SOURCE: Waage, Jr., Frederick O. “Henry VIII and the Crisis of the English History Play.” Shakespeare Studies 8 (1975): 297-309.

In the following essay, Waage argues that Shakespeare was unable to “mythologize history” in Henry VIII, maintaining that this inability “signalled the virtual end of the reign of the English history play on the Stuart stage.”

With regard to Shakespeare's Henry VIII, there is no doubt that the “fraction of commentary on the play not worried by the academic question of who wrote it is mostly patronizing and wholly disappointing. Both its foes and its few champions present … not the play as we have it, but some preconception of what the play should be.”¹ Unfortunately, many of the reformers of this condition seem to labor under a similar preconception, namely that the play is “mythical,” and must be considered a companion of Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. In...