Footnotes:
[1] Cavendish was Wolsey’s faithful secretary, and after his fall wrote the interesting “Life of Wolsey,” one of the manuscript copies of which evidently fell into Shakespeare’s hands before he wrote Henry VIII.
[2] “Pastime with Good Company,” composed and written by Henry, is sung in the production at His Majesty’s Theatre.
[3] Hypocras—“A favourite medicated drink, compound of wine, usually red, with spices and sugar.”
[4] It is Wolsey’s fool to whom is given the final note of the play in the production at His Majesty’s Theatre.
[5] The ceremony of bringing the Blessed Sacrament from the sepulchre where it had lain since the Good Friday. This took place early on Easter Monday.
[6] Personally, I have been a sentimental adherent of symbolism since my first Noah’s Ark. Ever since I first beheld the generous curves of Mrs. Noah, and first tasted the insidious carmine of her lips, have I regarded the wife of Noah as symbolical of the supreme type of womanhood. I have learnt that the most exclusive symbolists, when painting a meadow, regard purple as symbolical of bright green; but we live in a realistic age and have not yet overtaken the art nouveau of the pale future. It is difficult to deal seriously with so much earnestness. I am forced into symbolic parable. Artemus Ward, when delivering a lecture on his great moral panorama, pointed with his wand to a blur on the horizon, and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, that is a horse—the artist who painted that picture called on me yesterday with tears in his eyes, and said he would disguise that fact from me no longer!” He, too, was a symbolist.
Transcriber’s Note: