Much of the impact of the play has been lost, of course, because for the most part the modern audience no longer has sufficient knowledge of Tudor politics to be aware of the absences and omissions of people and events. Even so, we still recognize today that in the play there is only a hint of Henry's desperation for an heir; no real debate about the legality of his marriage to Katherine; no mention of him becoming Supreme Head of the English Church; four of his wives are missing and no wives are beheaded.
I think the relative lack of popularity of the play is due to its episodic nature and lack of narrative drive. It's not Hamlet. Henry has only a few decisions to make: to judge the veracity of Buckingham's surveyor, to remove Wolsey for feathering his own nest, to legitimize his attraction for Anne Bullen and to select and protect Cranmer. None of them are particularly difficult.
Unsurprisingly for a play written when the divine right of kings was a hot issue there is little criticism of the king in the text, saving a hint that his interest in Anne Bullen is merely sexual, but for a play regarded by some as a great patriotic celebration there isn't much praise for Henry either. The play illustrates the trick used by rulers and governments for centuries: pageantry disguises that it's dangerous at court.
Early performances seem to have used the subtitle All Is True; were you tempted by this strategy and would it make a difference to perceptions about the play?
Doran: I am entirely convinced that the play is called All Is True. Henry Wotton's letter about the burning down of the Globe says that the King's Men were performing a play called All Is True, so it seems to me to be the proper title. But it also hints at those rather enigmatic Shakespearean titles like All's Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, or What You Will. It struck me that the title is a bit like a comedian saying, "this is an absolutely true story": the more the comedian emphasizes the truth of his tale, the more you question its veracity. I think the title comes with suspicion attached to it, in the same way that All's Well That Ends Well always seems to me to require a question mark at the end of the title.
We took it a stage further and had in the designer Rob Jones's set two huge doors, which opened to reveal the Field of the Cloth of Gold at the beginning. When they closed at the end of that piece of pageantry, you saw emblazoned in gold letters across these doors the words "All Is True." It kept in mind a sense that there was an agenda attached to this dramatization. Was it all true? Can you be true? What is the historical fact? Is there a whitewash job going on? Is this a political gesture to rehabilitate Katherine of Aragon?
One has to remember that Shakespeare had already treated this subject, or at least been part of a collaboration on this very period of history, when he wrote Thomas More. The manuscript of that play suggests it's in five different hands and it may therefore be that he was only one collaborator of many in that play, but in the reign of Queen Elizabeth that was an extremely subversive subject to discuss, a regular hot potato. In a way Thomas More canonizes the man who had refused the right of Henry to divorce Katherine, and therefore the right of the present Queen--the daughter of Anne Bullen--to reign. To write a play about that and put it on the stage during Elizabeth's reign was an extraordinary thing to do. Coming back to that same period in history at the end of his career suggests that there was business Shakespeare felt he had left unattended. We blazoned "All Is True" on the walls to suggest to the audience that they had to keep a question mark in their minds.
Thompson: The RSC used Henry VIII, which is a sensible marketing decision as it is how the play is known. All Is True is a great title, though, as one of the driving ideas in the play is that in the court all is true. "All Is true" in the court in the sense that whatever is the current appearance, fashion or policy is taken to be the true and eternal will of the king. Of course, when there is a change in appearance, fashion, or policy then the new situation becomes the true and eternal will of the king. We see Anne shift from lady-in-waiting to heaven-sent queen and then go missing. We know that she becomes the whore that bewitched a king.
When all is true, words cannot be trusted. The members of the court survive and thrive through favor and position as all the power is concentrated in and flows through the king. Words are used to curry favor and maintain position and, as so often with strong government, the first casualty is the truth.
Speaking truth to power is, of course, a Shakespearean theme and the play begs the question: who will speak the truth to the king? The play opens with Norfolk and Buckingham complaining about Wolsey's ambitious schemes and Norfolk warns Buckingham to be careful about telling Henry the truth. Wolsey sees to it that Buckingham doesn't live long enough to influence Henry.
It is a rare person who speaks truth to power. Even the Lady who brings news of the birth of Elizabeth initially tells Henry that the baby is a boy. Katherine uses her position as queen to expose Wolsey's tax gathering and to question the reliability of Buckingham's surveyor as a witness against Buckingham. Cranmer is the only one who fears nothing that can be said against him when pressed by the king.
