King John & Henry VIII (50 page)
Read King John & Henry VIII Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
Lines 1–148:
Cranmer arrives to see the Privy Council but finds the door shut against him. The king’s physician passes and informs the king. Henry views the scene from above, displeased by this treatment
of the archbishop. A table is brought in and the council members take their seats before Cranmer is finally called in. The Lord Chancellor accuses him of teaching “new opinions, / Divers and dangerous, which are heresies.” When Cranmer asks to see his accusers face-to-face, he’s told that’s impossible because of his position as a member of the Privy Council. Gardiner says the king and the council intend to commit him to the Tower where as a “private man again,” he may face his accusers. Gardiner is his severest critic, but Cromwell thinks he’s “too sharp” and that they should treat the archbishop with respect. The Chancellor calls them to order and all agree that Cranmer should be taken to the Tower as a prisoner until they know the king’s wishes.
Lines 149–250:
The Guard is called and when Cranmer is assured there is no alternative, he produces Henry’s ring, taking his case out of their hands and placing it directly before the king. They recognize the ring and the implication that Cranmer enjoys the king’s support and try to blame each other for starting the action against him. Cromwell tells them it serves them right for trying to manufacture a case against Cranmer, whose “honesty” is well known. Henry enters and Gardiner immediately flatters his wisdom and religious sense and tries to win him to their side. Henry, however, tells him he has “a cruel nature” and that he thought better of them than to leave the archbishop waiting outside the door like a servant. He commands them to embrace Cranmer and treat him with respect in future. Henry then asks him to stand as godfather to the new princess before insisting once more that they all embrace Cranmer, starting with Gardiner, who does so. This causes Cranmer to weep, thereby confirming his virtue in Henry’s mind. He tells them to hurry to the baby’s christening. Now he has made them friends, they must remain so, which will strengthen him and honor them.
An enthusiastic crowd has gathered outside the gate of the royal court for the christening. The people are noisy and restless and the
Porter and then the Lord Chamberlain try to calm them and make way for the procession.
A magnificent procession enters for the christening. The Garter King-at-Arms asks heaven to “send prosperous life, long, and ever happy, to the high and mighty Princess of England.” Cranmer wishes the king and queen the same and goes on to prophesy that the princess will become “A pattern to all princes.” She will be virtuous and learned: “She shall be loved and feared” and bring the nation peace, which will be continued by her successor. He foretells her long life and eventual death, “yet a virgin.” Henry is delighted and announces the day shall be a “holiday.”
The Epilogue fears the play won’t have pleased everyone. Those who come to rest and sleep will have been woken by the trumpets, while others who come to hear the city abused will also have been disappointed. So the play must be left to the judgment of good women, since they’ve shown them one (although her identity is ambiguous). If they smile and judge the play a success, then the men will too, since it’s bad luck not to do so when their ladies “bid ’em clap.”
IN PERFORMANCE:
THE RSC AND BEYOND
FOUR CENTURIES OF
HENRY VIII
: AN OVERVIEW
Shakespeare and Fletcher’s late play about the reign of Henry VIII enjoyed great popularity historically and hence has a complete and continuous stage history. Originally designed perhaps to celebrate the marriage of James I’s daughter, another Princess Elizabeth, to Frederick V, the Elector Palatine, in the summer of 1613, it has been regularly revived for spectacular royal occasions ever since. Evidence of its early performance and reception exists in several accounts recording the disastrous performance on 29 June 1613, when one of the cannons set the Globe’s thatch alight. Sir Henry Wotton’s letter of 2 July 1613 offers a detailed account of its staging, as well as voicing his concerns about its manner of representing “greatness” on stage, making it “very familiar, if not ridiculous”:
I will entertain you at the present with what happened this week at the Banks side. The King’s players had a new play called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which 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 awhile to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making a Masque at the Cardinal Wolsey’s house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff, wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but idle smoak, and their eyes more
attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrick, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with a bottle of ale.
64
Despite this setback, the play remained popular, due to its combination of the treatment of relatively recent history and gorgeous spectacle. It was revived at the rebuilt Globe at the request of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, on 29 July 1628.
