King John/Henry VIII

by William Shakespeare, William H. Matchett, Sylvan Barnet (Editor)

Two of Shakespeare's important and illuminating history plays in a comprehensive and scholarly update. This edition includes a discussion and criticism of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater by outstanding scholars past and present, stage histories of notable actors, directors, and producers, and clear, readable text and commentaries.

Genres: Shakespeare, Classics, Plays, Drama, Theatre, History, Ebooks

512 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 6, 1986

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Daniel Chaikin]

I read both plays in 2022. They are reviewed separately below

30. King John by William Shakespeare
published: originally performed 1595. The signet classic originally dates from 1966, with 1989 & 2004 updates.
format: 215 pages within this King John/Henry VIII combined Signet Classic paperback
acquired: November read: May 18 – Jun 19
time reading: 11:55, 3.4 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic Drama theme: Shakespeare
locations: England and France
about the author: April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616

Editors
William H. Matchett – editing and introduction, 1966, 1989
Sylvan Barnett – series editor, contributions 1966, 1989, 2004
Sources
Raphael Holinshed – from Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1587
Edward Hall – from The Union Of The Two Noble Families Of Lancaster And York, 1550 (1548)
John Foxe – from Acts and Monuments of the Christian Martyr, 1597
Commentaries
Donald A. Stauffer - from Shakespeare's World of Images the Development of His Moral Ideas, 1949
Harold Clarke Goddard – from The Meaning of Shakespeare, 1951
Muriel St. Clare Byrne – from The Shakespeare Season at … Stratford-Upon-Avon, 1957, from Shakespeare Quarterly VIII (1957)
Alan C. Dessen – Deborah Warner’s Stratford-Upon-Avon Production (1988), from ”Shakespeare on Stage: Exciting Shakespeare in 1988”, Shakespeare Quarterly 40:2, (1989)
Sylvan Barnett – King John on Stage and Screen, 1966, 1989, 2004

Litsy post:
Mad world! Mad Kings! WS‘s least popular history rewards attention. Ok, King John‘s nephew comes to an awkward end. But the play looks at political expediency, a desperate king of iffy legitimacy invaded by the French. And, in place of a wise fool we have the Bastard, the perfect king if only. And he can express himself…and he‘s got a pretty good speech writer.

King John is tough because of its convoluted plot. This is partially because the historical king, who ruled 1199-1216, had a really complicated life. He not only signed the Magna Carta, but apparently had some anger and management issues. He's remembered for losing his French territories, murdering his nephew Arthur, getting excommunicated, losing support of the English nobility and getting invaded by France. Not a good track record.

Shakespeare has to step through this carefully. He skips the Magna Carta. He handles the nephew's death in a strange not-murdered manner. But he covers the rest in a manner. He adds in prominent roles for the mothers of John and Arthur. And he gives most of the lines to a semi-fictional bastard of the king before John, his older brother Richard I (the lionhearted). The Bastard, that's his stage identitiy, is a terrific character. He provides the comic commentary with brutal honesty (like a fool usually does), and he becomes John's righthand man, saving John from his incompetence. He plays perfect leader, potentially the perfect king, if only.

But, your eyes have probably glazed over because that's a mess of information. Here's the thing, the language is terrific, even for Shakespeare. It's full of wonderful, sometimes funny, lines, with many characters momentarily mastering the stage, before receding back into the obscuring plot.

So, an enjoyable mess.

