Wolsey's property, most of which he had accumulated by appropriating to himself a great deal of the money raised by taxation. The king, angry at Wolsey's treachery, takes from him all of his civil offices and declares all his goods, lands, tenements, chattels, and whatever to be forfeited. In the meantime, the king has obtained from Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, an opinion on his divorce favorable to his own views, has put away the queen, and has secretly married Anne Bullen.

ACT IV

Cardinal Wolsey is arrested charged with high treason, but dies before his trial. Shortly after Queen Katharine dies. The coronation of Anne takes place with great pomp and magnificence. Cranmer anoints her queen.

ACT V

Cranmer's favor with the king arouses the jealousy of some powerful nobles. They plot his downfall and bring him to trial. They are about to send him to the Tower when the king enters and orders his release and asks him to christen Anne's daughter, Elizabeth. This he does and prophesies that "peace, plenty, love, truth, terror," shall all be servants of this royal infant in the days to come.

THE FAMOUS HISTORY OF

THE LIFE OF

KING HENRY VIII

THE 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

10

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,

3. "high and working"; Staunton reads "and high-working.”— I. G.

12. "shilling"; the usual price for a seat on or next the stage.— I. G.

16. "a long motley coat"; the professional garb of the fool or jester.-I. G.

Will be deceived; for, gentle hearers, know,
To rank our chosen truth with such a show
As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting
Our own brains and the opinion that we bring
To make that only true we now intend,

21

Will leave us never an understanding friend.
Therefore, for goodness' sake, and as you are
known

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

19. "As fool and fight"; "This is not the only passage," says Johnson, "in which Shakespeare has discovered his conviction of the impropriety of 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.-H. N. H. 21. The line is either to be taken as a parenthesis, "that" referring to "opinion" (= reputation); or as following directly on "opinion," i. e. "the reputation we bring of making what we represent strictly in accordance with truth.”—I. G.

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.

30

ACT FIRST

SCENE I

London. An ante-chamber 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 ye done

Nor.

Since last we saw in France?

I thank your grace, Healthful, and ever since a fresh admirer

Of what I saw there.

1. "Enter the Duke of Norfolk," etc.; Thomas Howard, the present duke of Norfolk, is the same person who figures as earl of Surrey in King Richard III. His 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 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 Henry, 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 Abergavenny.-H. N. H.