I’m the eighth old man called ‘Enery…

Henry Tudor. We all know him, whether as gouty tub o’ lard or gorgeous hunk o’ flesh. He had six wives we know too: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. The first beheading was Elizabeth’s mum, Anne Boleyn. The first divorce (ever) was Mary’s mum, Catherine of Aragon.

Shakespeare who loved history plays wrote a play about Henry 8th. It centres on Queen Catherine’s disgrace, the aggrandizement (bigging up) of Anne Boleyn, and the birth of her daughter Elizabeth.

Now would it, as Edmund Malone (great shakespearean scholar of the 19thC) states, have been more appropriate to write this play in her lifetime and reign as Queen? Or to write it after her death, in the reign of a very different monarch?

Our gut instinct goes with the latter. We don’t think Elizabeth wanted necessarily to have her life set before her eyes onstage, perhaps sparking some latent patricidal fantasy, or precipitating dammed tears by suppressed memories.

King James on the other hand lived through similar traumas as his cousin, the Queen. James too believed in the Divine Right of Kings. And he was as much an authority on the subject as any Tudor, or Plantagenet. He too ruled a country. He too communicated with Europe, especially France. He too commanded armies, though he didn’t like to fight. He too rode the renaissance wave of the Early Modern Period, he was intrigued by the dark side.

Ten years into James reign

on june 29, 1613, the Globe theatre burned to the ground during a performance of Sh’s Henry 8th. At least six independent eye-witness accounts of the fire exist. Two of these six- July 1613 letters written by the poet Sir Henry Wooton and the London merchant Henry Bluett- refer to the play as being “new”.

This is the first ever performance of this play. It’s an old-school 1590’s history play with pomp and circumstance. Summer time, weather’s fine, thatch is dry. A cannon is fired with blanks to announce the arrival of the King and a spark hits the straw in the roof and starts to smoulder and burn.

The place is packed with 3,000 spectators. The cry goes up , the place is emptied, with no damage except for a man’s breeches catching on fire, which someone put out with a bottle of ale. Oh yeah, the theatre burned to the ground and after 14 years occupation of the building its contents are lost too.

Despite their loss, the King’s Men had options. The Globe was their big outdoor amphitheatre, the Blackfriars their indoor all-weather money-maker. Nevetheless it’s a big loss and it’s a day at the theatre six people recounted for us.( i’ll find a link to the orginals. Which is proving difficult but here is an extra witness).

Anyway time to carry on with appendix C’s conclusion on Henry 8th the “new” play.

It is indeed possible that in 1613 Henry 8th was new to the general theatergoing public. De Vere may well have left an incomplete Henry 8th manuscript behind at the time of his death only to be touched up in 1613 by other hands and debuted on the Globe stage.

Hold the bus! Stop that train! It’s not only indeed possible, it’s a fact as far as we can see. Two people who watched the play that day tell us it was new. Irrelevant of course. Try this one.

May well have. May well have? Is that your way of saying ‘possibly maybe perhaps we don’t know? You know like you accuse the Stratfrodians of doing all the time?

And this too. Touched up by other hands? Other hands? Whose hands? How? Blank as the slate of history may be, this is wholesale manufacture of the Emperor’s new clothes.

Mark’s basic argument here is that a pretend other, who might have done something or not, somehow contacted the King’s Men to tell them he had yet another play for Oxford’s pretend Jacobean performance history? We all know he’s been dead since 1604 some say by plague, suicide, or broken heart; we’ll never ever know.

We all need to know the plays were written some decades before and brought out when the time was right. Who authorised the putting on of this play if it treats of Tudor apologies? Why did the King’s Men choose to mount this production?

Perhaps by some coinkidinky it had to do with Sh’s retirement as premiere writer for the company? His handing over of his laurels to John Fletcher who possibly had a hand in writing this collaborated piece of theatre.

If it wasn’t WIll before his final, final collaboration, then why did de Vere even write it? Why write a play that may or may not be elected to be played postumously? We can see leaving unfinished manuscripts to be brushed up for the stage. But not in this case.

Where someone leaves some 8 or more plays dated by generations of literary historians to the Jacobean period. Starting with Macbeth onwards in no particular order: Coriolanus, King Lear, The Tempest, Pericles, Cymbeline, Timon of Athens, Antony and Cleopatra, A WInter’s Tale. All of which we would place in SH’s Jacobean writing period.

Why not Shakespeare the man in the middle, who was stil alive and probably at the premiere, or not? The first bit of his argument made us ROTF. The next part made us LMAO.

Yet there’s also no reason to treat the audience members Wotton and Bluett as expert witnesses either. In December 1663 the London diarist Samuel Pepys also referred to Henry 8th as being “new”.

What? If we were to guess, which one might be telling the truth? We’d go for the ones who first reported it. And let’s just check what Pepys actually said..

Dec 11th 1663, Calling at Wotton’s, my shoemaker’s, today, he tells me that Sir H. Wright is dying; and that Harris is come to the Duke’s house again; and of a rare play to be acted this week of Sir William Davenant’s: the story of Henry the Eighth with all his wives.
Jan 1st, 1664, the first play I have been at these six months, according to my last vowe, and here saw the so much cried-up play of “Henry the Eighth;” which, though I went with resolution to like it, is so simple a thing made up of a great many patches, that, besides the shows and processions in it, there is nothing in the world good or well done. Thence mightily dissatisfied back

So Mark’s inference is what here exactly? Yes they were witnesses but that’s not important, as they are not ‘expert’ witnesses.

So they cannot have known that Shakespere, who may or may not been present, did not in fact write the play. They cannot have known that the play had been written to enrich english literature. And not destined to be read even by the hardiest of Shakespeare lovers, except to say yes i have read it. Theatre companies also don’t play it much, as not much happens. Not like his other stuff.

Ok so the Pepys production would have been new to the Restoration audience that saw it. Theatres had been closed since 1642. We all know Shakespeare’s (ie Oxford’s) reputation was suffering in this period. He was considered a trifle old-fashioned and depeche mode. But Mark goes on to pat the Oxfordian’s on the back for forcing the 1604 Question.

All we can say is if it requires this much mental gymnastics to date a play, you might be in for crash-landing or two.