21. Henry VIII by William Shakespeare
published: originally performed in 1613, and famous for causing the Globe Theatre to burn down. The signet classic originally dates from 1967, with a 1989 and 2004 update.
format: 208 pages within this King John/Henry VIII combined Signet Classic paperback
acquired: November read: Apr 10 – May 6 time reading: 8:03, 2.3 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: Classic Drama theme: Shakespeare
locations: London
about the author: April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616

Editors
S. Schoenbaum – editing and introduction, 1967, 1989
Sylvan Barnett – series editor, contributions 1966, 1989, 2004
Sources
Raphael Holinshed – from Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1587
John Foxe – from Acts and Monuments of the Christian Martyr, 1597
Commentaries
William Hazlitt - from Characters of Shakespeare's Plays , 2nd edition, 1818
Caroline Frances Eleanor Spurgeon – from Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us, 1935
G. Wilson Knight - A Note on Henry VIII from Shakespeare & Religion, 1967
Mark Van Doren - Henry VIII, from Shakespeare, 1939
Jane Lapotaire – Playing Katherine in the Vision Scene (4.2) of Henry VIII, from “Queen Katherine in Henry VIII”, in Players of Shakespeare 4 edited by Robert Smallwood, 1998
S. Schoenbaum – Henry VIII on Stage and Screen, 1967, 1989, with postscript by Sylvan Barnett, 2004.



I'm reading through all Shakespeare's plays with a group on Litsy, and this is their second to last play. (King John will be the last.) The plays that least interested the group are the ones left, and this play seems to get more commentary on the authorship than the play. Most people assume Shakespear only wrote parts, and that the majority was written by John Fletcher. This play has a different feel from other Shakespeare plays. It‘s verse, but there is a lot less compression and ambiguity. Instead it‘s kind of surprisingly clear. And I appreciated that. It's also well blended and mostly seamless.

The play is made of six semi-independent plot points from Henry's reign - the fall and execution of the Duke of Buckingham, the fall and divorce of Katherine, the fall of Wolsey, who is prominently corrupt and influential up to his fall, the marriage of Henry and Anne "Bullen", a challenge to Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury who is saved by Henry, and finally the birth of Elizabeth.

A play full of spectacle (this is the play that burned down the Globe with a rogue cannon spark), some parts work better than other on the page. I found Katherine terrific. And I really appreciated how Wolsey was handled - first at his peak, and then his fall and elegant exit. In his last scenes he looks back as his life's arc, his rise from a butcher's son to Henry's most powerful adviser, key builder of Oxford, and his fall. And advises Thomas Cromwell going forward. It's my favorite part of the play (I saw a relationship between this and Hilary Mantel's Wolsey). The play ends softly, the birth of Elizabeth lacking drama. So maybe imperfect, at least on the page, but I thought the good parts were very good and really enjoyed this.

[Melora · Rating 3 out of 5]

“King John was not a good man –
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with notes in the air –
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown....”

Long before I encountered King John in the tales of Robin Hood or in English history, I knew him from A.A. Milne's poem, “King John's Christmas,” which my mother had memorized when young and liked to recite for us. So John has never been one of those blurry, colorless kings for me. Milne's King John is just endearingly naughty, but, adding some historical details, we get a character who, while, no Richard III (Shakespeare's version, anyway), is bad enough – crafty and grasping – to be Interesting! Shakespeare's King John, though, is distinctly lacking in pizzazz. The character who lights up the stage is “the Bastard,” a fictional addition to the story who soliloquizes amusingly, punctures the pretensions of other characters as well as his own, and who serves as the stabilizing “last man standing” at the end. He's a little like Falstaff, and a little more like Hotspur (how's that for an odd combination?).

I read this in RSC edition, which bundles it with Henry VIII, and I was surprised to read in the Introduction that in the past this play, now fairly obscure, has been quite popular! A quotation from a letter by Jane Austen to her sister in 1811 notes her disappointment when a scheduled performance of King John is replaced by Hamlet, “a very unlucky change of the Play for this very night – Hamlet instead of King John.” The editor's explanation, that “the Victorians, with their penchant for sentiment, delighted in the pathos of the boy Arthur persuading Hubert not to burn out his eyes with hot irons,” hardly seems right, since Austen was neither sentimental nor Victorian. Still, though it can't hold a candle to Hamlet in my opinion (I'm sorry to disagree with Jane Austen), this beats the socks off, say, “Edward III.”

