num_pages: 544
description: King Henry VIII has one of the fullest theatrical histories of any play in the Shakespeare canon, yet has been consistently misrepresented, both in performance and in criticism. This edition offers a new perspective on this ironic, multi-layered, collaborative play, revealing it as a complex meditation on the progress of Reformation which sees English life since Henry VIII's day as a series of bewildering changes in national and personal allegiance and represents 'history' as the product of varied and contradictory testimony. McMullan makes a powerful claim for the rehabilitation of Henry VIII, providing the fullest performance history of any edition to date and reading the work not as a marginal 'late' Shakespeare play but as a play which is paradigmatic of the achievement of Renaissance drama as a whole.
language: English
title: King Henry VIII
titlecomplete: King Henry VIII
characters: Patience (Lady in waiting to Katherine of Aragon), Old Lady (Attendant to Anne Boleyn), Stephen Peacock, Lord Mayor of London, Lorenzo Campeggio, Anne Boleyn, William Warham, Thomas Wolsey, Sir Henry Marney, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, 2nd Earl of Surrey, Stephen Gardiner, Dr. William Butts, Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Walden, Elizabeth I of England, Thomas More, Nicholas Vaux, 1st Baron Vaux of Harrowden, Catherine of Aragon, Eustace Chapuys, Griffith, attendant to Katherine of Aragon, Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Lovell, Henry Guildford, Charles Knevet, Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, Nicholas Hopkins, Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester, John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, John de la Court, Anthony Denny, William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys, Henry VIII of England, George Nevill, 5th Baron Bergavenny, Thomas Cromwell, Gilbert Park, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk
genres: Fiction, Plays, Theatre, Classics, Drama, Historical, Historical Fiction, Literature, 17th Century, Poetry
ratings_count: 9038
publisher: The Arden Shakespeare