INTRODUCTION

Summary

It is now agreed by all scholars that Henry VIII is of later date than any other play in the Folio: The Two Noble Kinsmen may well be later. The performance on 29 June 1613, in the course of which the Globe Theatre was burned down, need not have been the very first, but Sir Henry Wotton's description of the play as new is scarcely consistent with its having been more than a few months on the stage. On the other hand, as Foakes points out, Thomas Lorkin's letter written the day after the fire, referring without explanation to ‘the play of Hen: 8’, suggests that it was not completely unknown to his correspondent—though too much stress cannot be placed upon a single definite article in a hastily written letter.

It has long been conjectured that the play had a certain measure of topicality in 1613. Its culmination in the baptism of Elizabeth would have made it a suitable play for the occasion of the marriage of James's daughter, Princess Elizabeth, to Prince Frederick, the Elector Palatine, on 14 February 1613. Malone, who believed the play to be of Elizabethan origin, none the less suggested that the marriage might have been the occasion for its revival, James Spedding thought the completion of the play may have been hastened on for this event, and a number of later scholars have held similar views.