The Librivox recording of King John is exceptionally good, I think. The readers vary in talent, of course, but the leads are mostly excellent. Elizabeth Klett as the Bastard, John Fricker as King John, David Nicol as Lewis the Dauphin, and Arielle Lipshaw as Constance all stand out and bring passion and life to their roles. A good dramatic reading really adds tremendously to enjoyment of these plays, and the volunteers at Librivox do a noble service for frugal fans of Shakespeare.

In retrospect, I think that Milne, who was himself a playwright as well as the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, really did capture something of the indecisive, petulant character of Shakespeare's King John.

”King John was not a good man,
And no good friends had he.
He stayed in every afternoon...
But no one came to tea.”

I think the Bastard would have come, at least if he'd been assured a nice spread!

(Here's a link, if you'd like to read Milne's poem in full: http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-2/king_johns%...)

[Wesley Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read Henry VIII, so my review will solely focus on that play. I read this for a university course focusing on law and Shakespeare. So, my review will also focus on this element a little bit.

I found this play was more difficult to get into than some of the other Shakespeare plays I have read. I think it was because of the actual events and the naming of the characters. I found it very helpful to keep track of their positions as well as their names. Hence, calling a character "Norfolk" as opposed to "Duke of Norfolk" was confusing for me.

As far as the law goes, the most critical lawful section, in my opinion, is when Katherine is asking for a new and unbiased judge to analyze her case instead of Wolsey. She is denied a fair trial, which is illegal. She was a great and enjoyable character. She led me to recognize that Shakespeare often makes the lead female role of a play the most lawful. While there are some exceptions, this is the case with Portia, Emilia, and Paulina in The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Winter's Tale, respectively.

Overall, I enjoyed this play. It wasn't my favourite due to the confusion. But it did produce Katherine, who is one of my favourite Shakespeare characters in my studies thus far.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review covers only Henry VIII, since that of King John has been done in a separate edition....

Henry VIII:

Shakespeare and Fletcher's collaborative history of Henry VIII was written in early 1613 as a pageant for the royal wedding of James I's daughter, Princess Elizabeth, to Frederick the Elector Palatine of the Rhine in the Holy Roman Empire that February. As such, it is both a chronicle and a spectacle of entertainment. As such, it does some odd things with the colour of history, particularly in neutralising some of its threats (Henry's avarice, Anne's scheming), nullifying certain personalities (Anne Boleyn and Cromwell at 2%) and painting others with duplicitous complexion (Wolsey). Notably, it makes of Henry a thoughtful, politically astute King whose primary issue is... well, just that. But it also makes of Katherine of Aragon, in a role equal to that of Henry and Wolsey, something larger than all of them, even the King. And while the golden epitaphs of the successive monarchs rain down on the ending, the mind's eye is full of that Vision.

After Mantel's recent historical novels of this period - particularly Wolf Hall (2009), the first of her Cromwell trilogy - the play diminishes (almost eliminates) the roles of Thomas Cromwell, Thomas More, and especially Anne Boleyn. Other worthies, such as Thomas Audley, the new Chancellor after More's resignation (~1534/5), More having taken up the post after Wolsey's fall (d.1530), are compounded into the single role of Lord Chancellor. If you come to the play first, this will mean little; if you come to the play after Mantel's novel, the assignation of parts and their predominance will surprise, for Cromwell has but 2% of the piece, and the Chancellor but a peep. Also, considering the growing dominance of Anne Boleyn during this period, not developing her character (also 2%) seems a mark missed.

Anne also is presented in her first full scene (2.3) as both sympathetic to Katherine, now that the news is she will be dropped from her regal heights, and expressing relief that she herself were not a queen - all contrary to the scheming froward Howard Mantel paints her, in temperament like her uncle, the bellicose Norfolk (Thomas Howard).

