King Henry VIII

King Henry VIII (All Is True): The Arden Shakespeare Third Series by William Shakespeare
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Gordon McMullen’s good-humoured case for the subtleties of this play in the Arden edition is interesting, but ultimately failed to convince me. The material should have furnished a more interesting play than the one we get. All Is True is a provocative title, but in performance it’s pretty clear which advisors are on the side of truth and which are not, and there’s only so much Shakespeare and Fletcher do to destabilise the impression that the Catholics are the bad guys and the Protestants the good guys. Henry’s wives, historically interesting personalities, are here rendered strangely bloodless. The cursing queens of the early histories, who provide actors with powerful dramatic parts, have been silenced. Shakespeare is adept at navigating the fraught political circumstances in which his political plays were performed, but here the edges were sanded down a bit too much.

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