I’ve received this very interesting critique of Henry VIII, a play co-written by Shakespeare, by the Spanish writer and critic Enrique Garcia-Máiquez:

 

A kind, curious reader has asked me why Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More had so much trouble with the censors (in fact, it was never staged), whilst Henry VIII, also Shakespeare’s, also co-written and also pro-Catholic, was staged with no trouble at all. With no trouble, and even amidst great pomp and circumstance: let us not forget that The Globe was burnt to a crisp thanks to a cannon shot included in its exuberant staging (what a picture of Henry VIII, and what a Baroque end to William Shakespeare’s public career!). I passed the question on to Joseph Pearce, author of the foreword to the Spanish edition of Sir Thomas More, and defender of the theory crediting Shakespeare with the authorship of the play. He says that the key is the difference in dates. During the ten years’ lapse between the presentation of the one and the other, James I had come to power, and his politics had grown away from the Tudors’.

True. But William Shakespeare had also grown in subtlety. He must have learnt his lesson well, after everything he went through with Sir Thomas More. The message contained in Henry VIII is much sharper, more silent, dagger-like. So in order to strike, he must get much closer to the king, but stealthily. In Sir Thomas More, he sidesteps the thornier, more explicitly political issues; the mere presence of the martyr turns the drama –despite its intelligent, continuous play on humour—into a eucharistic play. And the May Day revolt, which (reasonably) so worried the censor, Sir Edmund Tilney, led the way to an explicit development of a very Catholic theory of power.

 

There are, of course, great all-around similarities; for example, between the Christian speeches by the fallen Wolsey and Thomas More as he nears the scaffold; and, almost literally, between this sentence of Catherine of Aragon’s:  “Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge that no king can corrupt”, so similar to another sentence spoken by More in the play about him. But Henry VIII is a monument of literary cunning which has bewildered critics who were very sure of their own sagacity.

 

The picture of the king is complex only on the surface. At heart it is very simple, and shows that his will is his pleasure; but on the outside, what theological, diplomatic and courtly spirals, distracting whoever will be distracted. Henry sighs over Catherine: “Would it not grieve an able man to leave so sweet a bedfellow? But, conscience, conscience! O, ‘tis a tender place; and I must leave her”. There are some who, in the presence of Shakespeare, always repeat, “’Tis a tender place, ‘tis a tender place”. Indeed.

 

Shakespeare’s portrait of Catherine of Aragon, so bewildering to so many, is a masterpiece of ambiguity. The Prince of Lampedusa, due perhaps to some atavistic Sicilian grudge against the Crown of Aragon, is outspoken on the subject, even forgetting his manners: “That unhappy prude, brimful of Spanish dignity and arrogance which were démodé even in Henry’s England”. However, he is also astonished to witness the sensation caused by Mrs. Siddons in the role of Catherine: “When the curtain fell, the house was half destroyed, the upholstery torn off the seats, the stuccos chipped off, the candles twisted in their candelabra. One Lord Dalbraith was seen in his box, eating a candle in order to give vent to his emotion”.

 

That two-fold perception happens again to different critics. Harold Bloom prefers Wolsey’s and Buckingham’s adieus, but is perplexed to report Dr. Johnson’s opinion that Shakespeare’s genius is poured into Catherine, making her the equal of Cordelia, King Lear’s worthy daughter.

 

Such disparity is due to the fact that Shakespeare, master of technique, plays at hiding his hand, letting emotion mysteriously draw the portrait of the queen in our souls. Whoever would understand her in all her personal, religious, political and matrimonial stature would do well to read Salvador de Madariaga’s essay in Mujeres españolas. Shakespeare (who was doubtless well acquainted with her, having inherited the love she inspired in the people of England) does not dwell on those facts, nor does he quote the cultural admiration Erasmus felt for her, or her friendship with Thomas More, Luis Vives and John Fisher, nor does he quote this impressive dialogue between the King and Suffolk. Suffolk reports to the King: “The Queen will obey in everything except in what the two supreme powers rule”. “What?” protested the King, “the Emperor and the Pope?” “No. God and her conscience”. Shakespeare’s dramatic genius preferred Catherine’s dignity, her silences and her gestures to speak for her, and only left us the barest clues in the play:

 

—It seems the marriage with his brother’s wife
Has crept too near his conscience.
…………………………………………………….—No. His conscience
Has crept too near another lady.

With an amazing economy, Shakespeare achieves Lord Dalbraith’s fever or Dr. Johnson’s admiration. Shakespeare was extremely careful: Thomas More is only vaguely mentioned once in the whole play. The playwright’s great interest in More has been researched; his silence is very telling.

But Shakespeare’s ironic master touch arrives in good time: at the end. At the end of Act V there is an exuberant eulogy to Elizabeth which, according to the dates given by Joseph Pearce and his political argumentation, must have seemed extravagant, even dangerous, in the court of James I, whose mother was executed by the Virgin Queen. Now we must call to mind the play’s original title,All is True, which, in view of all that happened on stage and in history, must have struck the audience as deeply false, and funny.

But just in case we didn’t get it, William Shakespeare really lets his hair down at the very end: “’Tis ten to one this play can never please all that are here”. And then he adds (and note every word, and my bolded ones): “All the expected good we’re like to hear for this play at this time, is only in the merciful construction of good women; for such a one we show’d ‘em: if they smile…”. The play portrays Catherine in a suspiciously neutral manner, and Anne Boleyn not too badly, and has just praised Elizabeth fulsomely. Three main female characters, one of which has been shown us as good; the good women in the audience will know who she is. Of course they will smile.

 

Enrique García-Máiquez (Murcia, Spain, 1969), poet and essayist, has published four books of verse, two volumes of his diary, and two collections of his newspaper articles. Together with Aurora Rice, he has translatedSir Thomas More, by William Shakespeare and others, into Spanish.