However, the complexion of the play is the history of Henry VIII, after all, and Katherine has a role equal to the King's. It commences at the fulcrum of the great change which England underwent in the 1530s and the trigger of the Reformation: the renouncing of Papal Authority. Henry, determined to marry the next girl he fancied, creates laws to nullify his former marriage to Katherine of Aragon, and since she and her homeland Spain, and Rome, under Emperor Charles V (her nephew), were Catholic, two obstacles needed to be removed at once, potentially offending two of the other three great powers of Europe. Henry couldn't behead Katherine for fear of certain war, so he finds a way to imply that she was already married - to his brother Alfred (deceased) - after having spent considerable time 'proving' that they had not, in deed, been married, in order to first marry her.

The action commences after the cordial meeting of the kings of England and France (François I) in the English province of Calais, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a grand embassy and pageant sumptuously arranged and furnished by Cardinal Wolsey, which causes unrest among the nobles, who have to pay for it - with Anne hovering on the periphery. But in the play, Henry does not notice Anne until after the return from France. The timings do not align, but that is dramatic licence.

But the play also rewrites motives. The first inklings of Henry's want of separation from Katherine are ascribed to Wolsey, the hearsay goes, in revenge for the lack of a promised position by the Pope (a bolt-hole?; a shot at the Papacy?), or some such fault; yet Mantel has it that Henry instigated the drive to disavow his marriage, firstly through lack of a male heir by her, Henry's vocal reason of conscience in the play (2.4), secondly, because he fancied to move on to Anne. Indeed, the entire first act is abuzz with slander against Wolsey, personified by his slanderers as the Devil in carmine. That it was he who facilitated the alliance with Katherine, he who played diplomacy with the Emperor, he who facilitated the accord with France, seems to be dismissed by his detractors as of him having far too much power. His very first speech in his own defence (1,2.78-98) to Henry (of, as Lord Chancellor, instigating punitive taxation on the cloth-makers), as good as says that he is forgotten for what he has achieved and individually vilified for any seeming injustice via the King's Council. The truth is of course much more complicated, but as soon as Henry clapped eyes on Anne (after he had grown bored with her sister as his mistress), Katherine was sunk, and Wolsey must follow as arbitrator of Catholicism.

What is interesting is that it can be seen that Shakespeare seeded in his plays a certain sympathy for Catholicism, albeit disguised in general classical tropes and dramatic resolutions. In Pericles (1608), for example, in a post-Reformation world where Catholicism was interdicted, Pericles undergoes Purgatory for fourteen years before his own ‘resurrection’ in the mutual recognition scene with Marina (Per, 5.1). In the same play, Marina, sold from piracy into a brothel, rescues herself from stain by her saintly demeanour and argument, remaining virginal as the Virgin Mary, the figure most worshipped in Catholicism after God. Isabella in Measure For Measure (1604), one of the most principled, oppressed and attractive of all Shakespeare's characters, about to take her vows, but importuned by the Duke to be his wife, is virtually a saint, silenced, at the end. In the Winter's Tale (1611), Leontes likewise suffers for 16 years the loss of his wife and daughter, until reconciliation. Naturally, such extremes of moral purgation - crucial to the plays' dénouements - can be read without religious or specifically Catholic interpretation, but the echoes of interdicted symbols are there for us to see and raise our eyebrows at. Even more naturally, Shakespeare had to be clever in passing these signs off as classical romance tropes, should he have wished to signify such sympathies. But the inflections are there nonetheless. In this historic account of the birth of anti-Catholic measures, there are similar undertones.

The play as a whole is one of the easiest of Shakespeare's to read, and thus generally indicates that it has been tempered by John Fletcher, he who with Francis Beaumont wrote the classic prototypes of the Seventeenth Century tragicomedy, which bred the syncretic-genre romances that had up to this point occupied Shakespeare's last phase. The RSC introduction doesn't allocate which sections were written by whom, which is remiss, but they note that Fletcher wrote the final scene. The verse (98% of the play) feels very regular and exhibits a high degree of enjambment with a low degree of it end-stopped (and is thus non-lyrical), a characteristic of Shakespeare's late plays. Yet also, it does not shine as verse, aiming rather for a 'competent' representational verisimilitude of its history. Perhaps it is safest to say it is character- and event-led. There are no soul-quaking explosions such as Juliet's 'fiery steeds', nor Macbeth's 'Tomorrow', nor Richard II's star-torn pain: 'Ay, no; no, ay, for I must nothing be.' (4.1.195). No; here, we have competence, nothing greater. It was during a performance of this play that the cannons announcing the entrance of the King burnt down the Globe theatre in 1613. Certain it was not caused by the shooting stars of its langauge searing the indigo firmament.

