The Vagaries of Status
A cottage industry has grown up around investigation into the remarkable change that King Henry underwent during his reign. As a youth, he very much physically embodied the ideal of the monarchy deemed worthy of rule by divine right. Although the dominant image of Henry has become the obese, sex-obsessed, unpredictable glutton, for much of his life he was peak condition physically, mentally and intellectually. The effects following a fall from a horse prevails as the origin of the transformation, but the facts even in history seem less interesting than the wholesale change the status of the King as a symbol of his entire reign. While being mindful of crafting a politically loaded story while the man daughter was now sitting on the throne, Henry VIII presents an accurate portrait of a court where one could go from being considered Henry’s closest advisor one day to losing your head the next. In reality, status in the court did not change at that rate, but a few extra months or years waiting in a cold prison for the inevitable punctuation on their reversals of fortunate is likely cold comfort to the long list of those who saw first-hand the vagaries of status when at the mercy of the mercurial Henry.
Too Little of Iago inside Too Many Iagos
Political intrigue, religious upheaval, romantic changes of heart and the creation of a chaotic environment that favored the most ruthlessly ambitious make this particular entry in Shakespeare’s history cycle (or what he was responsible for contribution to drama anyway) one populated with some of the craftiest characters to be found in the Bard’s canon. Unfortunately, one of the strongest pieces of evidence against Shakespeare having a dominant part in its composition is that despite being given such complex real-life figures more than capable of giving Iago or Edmund the Bastard a run for their money in occupying the ladders of delightfully deceitful villains, neither Wolsey nor Cromwell—the two most likely characters to do so—are given a dimensionality or charm anywhere close to that exhibited by Iago or Edmund. The chief culprit here may less a failure to create a memorable villain than a success in making just about everyone in the court reveal they have at least a little Iago in them.
A Celebration of British Independence and Identity
Shakespeare wrote three plays about Henry V (though two take place when he is still Prince of Wales) and a trilogy about Henry VI as well as covering the reigns of two of the less-heroic figures of the monarchy: Richard II and Richard III. For good measure, he even tossed in a play covering King John and the creation of the Magna Carta. The closest any of these works get to dealing with contemporary figures still wielding enough influence to bring unwanted scorn upon a playwright who failed to “get history” right was Henry VII. The very age in which Shakespeare thrived is named in honor Henry’s daughter: Elizabeth. If Henry VIII can be said to be about any one thing in particular, it is about mythologizing the dead father of the woman who succeeded him to throne. The reign of Henry was notoriously uneven: the man who wrote composed the beautiful melody that is now strongly identified with the Christmas season as any other tune, “Greensleeves,” also imprisoned those wives whose heads he did not order hacked off. Cutting through the ambiguity to transform this complex ruler into a mythic hero for all would probably have been impossible if not for one achievement capable of overriding all failures in the eyes those who supported it: making England independent from the grip of a foreign power located far away. Henry VIII becomes a testament to the profoundly imperfect Henry capable of being mythologized into the one true defender of the British Isles.