After the Restoration and reopening of the theaters in 1660,
Henry VIII
was one of the few Shakespearean plays to be regularly staged. Bookseller and actor Thomas Davies records how Thomas Betterton was coached in the part of Henry by William Davenant, a godson of Shakespeare’s, who had been instructed by John Lowin, a member of the King’s Men. John Downes, Davenant’s company bookkeeper records that Betterton was “all new Cloath’d in proper Habits” for the role.
65
According to William Winter, “Betterton’s performance was accounted essentially royal, and the example of stalwart predominance, regal dignity, and bluff humour thus set has ever since been followed.”
66
He was succeeded in the part by Barton Booth, Charles Macklin, and James Quin, suggesting that Henry was regarded as the star part, although Colley Cibber’s Wolsey was noted and praised.
Cibber mounted productions at Drury Lane between 1721 and 1733. His 1727 revival included a notable coronation procession at the beginning of Act 4, designed to coincide with the coronation of George II. David Garrick’s 1762 staging for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane was similarly spectacular, boasting a cast of more than a hundred and thirty for the coronation scene. Emphasis on the pageantry of the play necessitated cuts to the text, a practice that continued as elaborate spectacle came to dominate productions. At the same time, criticism of the play’s language and structure were voiced.
67
In a discussion of John Philip Kemble’s 1811 production, the
Times
’ critic suggests that Shakespeare had been called on to create
a piece of hackwork, designed to “palliate … adultery,” and “obscure” Katherine’s memory and Henry’s “gross caprices”:
Processions and banquets find their natural place in a work of this kind; and without the occasional display of well-spread tables, well-lighted chandeliers, and well-rouged maids of honour, the audience could not possibly sustain the accumulated
ennui
of
Henry the Eighth
.
68
The reviewer adds that “The banquet deserved all the praise that can be given to costly elegance. It was the most dazzling stage exhibition that we have ever seen,” and goes on to praise the performances of Kemble and his sister, Sarah Siddons: “If Mrs. Siddons and Mr. Kemble desired to show the versatility of their powers, they could not have chosen more suitable parts than Katherine and Wolsey.”
69
It became one of Siddons’ best-known and loved roles:
The grandeur of the actress as Queen Katherine, her air of suffering and persecution, enlisted a new order of sympathy, and the well-known denunciation of the Cardinal, like her famous scene in Macbeth, became inseparably associated with
herself
.
70
Katherine and Wolsey were now seen as the leading roles and the first three acts alone were performed. Edmund Kean’s Wolsey was highly praised in his 1822 and 1830 revivals. William Charles Macready played Wolsey from 1823 to 1847 in productions notable for the great actresses who played Katherine, including Helen Faucit, Charlotte Cushman, and Fanny Kemble. For the royal “command” performance of Acts 1–3 at Drury Lane on 10 July 1847, Macready played Wolsey to Charlotte Cushman’s Katherine and Samuel Phelps’s Henry, in the presence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Phelps himself played Wolsey in his stagings at Sadler’s Wells in 1845 and 1848, after which date he included Act 4: the staging on 16 January 1850 was given to help raise funds for the Great Exhibition of 1851. He revived the play another four times between 1854 and 1862. By far the most successful Victorian production, however, was Charles Kean’s 1855 spectacular with himself as Wolsey and his
wife, Ellen Tree, as Katherine. The twenty-three-year-old Lewis Carroll recorded in his diary that it was “the greatest theatrical treat I ever had or ever expect to have—I had no idea that anything so superb as the scenery and dresses was ever to be seen on the stage.”
71
Kean retained most of the first three acts, “but to allow time for the many processions and tableaux, which included an actual coronation, Acts 4 and 5 contained little else.”
