approaching his fiftieth year, and his life has been devoted to literature not in the way of idle seclusion, relaxation, or contemplation, but rather of strenuous effort and ceaseless, often hurried, production; he has no heart to renew the poetic exercises of earlier years, and his dramatic labours have earned for him a competence; therefore he will "retire him to his Milan."

But we need not take his retirement too seriously; he may drown his book, yet we must remember that while "book" (as so often the case with a word in Shakespeare) has more than one meaning, viz., the book of the necromancer, and the "book" of the theatre, it nevertheless conveys no allusion to the library or to literary work in general. For the poet's tastes and convictions we turn to an earlier passage in the play: "From mine own library

volumes that I prize above my dukedom"; or again, 'the liberal arts... being all my study," arts that “O'erprized all popular rate." No doubt Shakespeare has a longing for leisure and retirement (he seems to have left "Henry VIII" unfinished); but he has little intention that his life shall rust in him unused. Let us rather think of him as returning to the scenes of his youth, where his beating mind will be open to the sweeter influences of earth and heaven, where, all passion spent, he may know the delight of contemplation, where every third thought shall be his grave.

To such retirement "The Tempest" is indeed a fitting prelude; it tells of long years of trouble that have brought resignation:-"let us not burthen our remembrance with A heaviness that's gone"; of repentance, reconcilement, forgiveness; of renewed delight in the fair scenes of nature; of renewed faith in God and belief in man; of labour accomplished, victory gained (V. 25-27, etc.); of love, joy, peace.

(41) KING HENRY VIII, 1612

Historical Particulars

The play of "King Henry VIII" was being performed at the Globe Theatre, when "certain cannons being shot off at his (Henry the Eighth's) entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch where . . . it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming, in less than an hour, the whole house to the very ground." So Sir Henry Wotton writes on the 6th of June, 1613, of an event that "happened this week at the Bankside"; and it is the same writer who describes it as a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth"; but Howes, detailing the event in his continuation of "Stow's Chronicle," gives to the drama the title by which we know it, "the house being filled with people to behold the play, viz., of Henry the Eighth"; and in a letter of June 30th, 1613, the Rev. Thomas Lockin writes from London to Sir Thomas Pickering: "The fire broke out no longer since than yesterday, while Burbage's company were acting at the Globe the play of 'Henry VIII'"; and he adds, "there were shooting of certayne chambers etc."; chambers discharged" is a stage direction in the play.

The alternative title, "All is True," seems indicated in the Prologue:

Such as give

Their money out of hope they may believe
May here find truth too.

To rank our chosen truth with such a show.

About this time the titles of several of Shakespeare's plays were altered-or are recorded as alternative; "I Henry IV" was "Hotspur," "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was "Sir John Falstaff," "Much Ado" was

"Benedick and Beatrice," "Julius Caesar" was "Caesar's Tragedy," ," "Twelfth Night" was " Malvolio," and so forth.

We have yet other accounts of this fatal fire, in which we may suppose that several of the original copies of Shakespeare's plays were lost, but these particulars belong to the life of Shakespeare; and we must now quote another passage from Sir H. Wotton's letter, which informs us that the play "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 familiar if not ridiculous."

Here we have interesting testimony to the spectacular aspect of “Henry VIII,” which is a series of gorgeous pageants rather than a genuine drama.

As is explained in the next division, we must suppose that Fletcher was concerned in the production of the play as we have it, and he may have worked on it later than 1614, at which date he was writing for other companies than the king's. Possibly Shakespeare began the drama at a much earlier date; it was his practice to write a play at intervals, and to write more than one play at a time. Some think it was intended-the same has been said, perhaps as doubtfully, of "The Tempest"-to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, 14th February, 1612-13; and we know that during the festivities which accompanied this event, several of Shakespeare's plays were acted before the royal party.

As "The Tempest" was full of the plantation of Virginia, so we may well believe that this undertaking, which was the talk of the nation, finds its way into "Henry VIII":

Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour, and the greatness of his name,
Shall be, and make new nations.

But as these lines are in Fletcher's style-we may almost say his handwriting—and as a new interest was given to the Virginia enterprise by the charter of 1612, the passage will not help us in finding an earlier year for the play.

Finally, in regard to date, we may mention that the closing scene reads like a panegyric on James which might have welcomed him, possibly, soon after his accession; that Elizabeth could not have been flattered by the contrast between the picture of Anne Boleyn and that of Katherine; that the trial scene of Katherine is a companion to the one in which Hermione is wrongly accused in the "Winter's Tale"; and that the evidence of metre and style points to Shakespeare's latest period; and Sir H. Wotton's date of 1613 may well be accepted as approximate.

"Henry VIII" (probably because of joint authorship) is one of the few plays of Shakespeare that appeal to us from the stage as powerfully as from a book; its pageantry makes it popular, and it was revived by Sir H. Irving.

The material of the drama is derived from Holinshed, who incorporates "The Life of Wolsey," by Cavendish (1641); Hall's Chronicle was consulted by the dramatist, as also Foxe's "Acts and Monuments of the Church,” first edition, 1563. There is the usual rearrangement and modification of the events of history, which are supposed to happen during seven days, with intervals. The Porter, the Old Lady, and Patience are new characters; the first of these may be compared with the Porter in "Macbeth," and the second with the Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet." Brandon is confused with another personage of that name; and it may be added that inaccuracies are rather abundant.

It is possible that the author or authors of "Henry VIII" had before them Samuel Rowley's "When you see Me you know Me," first printed in 1605; the resemblances are too striking to be due to mere coincidence.

Critical Remarks

Even if we are reading this play for the first time we can hardly fail to notice some marked peculiarities; it varies greatly in style and thought; it seems to have been composed piecemeal, not continuously; there is no orderly plot, no central figure; it is entirely lacking in unity of interest.1

We have been accustomed to striking and sometimes strange inequalities in many of Shakespeare's dramas, but we have met with nothing quite like this; the play is almost too unequal and too disconnected to be interesting, though at times it is profoundly impressive.

If we now make conjecture of the origin of these peculiarities, we may say that Shakespeare composed parts of the play at different periods of his career, and then put them roughly together at its close; or that he wrote the play in close partnership with another playwright; or that this other playwright finished the work which he had left incomplete; and we may add that whatever the occasion, the play was somewhat hastily put together.

Of the three foregoing suppositions, the second is to be preferred; and if a coadjutor is admitted, it will be Fletcher; about this there is no doubt whatever. Here is an example of Fletcher's average style:

And, as they rise to ripeness, still remember

How they imp out your age! and when Time calls you,
That as an autumn flower you fall, forget not

How round about your hearse they hang, like pennons!

("Thierry and Theoderet.")

Turning to "Henry VIII" we read:

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,

And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

1 Possibly we have some explanation of this in the words of Sir Henry Wotton, quoted on a former page, who speaks of the play as "representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII"; and a further explanation may be found in the alternative title "All is True," which we are inclined to interpret, art will suffer from inartistic realism."