Yet in its competence, it rings with a maturity. Katherine, the first of Henry's amorous victims, speaks her part well. In all accounts she comes across with dignity and even more with integrity, and the words put in her mouth plead her case articulately, making us grant her respect; whereas Anne comes across as such a little shrew, her part so small. However, there are oddities. Wolsey's disfavour with the King is ascribed to some bungling error whereby he presented his personal inventory and letters to the Pope in with a packet of business intended for the King, an inventory intended to demonstrate his ability to 'fee' his friends in Rome for Papal nomination. Whilst swearing his ever undying loyalty to the King, Wolsey has accidentally supplied the King with evidence otherwise, in his self-interest. It is further reported - by Norfolk, Suffolk etc. - that a letter to the Pope from Wolsey had miscarried into the King's hands whereby Wolsey urged the Papal court to delay their judgement on the authority for Henry's divorce with Katherine because Wolsey is against his new alliance with Anne Boleyn, thus hindering the King's process.

Whether or not these circumstances are as they were, there is enough evidence for Wolsey's fall - but to imply that either he or his secretary or servants (Cavendish, Wolsey), who were loyal to him, made such a grievous error is unacceptable. If these circumstances are true, someone meant him malice and effected the disclosure. Which, considering what we have learnt about Cromwell, is unlikely that it should pass his notice, as deliverer of the packet himself. Something does not add up here. Then again, Buckingham was sentenced to death on the hearsay of one of his servants - the prior premise established, then. So structurally, the issue stands up. With what we know of Wolsey and Cromwell, Cavendish et al in the Cardinal's retinue, it doesn't. But then again, 'All Is True'. Clearly, that title was meant to be ironic, since Henry was a terror of a despot who, through his capriciousness, allowed torture and promoted beheadings.

Yet more importantly, it brings a frisson of urgency to a play that hitherto has lacked fire - which is, after all, in all our minds, an essential property of our image of Henry VIII, who has till now been nothing but conciliatory, a side we do not really know him by. His politics were personal, even while he declared his prime motivation was delivering the realm a male heir. When the legal charge against Wolsey comes (in 3.2, the turning point of the play, in which Henry's marriage to Anne has also been mentioned), it is that of 'praemunire', the offence of recognising papal legal authority over that of the English monarch - a dissembling charge, since Wolsey had been tasked with arranging papal authority of Henry's divorce from Katherine, hence the arrival of the legate Cardinal Campeius. But it also harbingers the coming change from Catholicism to Protestantism of the Reformation, in a scene (5.2) where Henry supports his new Archbishop of Canterbury from challenges of heresy for his unorthodox views, notably from Gardiner, newly Bishop of Winchester (a nasty man in Mantel's work), who's eventual fall signals the changes.

So, with our contemporary corrections, or re-representations, the play offers the trigger of the Reformation, the falls of Buckingham, Wolsey and Katherine, the ascensions of Cranmer, Gardiner and Cromwell, a divorce and a marriage, a coronation and a christening, and a litter of litigations and schemes, pageants, masques, embassies, proper for the enormous pomp which surrounded Henry VIII. It references the 'gem' that was Elizabeth I (2.3.93), Anne's surviving child before the end of her brief three-year reign, and celebrates her coming with two scenes devoted to her christening by both the rude populace (5.3) and the nobles and clergy (5.4), whilst lavishly praising her successor, James I, born out of the ashes of that phoenix (5.4.44-60). It is therefore an encomium to royalty, with its pomp and pageants, concentration on monarchic supremacy and splendour. But does it harbour any secret message? A sympathy for lost Catholic ways and observances? Yes, it does. There are intimations in the encomium to Elizabeth, who, on her death will be taken up by the saints, a virgin (5.4.66).