72
It was Katherine’s vision of Act 4 Scene 2 that seems to have produced the most striking effect:
But oh, that exquisite vision of Queen Catherine! I almost held my breath to watch; the illusion is perfect, and I felt as if in a dream all the time it lasted. It was like a delicious reverie, or the most beautiful poetry. This is the true end and object of acting—to raise the mind above itself, and out of its petty everyday cares—never shall I forget that wonderful evening, that exquisite vision—sunbeams broke in through the roof and gradually revealed two angelic forms, floating in front of the carved work of the ceiling: the column of sunbeams shone down upon the sleeping queen, and gradually down it floated a troop of angelic forms, transparent, and carrying palm branches in their hands: they waved these over the sleeping queen, with oh! such a sad and solemn grace.— So could I fancy (if the thought be not profane) would real angels seem to our mortal vision …
73
The top angel in the vision was Ellen Terry.
74
Kean’s last performance on the London stage was as Wolsey on 29 August 1859. Phelps too made his final appearance in the part in the revival at the Royal Aquarium in 1878 when he “all but collapsed at the end of his final speeches” and had to be “helped off stage when the curtain fell.”
75
In his stage history, George C. D. Odell suggests that Henry Irving’s production at the Lyceum in 1892 was “Undoubtedly the greatest—if not the only—Shakespearian ‘spectacle’ that Irving ever attempted.”
76
The richness and accuracy of costumes and sets were much admired, as were the performances of the strong cast. Irving’s was an “original conception” of Cardinal Wolsey that “differed
radically from that of most of his famous predecessors, and constantly challenged attack and admiration. Certainly it was not the Wolsey of tradition, but forceful intellect was in every fiber of it.”
77
Ellen Terry’s Katherine was similarly admired: “It had not the somber touch of tragedy that should ennoble it, but it was womanly to the core and thoroughly royal in deportment.”
78
Despite his innovative interpretation, Irving continued the tradition of giving most of the first three acts, but only those parts of the final two that added to the spectacle. Herbert Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty’s Theatre was similarly cavalier in his handling of the text, justifying his decision in an essay of 1920: “
Henry VIII
is largely a pageant play. As such it was conceived and written; as such did we endeavour to present it to the public.” For this reason, “It was thought desirable to omit almost in their entirety those portions of the play which deal with the Reformation, being as they are practically devoid of dramatic interest and calculated, as they are, to weary an audience.”
79
Tree argues this practice was vindicated by the Prologue’s reference to “two short hours.” Nevertheless reviews make it clear that the drastic cutting of the text did not have the desired effect of speeding the production up:
Much cut, for Tree removed the whole of the last act and ended at Anne Boleyn’s coronation, the play nevertheless occupied four hours: the stage staff of His Majesty’s, trained though it was, had to toil frantically to construct Wolsey’s ostentatious palace, the hall in Blackfriars where Katherine was tried, and Westminster Abbey itself.
80
Despite this, Tree’s production enjoyed tremendous success, running for a record-breaking 254 performances until 8 April 1911 and earning him this plaudit from
Sporting Life
: “He has achieved that which a few years ago was considered impossible—he has made Shakespeare popular.”
81
A twenty-five-minute silent film of this production was made, but all copies were sadly destroyed after six weeks of special cinematic exhibition.
Early-twentieth-century productions continued the tradition of spectacular stagings. Ben Greet’s for the tercentenary celebrations of Shakespeare’s death at the Stratford Memorial Theatre and the Old Vic was revived two years later in London with Russell Thorndike as Wolsey and Sybil Thorndike as Katherine. Tree had cut the last act completely, moving straight from Katherine’s death to Anne’s coronation. Such practices were rendered less justified by changing critical perceptions; the work of the eminent scholar E. K. Chambers exposed the subjective nature of the verse tests applied by the “disintegrators” (scholars who held that many of Shakespeare’s plays were not written by him but revisions of, or collaborations with, other writers), which argued that Shakespeare was responsible for most of
Henry VIII
. Robert Atkins’s 1924 production at the Old Vic, despite staging the complete text, took less time than Tree’s four-hour marathon. Atkins was influenced by the ideas of William Poel and the Elizabethan Stage Society who attempted to recreate Elizabethan staging practices. Use of the complete text rekindled interest in the role of Henry, evidenced in Tyrone Guthrie’s casting of Charles Laughton in the part in his 1933 production at Sadler’s Wells, with Flora Robson as Katherine.
