINGHAM
Lord ABERGAVENNY
son-in-law to the Duke of Buckingham
Cardinal WOLSEY
Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor
SECRETARY
to Cardinal Wolsey
BRANDON
SERGEANT-at-Arms
KING Henry the Eighth
of England
Sir Thomas LOVELL
KATHERINE
of Aragon, Queen of England, later divorced
Duke of SUFFOLK
SURVEYOR
to the Duke of Buckingham
Lord CHAMBERLAIN
Lord SANDYS
ANNE Bullen
maid of honour to Katherine, later Queen of England
Sir Henry GUILDFORD
SERVANT
at Wolsey’s party
First GENTLEMAN
Second GENTLEMAN
Sir Nicholas VAUX
Cardinal CAMPEIUS
papal legate
GARDINER
the King’s secretary, later Bishop of Winchester
OLD LADY
friend to Anne Bullen
Bishop of LINCOLN
GRIFFITH
Gentleman Usher to Katherine
SCRIBE
to the court
CRIER
to the court
Earl of SURREY
son-in-law to the Duke of Buckingham
Thomas CROMWELL
Wolsey’s secretary, later secretary to the Privy Council
Lord CHANCELLOR
(Sir Thomas More)
GARTER
King-of-Arms
Third GENTLEMAN
PATIENCE
attendant on Katherine
MESSENGER
at Kimbolton
Lord CAPUTIUS
ambassador from the Holy Roman Emperor
Gardiner’s PAGE
Sir Anthony DENNY
Thomas CRANMER
Archbishop of Canterbury
Door KEEPER
of the Council Chamber
Doctor BUTTS
the King’s physician
PORTER
Porter’s MAN
EPILOGUE
Musicians, Guards, Secretaries, Noblemen, Ladies, Gentlemen, Masquers, Tipstaves, Halberdiers, Attendants, Common People, Vergers, Scribes, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishops of Ely, Rochester and St Asaph, Priests, Gentleman Usher, Women attendant on Katherine, Judges, Choristers, Lord Mayor of London, Marquess of Dorset, four Barons of the Cinque Ports, Bishop of London, Duchess of Norfolk, six Dancers (spirits) in Katherine’s vision, Marchioness of Dorset, Aldermen, Servants, Grooms
King Henry VIII
Enter PROLOGUE.
PROLOGUE
I come no more to make you laugh: things now
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high and working, full of state and woe,
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present. Those that can pity here
5
May, if they think it well, let fall a tear:
The subject will deserve it. Such as give
Their money out of hope they may believe
May here find truth, too. Those that come to see
Only a show or two and so agree
10
The play may pass, if they be still and willing
I’ll undertake may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours. Only they
That come to hear a merry, bawdy play,
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 245