In Act 3 Scene 1 Katherine refuses to accept Wolsey's scheme for a divorce: she holds fast to the truth, particularly the truth that she is lawfully married to Henry. In Act 3 Scene 2 Wolsey's corruption is exposed and he tells Cromwell to fling away ambition. These two juxtaposed scenes, one where someone holds fast to what she believes to be true and one where someone discards all that is false, were what attracted me to the play.
There are more occurrences (twenty-one) of the word "truth" in Henry VIII than in any other Shakespeare play. (All's Well That Ends Well has eighteen; Henry IV Part Two has sixteen.) The Chorus immediately muddies the water though:
... Such as give
Their money out of hope they may believe,
May here find truth too.
Hope and belief are not usual signs of truth. The Chorus goes on to make clear that what is being shown has been selected and is a partial view:
... For, gentle hearers, know
To rank our chosen truth with such a show
As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting
Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring
To make that only true we now intend,
Will leave us never an understanding friend.
There has been much criticism of the episodic nature of the plot; was it a problem to find a narrative line or did you detect a more subtle shaping of material in the play in the way it juxtaposes contrasting scenes, moods, and characters?
Doran: I deliberately did not try to solve all the problems of the play before we went into rehearsal, but to see how the play unfurled itself during that process. It inevitably has an episodic quality, but then so does history. To begin with I thought that the potential downfall of Cranmer was one episode too many and felt that I should cut Cranmer from the story. But as we rehearsed and grew to know the play, it seemed to me that it is a learning process for Henry himself: he learns how to trust and who to trust. He trusts Wolsey and then the lords gang up against Wolsey, conspire against him, and bring about his downfall. The lords also conspire against Cranmer, and yet this time Henry, knowing Cranmer to be a good man, gives him his support and his blessing. There is an arc to the story in terms of Henry VIII himself learning how to deal with the people around him. The structure of the play emerged by us allowing it to emerge.
Thompson: The narrative line isn't obvious and there are some delicious juxtapositions. The theater is all about juxtaposition and this play delivers, including: a celebration followed by an execution; the elevation of a lady-in-waiting followed by the trial of a queen; a man of lies followed by a woman of truth; and the coronation of a new queen followed by the death of an old one.
However, there are always two questions to begin with when directing a play: what kind of play is it? And what's the story?
Henry VIII is clearly a history play. One might call it a docudrama. It deals with events over twenty or so years in the middle of Henry's reign from the Field of the Cloth o
f Gold in 1520 to the birth of Elizabeth in 1533 and Cranmer's political struggles in 1535.
It shows both the public and private lives of the court and we took a decision to have Henry in various states of dress and undress: from his golden and white state outfits recognizable from the iconography to having him entering court in his hunting dress and struggling with his conscience in his nightgown.
The trickier question with this play is: what's the story? The first four acts deal with exits: the trial and death of Buckingham, the fall of Wolsey, the divorce and death of Katherine, and the disappearance of Anne Bullen after the coronation. These leavings are balanced with the wooing and elevation of Anne Bullen to Queen of England, the identification, promotion, and protection of Cranmer, the birth of Elizabeth and the prophecy of her great reign and the one who will come after.
Perhaps the real story is in the departures of Buckingham, Wolsey, and Katherine, and the disappearance of Anne Bullen?
We made a great deal of the exits: using the architecture of the church to give Buckingham, Wolsey, and Katherine long walks down the nave to a glorious exit beyond the audience and the crossing to the altar. A countertenor sang an ethereal tune and the lighting was suitably dramatic. A ghostly nightgowned Anne watched the christening of Elizabeth from the altar.
The story of the play might be that the only way out of the Tudor court is by death.
Another way of answering the "what's the story?" question is to look at the journey of the main character. What happens to Henry VIII? Henry shifts from trusting the ambitious Wolsey who sowed division to trusting the pious Cranmer and ordering the factions to unite behind him. Henry leaves the barren Katherine and ends, by way of the fecund Anne Bullen, holding the new hope Elizabeth. So the kingdom moves from barren corruption to fertile prosperity. Our sympathies, though, are with Wolsey and Katherine.
