Product Description

Extensive critical and historical commentaries accompany Shakespeare's traged of the life of the English king.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #720577 in Books
• Published on: 1981-04-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Believed to be Shakespeare's very last play, Henry VIII is probably best remembered as the play that, when performed in June 1613, led to the Globe Theatre burning down due to the fireworks and cannon fire listed in the stage directions. However, the play has puzzled critics, who can see little more in it than a nostalgic account of Henry's reign, and the prophetic birth and christening of Elizabeth, Shakespeare's future Queen, that takes place at the end of the play.

Henry VIII deals with the intrigue that surrounds Henry's court, and in particular the controversial figure of Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry's separation from his wife Katherine and infatuation with Anne Bullen. However, there is little sense of the psychological complexity created by Shakespeare in earlier history plays such as Henry V. Henry VIII himself is a grand but distant figure, and the virulent anti-Catholicism lacks complexity. Within an increasingly troubled political period, the final hopeful invocation of "peace, plenty, love, truth" seems rather flat, as does the play as a whole. This has led many critics to argue that Shakespeare was just one of many collaborators in the writing of the play. --Jerry Brotton

Years Work in English Studies
"Halio gives a useful historical summary of the split from Rome"

Review
Halio gives a useful historical summary of the split from Rome (Years Work in English Studies )

Textual apparatus is of a high standard . . . the commentary provides succinct notes on chronological and historical detail, pointed reference to sources used and works that supplement the playwrights' sources, and a comprehensive gloss to problematic words and phrases usefully keyed to a separate index. This is an excellent edition for undergraduate study: the introduction works to consolidate previous critical approaches without itself ever offering restrictive pronouncements on how to read the play, while the text and commentary are set out in a clear, uncrowded manner. Attention to the working needs of the student is evident throughout (Matthew Woodcock, University College, Oxford, Sixteenth Century Journal XXXII/1 (2001) )

Customer Reviews

CONTEMPORARY REVIEW OF A CLASSIC-MAKES BENHUR APPEAR AN EPIC
Henry the eighth may sound like just another Shakespeare play to you but the advantage of this edition lies in the contemporary, elegant and witty commentary that proceeds it. Indeed the Editor has managed to link many of the happenings written about by the fine Bard to events in his own life. As such it provides a great insight into how rejection at a provincial disco at the age of 17 is in fact an essential metaphor for the experience of Henry's wives.

Indeed the foreward of the Editor is so long and detailed that it could be argued that William's words should have been let go to tell us more about the latest girlfriend!

Ultimately though the words of Shakepeare win through and there can no longer be any doubt that he did write this and his sonnets.

Its setting in the contemporary context of a post-modern intertextual methodology makes this a classic. Buy it!