Henry VIII is a five-act historical play once believed to be entirely written by the English dramatist William Shakespeare. Critics now think that Shakespeare composed less than half of it and that the rest is by his fellow playwright John Fletcher (1579-1625). Fletcher also collaborated with Shakespeare on another play, The Two Noble Kinsmen, which is not regularly included even in modern editions of Shakespeare’s plays.
Henry VIII is also called in full King Henry VIII. In addition, the play was known to its first audiences as All Is True. It was written in 1612 or 1613, and was apparently staged in February 1613 to mark the marriage of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James I and Princess Anne of Denmark, to Frederick, the Elector Palatine. It was published along with Shakespeare’s other plays in 1623. During a performance of Henry VIII in June 1613 at the Globe Theatre, Southwark, London, the building’s thatch caught fire and the theater was destroyed. See Globe Theatre.
The play deals with various episodes in Henry VIII’s reign from 1509 to 1547. Events include the fall from favor of the Duke of Buckingham and his execution; Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon (spelled Katherine in the play); the fall from royal grace of the king’s adviser Cardinal Wolsey and his death; the marriage of Anne Boleyn to Henry and her crowning as his second queen; the ascendancy of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer to replace Wolsey; and the christening of Henry’s younger daughter Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth I.
Henry VIII is a loosely constructed drama and better known for its pageantry than for its characterization. It has passages of splendid verse, but the work as a whole does not show Shakespeare at the height of his creative powers.
