HE Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight was first printed in the Folio of 1623, where it brings to a close the series of Shakespeare's English historical plays. The text appears to be given with a degree of accuracy not commonly found in the First Folio.

Differences of opinion as to the date at which the play was written exist among critics. Malone believed that it belonged, in part at least, to the year 1603, while Queen Elizabeth was still living; the panegyric of the queen uttered by Cranmer's prophetic lips was meant, Malone supposed, for her own ears; the lines which refer to King James I were, according to his conjecture, a later addition. He argued that a eulogy of Elizabeth would have been peculiarly distasteful to her successor, the

son of Mary Queen of Scots. But many eulogies of Elizabeth appeared during the reign of James. It is enough here to recall the fact that in 1611 the translators of the Bible coupled the name of the king in their address to him with the well-known mention of "that bright Occidental Star, Queen Elizabeth, of most happy memory." On the other hand it is far from likely that Elizabeth would have been gratified by the reference to herself as "an aged princess," by the homage paid in the play to the virtue of Queen Katharine of Aragon, and by the free handling of her father's motives in the matter of the divorce, and of her mother's moral pliability, which is smiled at-though in no unkindly spirit- by the writer of the third scene of the second act.

Malone supposed that among the lines added in a revision of the play after the death of Elizabeth were those which seem to refer to the colonising of Virginia :

"Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations."

"I suspect," he wrote, "that the panegyrick on the King was introduced either in the year 1606, or in 1612, when a lottery was granted expressly for the establishment of English Colonies in Virginia." But we may believe that these lines were written in 1612 or 1613 without the needless conjecture that they were “introduced." An allusion in Act V, scene 4, to the " strange Indian . . . come to court " was pointed out by Malone

as a note of time, but he could not discover to what circumstance the allusion refers. Five Indians were brought to England in 1611; one of these, distinguished for his stature, remained in the country until 1614, and was publicly exhibited, says Halliwell-Phillipps, in various parts of London.

If we can show that a play dealing with the reign of Henry VIII was produced for the first time at the Globe Theatre in the year 1613, and that this corresponded in its general design and in details with the play printed in the First Folio, there will be little reason to doubt that the play of 1613 was that which Shakespeare's fellows gave to the reading public ten years later, or that the play was written almost immediately before it was produced on the stage. Every one acquainted with theatrical history is aware that, owing to the burning of the Globe Theatre, which furnished a striking piece of news for letter-writers of the day, these things can readily be shown. The testimony of Sir Henry Wotton, writing on July 2, 1613, to his nephew, Sir Edmund Bacon, is the most important of several such notices of the event: "Now, to let matters of State sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what hath happened this Week at the Banks side. The Kings Players had a new Play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the 8th, which was 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 a while 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 an 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." Wotton adds that "nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks." A manuscript letter of Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering (June 30, 1613) tells us that the fire took place "while Bourbage his companie were acting at the Globe the play of Henry 8." Chamberlaine gives a similar account of the calamity in a letter (July 8, 1613) to Sir Ralph Winwood. And Howes, in his continuation of Stowe's "Chronicle," states that the house was "filled with people to behold the play videlicet of Henry the 8."

The title - probably a second title "All is True,' mentioned by Sir Henry Wotton, is referred to three times in the Prologue to the play as given in the Folio of 1623. To doubt that the play before us was the new play presented at the Globe in June, 1613, seems the very credulity of scepticism. Yet there have been doubters; and among them are Halliwell-Phillipps and Mr. Boyle. The ground of Halliwell-Phillipps's opinion seems to be that in a ballad written on the occasion of

the burning of the Globe Theatre, it is said that “the reprobates prayed for the fool and Henry Condy" (Condell); but the reprobates may have prayed for their favourite fool, although no fool appeared in "King Henry VIII." The internal evidence supports the date generally accepted, 1612-1613. Queen Katharine, wronged yet nobly enduring injuries, is, like Queen Hermione of the "Winter's Tale," transported to the English court. The characteristics of the versification of Shakespeare's latest plays are found in parts of "King Henry VIII." The decorative splendour of the play could not have been contrived on a public stage at a much earlier date ; now the pomps of court masques had reacted upon the drama of the public theatres, and had created a popular demand for spectacle which authors and managers endeavoured to gratify. The chronicle history had in a great degree fallen out of favour at this time; but a chronicle history set forth not in the old-fashioned way of "King Henry V," set forth rather with all that magnificence at which Sir Henry Wotton smiles, might delight those who, as the prologue puts it, came "to see away their shilling richly in two short hours."

In 1613 the court had been the scene of sumptuous solemnities and entertainments. The marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine had been celebrated with great ceremony. The masquers of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn reached Whitehall by water in barges, like the masquers at Cardinal Wolsey's banquet in "King Henry VIII." The masquers of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn rode to court in Indian habits,