Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Henry VIII
Henry VIII
Henry VIII
Ebook436 pages4 hours

Henry VIII

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

The authoritative edition of Henry VIII from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.

In Henry VIII, Shakespeare presents a monarchy in crisis. Noblemen battle with Lord Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey, who taxes the people to the point of rebellion. Witnesses whom Wolsey brings against the Duke of Buckingham claim he is conspiring to take the throne, yet Buckingham seems innocent as he goes to his death.

Henry is also without a male heir. After meeting the beautiful Anne Boleyn, he says that he suspects his current marriage to Katherine, with whom he has one surviving daughter, is invalid. Katherine, meanwhile, glows with such splendid integrity that actresses have long desired the role. She advocates for the people, suspects the witnesses against Buckingham, and eloquently defends her conduct as Henry’s wife.

This edition includes:
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Barbara A. Mowat

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 8, 2016
ISBN9781501149986
Author

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

Read more from William Shakespeare

Related to Henry VIII

Related ebooks

Performing Arts For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Henry VIII

Rating: 3.3278145430463577 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

151 ratings7 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Henry 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 stars
    5/5
    The 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: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Henry 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: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    34 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: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Shakespeare'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 stars
    2/5
    Read 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 stars
    2/5
    Well 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.

Book preview

Henry VIII - William Shakespeare

About this eBook

This eBook contains special symbols that are important for reading and understanding the text. In order to view them correctly, please activate your device’s Publisher Font or Original font setting; use of optional fonts on your device may result in missing, or incorrect, special symbols.

Also, please keep in mind that Shakespeare wrote his plays and poems over four hundred years ago, during a time when the English language was in many ways different than it is today. Because the built-in dictionary on many devices is designed for modern English, be advised that the definitions it provides may not apply to the words as Shakespeare uses them. Whenever available, always check the glosses linked to the text for a proper definition before consulting the built-in dictionary.

THE NEW FOLGER LIBRARY

SHAKESPEARE

Designed to make Shakespeare’s great plays available to all readers, the New Folger Library edition of Shakespeare’s plays provides accurate texts in modern spelling and punctuation, as well as scene-by-scene action summaries, full explanatory notes, many pictures clarifying Shakespeare’s language, and notes recording all significant departures from the early printed versions. Each play is prefaced by a brief introduction, by a guide to reading Shakespeare’s language, and by accounts of his life and theater. Each play is followed by an annotated list of further readings and by a Modern Perspective written by an expert on that particular play.

Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.

Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is a general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare and of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.

Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is a privately funded research library dedicated to Shakespeare and the civilization of early modern Europe. It was founded in 1932 by Henry Clay and Emily Jordan Folger, and incorporated as part of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, one of the nation’s oldest liberal arts colleges, from which Henry Folger had graduated in 1879. In addition to its role as the world’s preeminent Shakespeare collection and its emergence as a leading center for Renaissance studies, the Folger Shakespeare Library offers a wide array of cultural and educational programs and services for the general public.

EDITORS

BARBARA A. MOWAT

Director of Research emerita

Folger Shakespeare Library

PAUL WERSTINE

Professor of English

King’s University College at Western University, Canada

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their composition more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process of taking up Shakespeare, finding our own thoughts and feelings in language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason, new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These expertly edited texts are presented as a resource for study, artistic exploration, and enjoyment. As a new generation of readers engages Shakespeare in eBook form, they will encounter the classic texts of the New Folger Editions, with trusted notes and up-to-date critical essays available at their fingertips. Now readers can enjoy expertly edited, modern editions of Shakespeare anywhere they bring their e-reading devices, allowing readers not simply to keep up, but to engage deeply with a writer whose works invite us to think, and think again.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is the single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger either in person or online, where a range of physical and digital resources exists to supplement the material in these texts. I commend to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

