It would but weary the reader to go through the work from beginning to end to show how the seal of Shakespeare's style is stamped upon it. The traces of his pen are most frequent in the opening act; the appeal of the first queen to Theseus ("We are three queens," &c.), in the introductory scene, for example. These lines possess all the rhythm peculiar to the productions of the last years of the poet's life; and how boldly figurative and genuinely Shakespearian in expression is the same queen's fanciful expression:
"Dowagers, take hands;
Let us be widows to our woes; delay
Commends us to a famishing hope."
Theseus' last speech in this act (the summing up of the situation and circumstances) reminds us of Hamlet's monologue, "The whips and scorns of life, the oppressors' wrongs," &c., and "Ulysses' beauty, wit, high birth," &c.
"Since I have known frights, fury, friends' behests,
Love's provocations, zeal, a mistress' task,
Desire of liberty, a fever, madness."...
Mere imitations must not be confounded with Shakespeare's own style, however. The passage in which Emilia speaks of the ardent and tender friendship that united her to her dead friend, Flavina, which in England has been mistakenly admired as Shakespeare's work, is in reality a poor copy of the passage in the Midsummer Night's Dream (Act iii. sc. 2) where Helena describes the love between herself and Hermia. The unhealthy affection here set forth bears Fletcher's stamp upon it, and is made particularly unpleasant by the use Emilia makes of the word "innocent."
We are again sensible of Shakespeare's touch in the monologue spoken by the jailer's daughter, which constitutes the second scene of the third act. Note the picturesque expression, "In me has grief slain fear," and many others. From the moment she goes out of her mind down to the last word she utters, Shakespeare has neither part nor lot in those speeches whose uncouth imitation of his style must have been singularly offensive to him.
The greater part of the first scene of the fifth act is undoubtedly Shakespeare's. Theseus' first speech is superb, and Arcite's address to the knights and invocation of Mars is delightful. The lines at the close of the play have also a Shakespearian ring about them, especially the words so much admired by Swinburne:
"That nought could buy
Dear love but loss of dear love."
But there is no deeper, no intellectual interest for us in all this. Shakespeare had nothing to do with the psychology, or rather want of it, in this play.[3]
Had he any greater share in Henry VIII.? The play was first published in the Folio edition of 1623, where it closes the series of Historical Plays. The first four acts are founded on Holinshed's Chronicle, and the last upon Fox's Acts and Monuments of the Church, commonly known as the Book of Martyrs. The authors were also directly or indirectly indebted to a book which at that date only existed in manuscript, George Cavendish's Relics of Cardinal Wolsey, which had been largely drawn upon by Holinshed and Hall. The earliest reference to a play of Henry VIII. may be found in the Stationers' Hall Registry for the 12th of February 1604-5, where the "Enterlude for K. Henry VIII." is entered; but this refers to Rowley's worthless and fanatically Protestant play "When you see mee you know mee." The next mention of such a drama occurs in the well-known oft-quoted letters concerning the burning of the Globe Theatre on the 29th of June 1613. In an epistle from Thomas Larkin to Sir Thomas Pickering, dated "This last of June 1613," we read: "No longer since than yesterday, while Burbege's company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII., and there shooting off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched and there burnt so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less than two hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves." Also Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to his nephews, dated the 6th of July 1613, writes: "Now let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what happened at the Bankside. The king's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII., 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 canons being shot off at his entrance, 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 grounds."