Further, in a play with prolific stage directions (from the First Folio of 1623), we have enacted The Vision (4.2.88.SD), of Katherine's before her death, a dance of angelic forms paying obeisance to her. Katherine, the principal Catholic symbol in the play, with a principal role equal to the King, is honoured by a visitation of angels. Represented as a person of virtue and integrity throughout, she - not Henry VIII, not Anne Boleyn, not Cardinal Wolsey - is the person honoured by the play. The implications are obvious. The underlying message of the play, beneath the representation of history, is the mourning of the loss of a principal Catholic symbol. It may lie within a romantic trope within the genre of a history, but it is one of the purest moments of the play. If the content and tone do not explicitly impugn the King, or vilify Buckingham, nor condemn Wolsey, nor attack Anne, they reverence Katherine. While Katherine cannot be resurrected, like Thaisa (Pericles), like Innogen (Cymbeline), like Hermione (The Winter's Tale), of the romances, she is given the next best thing: she is canonised by Shakespeare.

As Trevor Nunn said in his programme notes to his 1969 production for the RSC: 'In the late plays grace is achieved through love' (King John and Henry VIII, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p.296). And in Henry VIII, Katherine is the keynote of both.

Favourite word: 'otherwhere'.

A note on the edition: RSC's combination of the two histories, King John (1595-7) and Henry VIII (1613) juxtapose an early and a late play which sit outside the two epic tetralogies of RII to H6. Both, as Jonathan Bate's introduction explains, are thus standalone chronicles and 'are deeply concerned with courtly political manoeuvring in the context of the heated religious debates about Catholicism and Protestantism, which constituted the great fissure within early modern English and European society and statecraft' (King John and Henry VIII, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p.1). This introduction, though, is too brief to give the colour of those histories, and while our background knowledge of the Tudor period has been greatly enriched by many novels (Gregory, Mantel) and TV series (BBC Shakespeare, Six Wives, Wolf Hall) and films (The Other Boleyn Girl, Anne of the Thousand Days, Elizabeth (I and II)) etc., our knowledge of the early part of the 13th century is remote and only really coloured by the chivalric legends of Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart.

While one advantage of reading the RSC's Macmillan series is the brevity of footnotes which aids the fluency of reading the play (where the Arden 3rd Series editions are useful for degree-level study, for example), as well as its comprehensive coverage of performances, a disadvantage is that, for plays which come across as leaving the impression of their oddness, as both these plays do, and, as in the case of the representation of Henry VIII, those which engender a lot of questions, greater analysis is wanted. As for King John, what there was, was sufficient for my interest (not a lot). But with Henry VIII, I wanted a far greater discussion that the cursory introductory section provided; I wanted an analysis of the representation of the key roles and events compared to some benchmark history.

The problem is that, once you've read Mantel's detailed and fiercely charactered historical novels of this period, which raise Anne Boleyn's story as high as Henry's, Wolsey's or More's (only Cromwell's naturally exceeding all the rest), you want an analysis of the way Anne Boleyn has been reduced to a whimpering cipher in the play, and Cromwell to a paltry jumped-up, wool-capped servant. Only Katherine shines brighter in this play than her picture in Mantel's narrative. It would have been great to have had a deeper analysis of the representation of these vibrant characters of our history. Some of it is interestingly covered by the long section on modern performances, particularly the discussion by the two creative directors of RSC productions, Doran (1996) and Thompson (2006). Otherwise, the RSC series fits my purpose almost every time, for casual reading, and the physical books themselves are the best quality paperbacks that will last five generations.

[Waleed · Rating 3 out of 5]

This RSC/Macmillan edition has a bewildering amount of introductions, critical apparatus, notes, appendices, and interviews. Some of this stuff is helpful and some rather eccentric. Little thought has been given to its structuring, and at times I was using three bookmarks just to keep up.