Michael Witmore

Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

Contents

Editors’ Preface

Shakespeare’s Henry VIII

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: Henry VIII

Shakespeare’s Life

Shakespeare’s Theater

The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays

An Introduction to This Text

Characters in the Play

Henry VIII

Text of the Play with Commentary

Act 1

Prologue

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 5

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Epilogue

Longer Notes

Textual Notes

Appendix on Authorship

Henry VIII: A Modern Perspective

by Barbara A. Mowat

Further Reading

Key to Famous Lines and Phrases

Commentary

Act 1

Prologue

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 5

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Epilogue

Editors’ Preface

In recent years, ways of dealing with Shakespeare’s texts and with the interpretation of his plays have been undergoing significant change. This edition, while retaining many of the features that have always made the Folger Shakespeare so attractive to the general reader, at the same time reflects these current ways of thinking about Shakespeare. For example, modern readers, actors, and teachers have become interested in the differences between, on the one hand, the early forms in which Shakespeare’s plays were first published and, on the other hand, the forms in which editors through the centuries have presented them. In response to this interest, we have based our edition on what we consider the best early printed version of a particular play (explaining our rationale in a section called An Introduction to This Text) and have marked our changes in the text—unobtrusively, we hope, but in such a way that the curious reader can be aware that a change has been made and can consult the Textual Notes to discover what appeared in the early printed version.

Current ways of looking at the plays are reflected in our brief introductions, in many of the commentary notes, in the annotated lists of Further Reading, and especially in each play’s Modern Perspective, an essay written by an outstanding scholar who brings to the reader his or her fresh assessment of the play in the light of today’s interests and concerns.

As in the Folger Library General Reader’s Shakespeare, which the New Folger Library Shakespeare replaces, we include explanatory notes designed to help make Shakespeare’s language clearer to a modern reader, and we hyperlink the notes to the lines that they explain. We also follow the earlier edition in including illustrations—of objects, of clothing, of mythological figures—from books and manuscripts in the Folger Shakespeare Library collection. We provide fresh accounts of the life of Shakespeare, of the publishing of his plays, and of the theaters in which his plays were performed, as well as an introduction to the text itself. We also include a section called Reading Shakespeare’s Language, in which we try to help readers learn to break the code of Elizabethan poetic language.

For each section of each volume, we are indebted to a host of generous experts and fellow scholars. The Reading Shakespeare’s Language sections, for example, could not have been written had not Arthur King, of Brigham Young University, and Randal Robinson, author of Unlocking Shakespeare’s Language, led the way in untangling Shakespearean language puzzles and shared their insights and methodologies generously with us. Shakespeare’s Life profited by the careful reading given it by the late S. Schoenbaum; Shakespeare’s Theater was read and strengthened by Andrew Gurr, John Astington, and William Ingram; and The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays is indebted to the comments of Peter W. M. Blayney. We, as editors, take sole responsibility for any errors in our editions.

We are grateful to the authors of the Modern Perspectives; to the Huntington and Newberry Libraries for fellowship support; to King’s University College for the grants it has provided to Paul Werstine; to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which provided him with a Research Time Stipend for 1990–91; to R. J. Shroyer of the University of Western Ontario for essential computer support; to the Folger Institute’s Center for Shakespeare Studies for its sponsorship of a workshop on Shakespeare’s Texts for Students and Teachers (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and led by Richard Knowles of the University of Wisconsin), a workshop from which we learned an enormous amount about what is wanted by college and high-school teachers of Shakespeare today; to Alice Falk for her expert copyediting; and especially to Stephen Llano, our production editor at Washington Square Press. Among the texts we consulted, we found Gordon McMullan’s Arden King Henry VIII (2000) particularly helpful.

Our biggest debt is to the Folger Shakespeare Library: to Michael Witmore, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, who brings to our work a gratifying enthusiasm and vision; to Gail Kern Paster, Director of the Library from 2002 until July 2011, whose interest and support have been unfailing and whose scholarly expertise continues to be an invaluable resource; and to Werner Gundersheimer, the Library’s Director from 1984 to 2002, who made possible our edition; to Deborah Curren-Aquino, who provides extensive editorial and production support; to Jean Miller, the Library’s former Art Curator, who combs the Library holdings for illustrations, and to Julie Ainsworth, Head of the Photography Department, who carefully photographs them; to Peggy O’Brien, former Director of Education at the Folger and now Director of Education Programs at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who gave us expert advice about the needs being expressed by Shakespeare teachers and students (and to Martha Christian and other master teachers who used our texts in manuscript in their classrooms); to Allan Shnerson and Mary Bloodworth for their expert computer support; to the staff of the Academic Programs Division, especially Solvei Robertson (whose help is crucial), Liz Pohland, Mimi Godfrey, Kathleen Lynch, Carol Brobeck, Owen Williams, Virginia Millington, and Karen Rogers; and, finally, to the generously supportive staff of the Library’s Reading Room.

Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine

Shakespeare’s Henry VIII

In Henry VIII, the last of his plays about English history, Shakespeare presents monarchy in a state of crisis.I Noblemen are embattled with the enormously powerful Lord Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey, as both parties level charges of treason against each other almost indiscriminately. Wolsey, without the king’s knowledge, has taxed the people to the point of rebellion. Yet the politics of the play are so subtle that the true cause of this crisis is not clear. In the case of the duke of Buckingham, for example, witnesses brought before Henry by Cardinal Wolsey claim that the duke, deceived by the prophecies of an evil monk, is conspiring to usurp Henry’s throne. Nonetheless, as Buckingham goes to his death for treason, he seems the innocent victim of suborned testimony. Perhaps, then, the root of the crisis is Henry’s failure to recognize Wolsey’s exploitation of the king’s favor, which, we learn later, has enabled him to amass a huge fortune through extortion and to feed his own pride and spite. Or perhaps the crisis arises from the ambition of noblemen who would strip Henry and his heirs of the throne.

The monarchy also faces a succession crisis, for Henry is without a male heir. Though Henry’s queen, Katherine, has been pregnant many times, all but one of the pregnancies have resulted in miscarriages or in infants who died soon after birth. Worse, the single survivor is the girl Mary. After meeting the young and beautiful Anne Bullen, one of Katherine’s ladies-in-waiting, Henry says that he is tormented by the suspicion that God has denied him a male heir because his marriage to Katherine—the widow of his brother—is invalid. The royal marriage begins to come apart. Again the precise nature of the crisis is put in question. Is Henry indeed experiencing a crisis of conscience about the sanctity of his marriage, or is he experiencing a crisis of desire provoked by the opportunity to take the young and beautiful Anne as a new wife and queen?

Whatever the ethics of Shakespeare’s Henry, Katherine’s integrity glows so splendidly in the play’s action and dialogue that her role has long been coveted by actors. She first takes the stage as the advocate for all the English people crushed by Wolsey’s oppressive taxes, and then she is properly suspicious, as Henry is not, of the motives of the witnesses who send Buckingham to his death. Her fierce opposition to Wolsey is repeatedly justified by the play’s depiction of the cardinal’s vices. When she is summoned to the church court that is deliberating on the propriety of her marriage, her defense of her conduct as Henry’s wife is resounding in its eloquence. She has been admired for centuries by readers and playgoers alike.

After you have read the play, we invite you to turn to the essay, "Henry VIII: A Modern Perspective," by Barbara A. Mowat of the Folger Shakespeare Library, contained within this eBook.


I. For our use of the name Shakespeare in this edition, see our Appendix on Authorship.

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: Henry VIII

For many people today, reading Shakespeare’s language can be a problem—but it is a problem that can be solved. (For our use of the name Shakespeare in this play, see our Appendix on Authorship.) Those who have studied Latin (or even French or German or Spanish), and those who are used to reading poetry, will have little difficulty understanding the language of poetic drama. Others, though, need to develop the skills of untangling unusual sentence structures and of recognizing and understanding poetic compressions, omissions, and wordplay. And even those skilled in reading unusual sentence structures may have occasional trouble with Shakespeare’s words. More than four hundred years of static—caused by changes in language and in life—intervene between his speaking and our hearing. Most of his immense vocabulary is still in use, but a few of his words are no longer used and many of his words now have meanings quite different from those they had in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the theater, most of these difficulties are solved for us by actors who study the language and articulate it for us so that the essential meaning is heard—or, when combined with stage action, is at least felt. When we are reading on our own, we must do what each actor does: go over the lines (often with a dictionary close at hand) until the puzzles are solved and the lines yield up their poetry and the characters speak in words and phrases that are, suddenly, rewarding and wonderfully memorable.

Shakespeare’s Words

As you begin to read the opening scenes of a Shakespeare play, you may notice occasional unfamiliar words. Some are unfamiliar simply because we no longer use them. In the early scenes of Henry VIII, for example, one finds the words keech (i.e., a lump of congealed fat), otherwhere (i.e., elsewhere), outworths (i.e., is more valuable than), and unpartial (i.e., impartial). Words of this kind are explained in notes to the text and will become familiar the more Shakespeare plays you read.

In Henry VIII, as in all of Shakespeare’s writing, more problematic are the words that are still in use but that now have different meanings. In the opening scenes of Henry VIII, for example, the word guarded is used where we would say trimmed, sad where we would say serious, morrow where we would say morning, and deceived where we would say disappointed. Again, such words will be explained in the notes to the text, but they, too, will become familiar as you continue to read Shakespeare’s language.

