Henry VIII

william shakespeare stephen orgel

Henry VIII is a history play generally believed to be a collaboration between William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, based on the life of Henry VIII of England. An alternative title, All is True, is recorded in contemporary documents, the title Henry VIII not appearing until the play's publication in the First Folio of 1623. Stylistic evidence indicates that individual scenes were written by either Shakespeare or his collaborator and successor, John Fletcher. It is also somewhat characteristic of the late romances in its structure. It is noted for having more stage directions than any of Shakespeare's other plays.

During a performance of Henry VIII at the Globe Theatre in 1613, a cannon shot employed for special effects ignited the theatre's thatched roof (and the beams), burning the original building to the ground

Genres playsclassicsdramafictionhistorical fictionpoetrytheatreliteraturehistoricalbritish literature

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1613

This edition

Format: 126 pages, Paperback
Published: August 1, 2001 by Penguin Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780140714753
ASIN: 0140714758
Language: English

Characters More characters

Anne Boleyn

1501/1507 - 1536) was Queen of England as the second wife of King Henry VIII. She was also Marquess of Pembroke in her own right.[2] Henrys marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval...
Thomas More

Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), also known as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, scholar, author and statesman. He is also recognised as being a saint within the Catholic Church. During his life he gained a reputation as a leading Renaissance humani...
Catherine Of Aragon

Catherine of Aragon (1485 - 1536) was Princess of Wales as the wife of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII of England. For six months, she served as regent of England while Henry VIII was in France. During th...
Charles Brandon 1st Duke Of Suffolk

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Thomas Cromwell

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, (b. in or before 1485, executed 28 July 1540), was an English statesman who served as chief minister of King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540.Cromwell was one of the strongest advocates of the English Reformation...
Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and for a short time, Mary I. He helped build a favourable case for Henrys divorce from Cat...

About the author

william shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".