As a volume, it is a mess. The book looks like it was typeset on Microsoft Word and printed on a basic office laserjet. The copyright page states that “this book is printed on paper suitable for recycling.” A bit odd. I buy books to keep, not to dispose. As Heine might have said, “Where they recycle books they will in the end recycle human beings too.”

As for the plays, King John is excellent but Henry VIII is a big disappointment. It’s a late work as weak and diminished as Led Zeppelin’s Coda or Jay Z’s Magna Carta.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually don’t read longer, academic introductions to Shakespeare’s plays but I am glad I read the one for Henry VIII. It was so different to read from other plays I am glad I knew about the co-authorship.

It was interesting to read the part of Katherine in multiple ways since it could be treated in such varied ways that it changes the feeling of her part. One of the things I love of plays!

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat disappointing anthology but for the great academic criticism packaged with this edition. Both plays are considered two of Shakespeare's poorest plays, and I could not agree more.

[Elizabeth]

Henry VIII ~ 3 Stars

[Lloyd Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the same King, or Prince, John that is ridiculed in the justifiably popular Errol Flynn movie "Robin Hood." But though Shakespeare refers to Robin Hood in some of his plays, he resists cluttering up his history plot with this dashing folk hero.

Here's what George Orwell said about King John: "When I had read it as a boy it seemed to me archaic, something dug out of a history book and not having anything to do with our own time. Well, when I saw it acted, what with its intrigues and double-crossings, non-aggression pacts, quislings, people changing sides in the middle of a battle, and what-not, it seemed to me extraordinarily up to date."

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review for Henry VII

A sumptuous look at the intricacies of monarchy. It's an inside-the-chambers look at the pomp, processions and power-plays of royalty.

Our titular king is Henry VIII, and Shakespeare's play covers the period that finds him moving from wife one, Katharine, to wife two, the unlucky Anne Bullen. As this takes place, the King's advisors jockey for position, setting up one another for beheadings and ruin.

A large part of the story examines how power twists law as Henry gathers learned councils to accomplish his goal of having his marriage annulled. Katharine was first married to his brother, and that's enough to invalidate the match...once enough pressure has been applied. His men--and allies from Rome--call her to take part in the proceedings, but she expresses the only power she has in refusing to lend them legitimacy, although this proves to be a hollow, short-lived victory.

"It seems the marriage with his brother's wife has crept too near his conscience," one character says.

"No, his conscience has crept too near another lady," another famously answers.

The play moves through Anne's coronation, capturing the extravagance of her new position. From there it moves to the seeds of England's Protestant reformation, as the King stands by his Archbishop of Canterbury, heading off the kind of conspiracy that brought down some of his men earlier in the play. It's a sign of the King's new comfort in managing his power.

The play has strong moments, although the language lacks the consistent fluidity of Shakespeare's best work. It's also a bit choppy in its pacing; each act seems to handle a different cast of characters, and there isn't a consistent drive or motivation linking the passages. Henry wants to divorce his wife while she doesn't want to be disgraced, but this dispute seems cool and bloodless, even as the other deadly machinations ultimately prove meaningless from our perspective.

In a way, the play mirrors the playacting of authority, the need to embody firm standards and expectations...or at least to appear to adhere to them until they can be safely discarded. It's interesting through that lens, but it's probably the weakest of Shakespeare's histories.

"O how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!
There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have:
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again."

[Bing · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always find it difficult to decide how many stars to give Shakespeare. Um, he's The Bard! King John is one of his shorter, based-on-real-history plays. He had some political points to make and so dramatized the story to allow for these things and make it more relatable and entertaining for his audience. The play contains some amazing dialogues between Constance and Elinor (Eleanor). The Bastard - a complete fabrication of a character - does an excellent job providing necessary perspective to the action.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Henry VIII!

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

King John only

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 stars for King John and none for Henry VIII bye