HENRY VIII (Shakespeare Happy Hours)****

 

By Alan

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNeM7RF90bk

Available until: Indefinitely

Henry VIII isn’t performed very often. A lot of big Shakespeare fans have never seen or read it and they’re surprised when they do. Henry VIII is known for having six wives but in this play he only has two wives. Katharine (of Aragon) who he is married to at the start and Anne Bullen (names in Shakespeare’s time had lots of different spellings) who he marries after he has divorced Katharine.

There are a lot of things about the play that aren’t accurate. Anne is written as a gentle, kind character. The real Anne was very well spoken but she did cause a lot of trouble by saying things she shouldn’t have said.

Also there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Cardinal Wolsey tried to mess up Henry VII’s divorce plans as he did in this play. He held lots of positions in the Church and he seems to have had a lot of influence and he didn’t always use this in a positive way but I’m not sure that happened this time. Henry did think Wolsey was being a bit slow about getting things done and that wasn’t good enough but that’s all anyone can be sure about. The play shows Wolsey as being very two faced and manipulative and that’s not wrong exactly but I think Shakespeare exaggerated how bad he was.

A lot of quite sensitive stuff is either ignored totally or just hinted at so you can’t be totally sure if Shakespeare is saying it did happen or that it didn’t. Also everything seems to happen quicker than it did in real life.

There are a few reasons why Shakespeare (and John Fletcher who wrote the play with him) might have written the play like this. It isn’t clear when exactly this play was written- the first official record of a performance is 29^th June 1613 at the Globe, 10 years after Elizabeth I died. But it’s possible the 1613 performance is just the one everyone wrote about because the Globe burned down during that performance. Some people think it was actually written a lot earlier and the tribute to Elizabeth at the end was added after her death. But if Elizabeth did see the play or even if Shakespeare wanted her to see the play he would want to write it in a way she would be happy with. Even if the play really was written after her death maybe Shakespeare wanted to be loyal to her after everything she’d done for him.

I think Wolsey was written in an exaggerated way and blamed for things he might not have done because plays usually need a villain. Katharine could have been the evil woman who wouldn’t let Henry go but Shakespeare actually writes her as a really intelligent, good and noble character. Elizabeth probably wouldn’t have met her and she was only 2 when Katharine died but Katharine was really popular and maybe she was still quite popular in Shakespeare’s time. Katharine also campaigned for things like women’s education which Elizabeth might have been happy about. Elizabeth was very well educated for a woman in that time. So Shakespeare needed someone else to be the villain and Cardinal Wolsey was convenient as he was unpopular, he had definitely manipulated other situations and Henry did go off him at around that time.

I get why Shakespeare didn’t want to go into detail about the sensitive stuff too. It feels quite awkward now sometimes talking about the situations we’re in. We have to be very careful because there are lots of ways we can offend people by accident. Maybe Shakespeare felt the same. And messing around with timings is something he does a lot to make the story better.

Henry VIII doesn’t come over as being totally nice. He is really mean to Queen Katharine. But he really wanted a son to be king after him and their only surviving child was their daughter Mary and there hadn’t been a queen of England before who wasn’t a disaster (and that was before William I which some people think doesn’t count). And Henry does come over a whole lot better than he could have done.

Shakespeare Happy Hours did a really good version of this play. Lots of the actors didn’t know the play but you’d never have guessed because the performances are really brilliant. There are 53 characters (but some don’t speak) but they did it with a cast of 12 and it worked really well. They are all good actors so you could tell when they are different characters and they’re usually really good at updating their Zoom name too. 

Tom Kanji didn’t play Henry how I expected. I thought he would be quite grand and kingly but he seemed quite normal really and a bit stressed which is understandable. But I really liked him because he seemed really human, just like a normal man trying to do his best.

Katharine was the one who seemed like a monarch. Deb Radloff had lots of power and dignity and she was so intelligent and a really good person. She also did the epilogue which really worked as the epilogue is really positive about women. Also ats the end of Act V is Henry and Cranmer talking about baby Elizabeth’s future like they already knew about it so it wasn’t really weird for Katharine to come back to life.

Paulina Tobar played Anne Bullen. She was really gentle and a nice person and she is a good singer too. Kathy Somssich was a really good Cardinal Wolsey, she did his character really well and she’s got the insincere politician thing down (I know a cardinal isn’t a politician but he was Lord Chancellor too). She was also Anne’s Lady who is obviously a different character but the way Wolsey is in this play I could totally imagine him disguising himself as a woman and getting close to Anne so he could manipulate her. Alex Hernandez is really good at comedy but he’s just as good at the serious roles like the Duke of Norfolk. I don’t remember seeing Andrew Garrett in a play before but I have seen a lot of plays so it’s probably hard to remember everyone but I liked him as Cardinal Campeius, I liked how he said the text.

I think a lot of people don’t really like this play but I think it’s good.