PERSONS REPRESENTED

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.
THOMAS WOLSEY, Cardinal of York.
CAMPEIUS, Cardinal, and Legate.
CAPUCIUS, Ambassador from Charles V.
THOMAS CRANMER, Archbishop of Canterbury.
THOMAS HOWARD, Duke of Norfolk.
EDWARD STAFFORD, Duke of Buckingham.
CHARLES BRANDON, Duke of Suffolk.

THOMAS HOWARD, Earl of Surrey.

LORD CHAMBERLAIN. LORD CHANCELLOR.
STEPHEN GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester.
JOHN LONGLAND, Bishop of Lincoln.
GEORGE NEVILLE, Lord Abergavenny.
WILLIAM LORD SANDS.

SIR HENRY GUILFORD. SIR THOMAS LOVELL.
SIR ANTHONY DENNY. SIR NICHOLAS VAUX.
THOMAS CROMWELL, Servant to Wolsey.
GRIFFITH, Gentleman-Usher to Queen Katharine.
DOCTOR BUTTS, Physician to the King.

Secretaries to Wolsey. Garter, King at Arms.
Surveyor to the Duke of Buckingham.
BRANDON, and a Sergeant at Arms.

Door-Keeper of the Council-Chamber.

Page to Gardiner. Porter, and his Man.

A Crier.

KATHARINE OF ARRAGON, Wife to King Heary.
ANNE BOLEYN, her Maid of Honour.

An old Lady, Friend to Anne Boleyn.
PATIENCE, Woman to Queen Katharine.

Several Lords and Ladies in the Dumb Shows; Women at tending on the Queen ; Spirits, which appear to her; Gen tlemen, Scribes, Officers, Guards, and other Attendants.

SCENE, chiefly in London and Westminster; once at Kim bolton.

KING HENRY VIII.

PROLOGUE.

I COME no more to make you laugh: things now,
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,

Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present. Those that can pity, here
May, if they think it well, let fall a tear;
The subject will deserve it: Such, as give
Their money out of hope they may believe,
May here find truth too: Those that come to see
Only a show or two, and so agree

The play may pass, if they be still and willing,
I'll undertake, may see away their shilling

Richly in two short hours.

Only they,

That come to hear a merry bawdy play,
A noise of targets, or to see a fellow
In a long motley coat, guarded' with yellow,
Will be deceiv'd; for, gentle hearers, know,
To rank our chosen truth with such a show
As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting

1 That is, faced or trimmed. This long motley coat was the usual dress of a professional fool. The intention of the writer, says Mr. Boswell, was to contrast the historical truth displayed in the present play with The Famous Chronicle of King Henry the Eighth, by Samuel Rowley; in which Will Summers, the jester, is a principal character.

This is not the only passage," says Johnson, "in which Shakespeare has discovered his conviction of the impropriety of

Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring,'
(To make that only true we now intend,)
Will leave us never an understanding friend.

battles represented on the stage. He knew that five or six men, with swords, gave a very unsatisfactory idea of an army; and therefore, without much care to excuse his former practice, he allows that a theatrical fight would destroy all opinion of truth, and leave him never an understanding friend." The Prologue, partly on the strength of this passage, has been by some ascribed to Ben Jonson. It certainly accords well with what he says in the prologue to Every Man in his Humour, though this nowise infers the conclusion some would draw from it:

"Though need make many poets, and some such

As art and nature have not better'd much;
Yet ours for want hath not so lov'd the stage,
As he dare serve the ill customs of the age;
To make a child, now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see
One such, to-day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard

The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard

To say
it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;
But deeds and language such as men do use,
And persons such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes."

H.

3 Opinion, the commentators say, is here used in the sense of character or reputation, as in 1 Henry IV., Act v. sc. 2: "Thou hast redeem'd thy lost opinion." To us it seems rather to imply a reference to what, as shown in our Introduction, there is good reason for thinking to have been originally the first title of the play. For by advertising his play under the title All is True the Poet would naturally beget an opinion or expectation of truth in what was to be shown; which opinion or expectation would be forfeited or destroyed by the course in question. And he adds, parenthet. ically, We now intend only to make good that opinion or ex pectation."

H.

Therefore, for goodness' sake, and as you are know n
The first and happiest hearers of the town,
Be sad, as we would make ye: Think ye see
The very persons of our noble story,

As they were living; think you see them great,
And follow'd with the general throng, and sweat
Of thousand friends; then in a moment see
How soon this mightiness meets misery!
And, if you can be merry then, I'll say
A man may weep upon his wedding day.

ACT I.

SCENE 1. London.

An Antechamber in the Palace.

Enter the Duke of NORFOLK, at one door; at the other, the Duke of BUCKINGHAM, and the Lord ABERGAVENNY.'

Buck. Good morrow, and well met. How have you done,

Since last we saw in France?

Happy is here used for propitious, or favourable, which is one of the senses of the corresponding Latin word felix.

Thomas Howard, the present duke of Norfolk, is the same His person who figures as earl of Surrey in King Richard III. father's rank and titles, having been lost by the part he took with Richard, were restored to him by Henry VIII. in 1514, soon after his great victory over the Scots at Flodden. His wife was Anne,

third daughter of Edward IV., and so, of course, aunt to the king. He died in 1525 and was succeeded by his son Thomas, earl of Surrey. The Poet, however, continues them as duke and earl to

Nor.

I thank your grace,

Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer

Of what I saw there.

Buck.

An untimely ague

Stay'd me a prisoner in my chamber, when
Those sons of glory, those two lights of men,
Met in the vale of Andren.

Nor.

'Twixt Guynes and Arde:' I was then present, saw them salute on horseback; Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung In their embracement, as they grew together;

3

the end of the play; at least he does not distinguish between them and their successors. - Edward Stafford, the Buckingham of this play, was son to Heury, the Buckingham of King Richard III. The father's titles and estates, having been declared forfeit and confiscate by Richard, were restored to the son by Henry VII. in the first year of his reign, 1485. In descent, in wealth, and in personal gifts, the latter was the most illustrious nobleman in the court of Henry VIII. In the record of his arraignment and trial he is termed, says Holinshed, "the floure and mirror of all courtesie." His oldest daughter, Elizabeth, was married to the earl of Surrey; Mary, his youngest, to George Neville, Lord Aberga. venny.

H.

2 Guines and Arde are the names of two towns in Picardy, where the English and French respectively set up their tents and pavilions. Andren, commonly changed in modern editions to Arde, is the name of a valley between them, where the two kings met. Thus in Holinshed: "The daie of the meeting was appointed to be on the Thursdaie the seaventh of June, upon which daie the two kings met in the vale of Andren, accompanied with such a number of the nobilitie of both realmes, so richlie appointed in apparell and costlie jewels, that a woonder it was to behold and view them in their order and roomes. The two kings meeting in the field, either saluted other in most loving wise, first on horssebacke, and after alighting on foot eftsoones imbraced with courteous words, to the great rejoising of the beholders; and after they had thus saluted ech other, they went both togither into a rich tent of cloath of gold, there set up for the purpose, in the which they passed the time in pleasant talke, banketting, and loving devises, till it drew towards evening, and then departed for that night, the one to Guisnes, the other to Ard." This was in 1520.

3 As for as if.

H