SOURCE: McMullan, Gordon. “‘Thou Has Made Me Now a Man’: Reforming Man(ner)liness in Henry VIII.” In Shakespeare's Late Plays: New Readings, edited by Jennifer Richards and James Knowles, pp. 40-56. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, McMullan assesses Shakespeare's Henry VIII in relation to the Renaissance masculine ideal based upon restraint and moderation.

I

‘Thou hast made me now a man’, Henry tells Cranmer after the archbishop has spoken prophetic words over the baby Elizabeth in the christening scene at the close of Henry VIII, announcing ‘never before / This happy child did I get anything’ (V, iv, 64-5). This claim of the king's that his masculinity has only now finally been established by his fathering (or perhaps more accurately, by Cranmer's christening) of a baby girl is a puzzling one, and one which has generally been ignored by critics. Yet Henry's appalling treatment of...