KING HENRY VIII is certainly one of the latest plays with which Shakespeare was concerned. It was performed, apparently for the first time, at the Globe Theatre, 29 June 1613. A spectator on that occasion, Sir Henry Wotton, speaks of it as °a new play, called 'All is True,' representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circum stances 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." The elaborateness of the production proved disastrous, for the eyewitness continues: "Now King Henry, making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry (cf. I, iv, 49, s. d.), some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where be ing thought at first but an idle smoke . . . it consuming within less than an hour the whole kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, house to the very ground." Thus perished the Shakespearean Globe Theatre in the first mod ern theatrical conflagration. The building was reconstructed the next year, but in the mean while it is probable that Shakespeare's com pany continued the performance of 'Henry VIII' at their other theatre of Blackfriars, where, it has been pointed out, they would have been acting the scene of Queen Catherine's trial (II, iv) in the very building in which the actual trial had taken place 84 years pre viously. 'Henry VIII' was first published in the Folio of 1623. There it appears as the last in order of the history plays and in conform ity to the others is entitled
was Fletcher, undoubtedly, who wrote most of 'Henry VIII,' though Shakespeare's hand and the features of his latest style are clear in some of the earlier scenes (I, i
iii, iv) and occa sionally elsewhere. In III, ii, the great scene of Wolsey's fall, Shakespeare appears to have written the first 200 lines and Fletcher the re mainder. Here the continuator cannot be said to fall short of his pattern. It is Fletcher who contributes Wolsey's soliloquy, °Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!" and his even more famous speech to Cromwell, of which the concluding lines, "Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition," etc., form the best known passage in the play. The brilliance of this part of the work, which rises above Fletcher's usual level, has even evoked the bold suggestion that Shakespeare was here paying his collaborator the compliment of showing what he could himself do in Fletcher's par ticular style. Other theories regarding the play which deserve mention, though controverted by the evidence in the case, are that Shakespeare originally wrote the play before the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 (consult Elze, K., Jahr buch of the German Shakespeare Society, Vol. IX, 55-86) and that Fletcher's collaborator was not Shakespeare but Massinger (consult Boyle, R.,