Some words are strange not because of the static introduced by changes in language over the past centuries but because these are words that Shakespeare is using to build a dramatic world that has its own space, time, and history. In the opening scene of Henry VIII, for example, the dramatist quickly constructs the court of this early-sixteenth-century English monarch in which courtiers of different backgrounds compete for places on the king’s honorable board of council. There are courtiers propped by ancestors, those who have done high feats for the crown, and those allied to eminent assistants. In their struggle for honor, they accuse their rivals of fierce vanities, malice, insolence, device, and practice. Such language quickly constructs Henry VIII’s court; the words and the world they create will become increasingly familiar as you get further into the play.

Shakespeare’s Sentences

In an English sentence, meaning is quite dependent on the place given each word. The dog bit the boy and The boy bit the dog mean very different things, even though the individual words are the same. Because English places such importance on the positions of words in sentences, on the way words are arranged, unusual arrangements can puzzle a reader. Shakespeare frequently shifts his sentences away from normal English arrangements—often in order to create the rhythm he seeks, sometimes to use a line’s poetic rhythm to emphasize a particular word, sometimes to give a character his or her own speech patterns or to allow the character to speak in a special way. When we attend a good performance of the play, the actors will have worked out the sentence structures and will articulate the sentences so that the meaning is clear. When reading the play, we need to do as the actor does: that is, when puzzled by a character’s speech, check to see if words are being presented in an unusual sequence.

Often Shakespeare rearranges subjects and verbs (e.g., instead of He goes we find Goes he). In Henry VIII, Buckingham uses such a construction in explaining why Charles the Holy Roman Emperor fears the English-French treaty—"from this league / Peeped harms that menaced him" (1.1.213–14). So does Lovell when he later says "so run the conditions (1.3.31). The normal order would be harms peeped and the conditions run. Shakespeare also frequently places the object before the subject and verb (e.g., instead of I hit him, we might find Him I hit). Buckingham provides an example of this inversion when he says all this business / Our reverend cardinal carried (1.1.119–20), and the king another example when he says of Buckingham’s surveyor that the treasons of his master / He shall again relate (1.2.7–8). The normal order would be our cardinal carried this business and he shall relate the treasons."

Inversions are not the only unusual sentence structures in Shakespeare’s language. Often in his sentences words that would normally appear together are separated from each other. Again, this is commonly done to create a particular rhythm or to stress a particular word, or else to draw attention to a needed piece of information. Take, for example, Norfolk’s Today the French, / All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods, / Shone down the English (1.1.24–26). Here the subject (the French) is separated from its verb (shone) by the subject’s three modifiers: All clinquant [glittering], all in gold, and like heathen gods. As Norfolk’s purpose is to describe to Buckingham the splendor of the ceremonies at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, these modifiers have an importance that allows them briefly to shoulder aside the verb. Or take Buckingham’s accusation against Wolsey for prompting Henry unwisely to sign a treaty:

                            This holy fox,

Or wolf, or both—for he is equal rav’nous

As he is subtle, and as prone to mischief

As able to perform ’t, his mind and place

Infecting one another, yea reciprocally—

Only to show his pomp as well in France

As here at home, suggests the King our master

To this last costly treaty[.]

(1.1.188–95)

Here the subject and verb (This holy fox . . . suggests) are separated by a coordinate conjunction and a noun (or wolf ), another conjunction and an appositive (or both), then a balanced subordinate clause (for he is equal rav’nous / As he is subtle, and as prone to mischief / As able to perform ’t), then an absolute construction (his mind and place / Infecting one another, yea reciprocally), and finally an infinitive (Only to show his pomp as well in France / As here at home). This pileup of interruptions emphasizes Buckingham’s almost overmastering contempt for Wolsey’s pride and fear of his cunning malice. In order to create sentences that seem more like the English of everyday speech, one can rearrange the words, putting together the word clusters (This holy fox suggests the king to this treaty, for he is equal ravenous . . .). The result will usually be an increase in clarity but a loss of rhythm or a shift in emphasis.

Often in Henry VIII, rather than separating basic sentence elements, Shakespeare simply holds them back, delaying them until other material to which he wants to give greater emphasis has been presented. He puts this kind of construction in the mouth of Buckingham to stress how the character missed all that took place at the Field of the Cloth of Gold: All the whole time / I was my chamber’s prisoner (1.1.17–18). The basic sentence elements (I was) are here withheld for a moment as Buckingham indicates the length of the sickness that kept him from appearing in public;

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1