Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Thomas Healy

Critical Essay by Thomas Healy

SOURCE: Healy, Thomas. “History and Judgement in Henry VIII.” In Shakespeare's Late Plays: New Readings, edited by Jennifer Richards and James Knowles, pp. 158-75. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Healy highlights the theme of historiography in Henry VIII, exploring the drama's concern with the evaluation, interpretation, and malleability of historical “truth.”

I

MOPSA

I love a ballad in print, alife, for then we are sure they are true.

AUTOLYCUS

Here's one to a very doleful tune, how a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she longed to eat adders' heads and toads carbonadoed.

MOPSA

Is it true, think

AUTOLYCUS

Very

(The Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 251-6)

2ND Gentleman

[D]id you not late days

A buzzing of a separation

Between the king and Katherine?

1ST Gentleman

Yes, but it held not;

For...
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