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King Henry VIII
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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Loyalty and Heredity-- King Henry VIII covers the period of Henry's reign from shortly after he becomes king to the birth of Elizabeth, who would one day become queen and for whom the play was written. The firing of a cannon during the very first performance of this play caused a fire that burnt the Globe theater to the ground. Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself. We may outrun By violent swiftness that which we run at, And lose by over-running.
Author
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen. He produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. He died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.
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Reviews for King Henry VIII
Rating: 3.3390410684931506 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
146 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Henry VIII is the final play in the histories series. Although it’s frequently challenged as being written solely by Shakespeare, I'm accepting it as part of the canon. The histories begin, chronologically, with Richard II and take us all the way through the Wars of the Roses. The plot covers the execution of Buckingham, the rise and fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the divorce of Henry VIII and Queen Katherine, his marriage to Anne Boleyn, the birth of Elizabeth, and more. The play itself is rarely produces and not well known, but pieces of it will be familiar to anyone who has read Wolf Hall or The Other Boleyn Girl. There's a lot crammed into this one, but a few of the characters truly shine. Your heart breaks for the neglected Katherine. She’s tossed aside by her husband of 20 years when someone younger catches his eye. She has some fantastic moments when she challenges Cardinal Wolsey.“Y’ are meek and humble-mouth’d,You sign your place and calling, in full seeming, with meekness and humility;but your heart is cramm’d with arrogance, spleen, and pride.”Buckingham is also a sympathetic character with some great speeches. Overall the play doesn't flow as well as many of his others. It's too scattered, too many moving pieces, but it's still got some beautiful language. “Yet I am richer than my base accusers,That never knew what truth meant.”“Heat not a furnace for your foe so hotThat it do singe yourself.”“Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee;Corruption wins not more than honesty.Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not:Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,Thy God's, and truth's.”
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The epitome of what an Arden edition should be. What a shame this came out so early, leaving so much for other editors to live up to!
The dense (200 page) introduction covers everything you expect - production history, composition history, placing the play within a social, cultural, political context, and textual analysis - and includes the expected amount of academic frou-frou (but we forgive those in an Arden, surely). But what really makes it sing is the editor's wonderfully knowing sense of narrative voice. He has his own passionate beliefs, but is happy to situate those within the 400-year history of bardolatry and Shakespearean criticism, thus giving the amateur reader a great overall understanding of the issues editors and academics face in working with these texts. It's the kind of edition that breathes new life into a play that is often ignored. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/534 William Shakespeare, John Fletcher Henry VIIIFORMATOTHERSGENRERATINGE-BOOKLewis Theobald, editorLiterature***I read this late collaboration because I knew it had great speeches and because I wanted to see how the Bard and his fellows would have treated England's Stalin. I liked the great speeches, i.e., Katherine of Aragon's defense of herself and Wolsey's farewell to his greatness, and would like to think that Shakespeare wrote them. But I had to shake my head sadly at how the playwrights had to treat the Anne Boleyn story with kid gloves and eulogize the baby Elizabeth.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry has decided to divorce his first wife, Katherine, after twenty years of marriage, in order to marry Anne Bullen. At his side is the manipulative Cardinal Wolsey, common born yet with the King wrapped around his finger. Though Katherine pleads with her husband, Wolsey is instrumental in her downfall, and in the execution of the Duke of Buckingham, accused of treasonous gossip. The whole court holds its breath waiting for the day the King will realize he's been Wolsey's puppet.Clearly written to be performed for Elizabeth I, Shakespeare is currying favor. Henry VIII is a man who was manipulated into treating Katherine badly, and who rejoiced that Anne had given birth to a daughter (ha!). Anne is a sweet maiden who worries about Katherine, and the play ends with a gushing speech about Elizabeth herself. This probably won't make anyone's list of the best of Shakespeare, but it is interesting and there are some good scenes, such as Katherine ripping into Wolsey.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Read this as a companion piece after I finished Wolf Hall. I didn't even know he wrote a play about Henry VIII, and now I know why: it pretty much sucks. And a total whitewash, which makes sense in retrospect. Where's the fucking beheadings, Will?
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Shakespeare's "Henry VIII" is best remembered as the play that was on stage when the Globe Theater burned down. There's a reason that's what it's known for.... the play itself really doesn't hold up well to the bard's more famous works.Rife with historical inaccuracies, most of the action takes place off stage, so you just hear characters talking about it. (Yeah, I didn't like it when Hilary Mantel did this either.) It was the Elizabethan age, so of course Shakespeare makes the birth of Queen Elizabeth something like the second coming and is mostly laudatory about her mother Anne Boleyn. There really isn't much that's great about this one.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Well here we are in the ugly competition. "Worst plays by William Shakespeare". Wisely the first line is "I come no more to make you laugh:... And you won't. It seems to me, that a sort of historical pageant was required, perhaps to get some people to put their money down at the box-office, and this was cobbled up. It is a chore to read, and only the queen Catherine of Argon scenes have much fire. We have records that the theatre caught fire during one of the performances and the audience must have left the theatre early with some relief. The theatre burned down , this was WS's last history play, and he soon retired. the play was written or revised, in1613.
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King Henry VIII - William Shakespeare
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