Shakespeare's Prince : the interpretation of the famous history of the life of King Henry the Eighth / \c Guy Story Brown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Guy Story.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. King Henry VIII.

Shakespeare, William.

Physical Description:

334 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Macon, Georgia : Mercer University Press, 2013.

Summary:

The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth is Shakespeare's most thoughtful history play-it was about this play that Schlegel made his famous comment that "Shakespeare was as profound a historian as a poet." Yet, this last play, Shakespeare's lone Tudor history, was popular at its first playing and has proven a crowd pleaser whenever it has been performed. Ever seductive in its trappings of power and emphatic pomp and pageantry, it delineates in a political way the characters of England's most surpassing statesman and her finest queen, as well as of the king thought most infamous of all by celebrated later English writers like Hazlitt and Dickens. The dramatist here takes only the highest view of all these personages and presents each of them in such an order that they may be seen by all for who and what they truly are. The study proceeds as an interpretive commentary, act by act and scene by scene, and should be considered with the text of the play at one's elbow. It aims at a comprehensive interpretation of the play itself from the beginning as Shakespeare's last dramatic testament, considering particularly its relation to Machiavelli's Prince and other important contemporary works and events, the Christian schism in England, in particular, and to the rule of the Tudors. The cumulative result is an altogether new understanding of The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth as well as a new introduction, from the point of view afforded by their conclusion, to the question of the purport of the "Shakespearean histories" as such, opened in The Famous History of the Life of King Henry The Sixth-indeed, of the Shakespearean stage as such-that is grounded thoroughly in the Folio text of Henry VIII itself. Book jacket.

Contents:

"...no more to make you laugh"-The Prologue and Opening Lines 1

Actus Primus: The Famous Life of Thomas Wolsey 28

Scena Prima: "C'est la ma place au soleil" 28

Scena Secunda: "The rough brake that virtue must go through" 52

Scena Tertia: "Such strange mysteries" 76

Scena Quarta: "This heaven of beauty" 100

Actus Secundus: The Divorce 126

Scena Prima: "Ensuing Evils" 126

Scena Secunda: "He will have all I think" 137

Scena Tertia : "What do you mink me?" 151

Scena Quarta: "In him it lies to cure me" 180

Actus Tertius: Cucullus non facit monachum 193

Scena Prima: The Embassy to Katherine 193

Scena Secunda: The Farewell of Wolsey 200

Actus Quartus: The Coronation 238

Scena Prima: Anne Bullen 238

Scena Secunda: Queen Katherine 252

Actus Quintus: The Holy Day 267

Scena Prima: "Bring Him to Us"/"All's Not Well" 267

Scena Secunda: "The chief aim of his honor" 290

Scena Tertia: "Hark, the Trumpets Sound" 309

Scena Quarta: "Thou speakest wonders" 321.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780881464337

0881464333

OCLC:

828893365