There is a contemporary political parallel too. Wolsey was a ruthless and powerful political servant who operated as the power of the throne. He is shown in the play to serve his own interests as well as those of the state. The feared Robert Cecil, who had straddled the reigns of both Elizabeth and James, had been seen in some quarters as another Wolsey. Cecil had died in 1612 and Henry VIII was first performed in 1613. After Wolsey's fall a new man arrives: Cranmer. Cranmer serves both God and the king and is incorruptible. It's as if Shakespeare is asking, what kind of man do you want in government? Interestingly, James I's solution to the problem of having so much power in one position was to leave the office of Secretary of State vacant until 1614.
The divisions rift by Henry's madness were still causing tensions in James's reign and so the choice of which parts of the story Shakespeare would tell was politically sensitive. The Jacobean audience would have been acutely aware of one absent character. There is just one reference in the play to Mary Tudor. Just before her death, Katherine reveals that she has commended her daughter to Henry and asked for her protection. Henry had only one real job: to provide an heir. Three of his children ruled: Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. Edward was born after the play ends. Elizabeth is celebrated. Where is Mary? Her absence is part of the story too.
The 1762 Drury Lane production boasted 130 figures in the coronation procession in Act 4, including "The Queen's herbwoman, strewing flowers" and "six Beef-Eaters"; does that sort of lavish spectacle attract you and how did you create your own coronation procession?
Doran: I tried to set up the glory of the spectacle, which has a theatrical impact, at the same time as saying that the narrative is going to end as everybody knew: in Anne Bullen's head being chopped off. We tried to place those pieces of spectacle not just as excuses for a lot of nice costumes and some music, but as something that you could see had a political agenda.
Thompson: Spectacle is an important part of theater and I, like many people attracted to theater, love the lavish and we indulged in spectacle where mentioned in the text: fireworks were visible through the west window for the entry of the goat men for example. However, if we had the resources to create the sort of extravaganzas seen in Drury Lane in the eighteenth century I suspect I would have preferred to double the actors' wages before spending anything on herbwomen strewing flowers or Beef-Eaters for the coronation.
Our coronation procession was about raising Anne as Henry had done. She was pushed down the nave above head height on a wheeled platform. Her eyes were focused on the horizon and her arms outstretched. She was a kind of sacrifice and is not seen again in the play.
The questions I was asking in rehearsal were: what does the spectacle do? What is the coronation scene about in terms of the play as a whole? What does it add to our understanding? Why are the gentlemen discussing who is who and where they are in the procession? Why does one gentleman recognize some people but not all?
I think that with the passage of time we have lost some of the significance. Shakespeare is showing us--or reminding the Jacobean audience--who had influence in the Tudor court after the removal of Katherine of Aragon. The contemporary audience will also have a sense of who was missing from the coronation. The marriage to Anne Bullen split the country. Thomas More's friends bought him a gown to wear at the coronation. He kept the gown but did not attend. It is akin to the much-commented absence of past Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton. Or the position of the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, tucked away in the third row, when President Obama addressed Parliament recently. The absences and positions are lost on many but significant for those in the know. I am not sure whether we successfully communicated this or not but I do think that the scene is about more than spectacle and makes a dramatic comment on the rise and fall of members of the court. Again the play hints that the Tudor court was a dangerous place to be.
11. 2006, Gregory Thompson production. Aoife McMahon as Anne Bullen. "Our coronation procession was about raising Anne as Henry had done. She was pushed down the nave above head height on a wheeled platform. Her eyes were focused on the horizon and her arms outstretched. She was a kind of sacrifice and is not seen again in the play."
Although the play is called Henry VIII, there's a stage history of Wolsey and Katherine being seen as the leading roles; how did you manage the balance between these three characters in dramatic terms?
Doran: Adrian Noble gave me very good advice in making sure that the casting was the best I could possibly get, and in securing Jane Lapotaire (Katherine), Ian Hogg (Wolsey), and Paul Jesson (Henry) to play those three roles I didn't have to do that balancing; it sorted itself out. Wolsey is a great starring role. It was one of Irving's roles and is an amazingly good part even though he disappears halfway through. I think maybe if you put all your eggs into that basket and have a star actor playing Wolsey to the detriment of the other characters, then once he has left the stage the audience is left wondering when he's going to come back on.
Katherine of Aragon is a wonderful part but I remember Jane Lapotaire describing it, after many performances, as a lonely part. There are four of what we described as "seasonal" scenes. She has her spring, her summer, her great moment in her autumn and then her decline into winter, but she doesn't spend a lot of the time interacting and that was difficult. But it's a spectacular role for an older actress.
Thompson: The play does the balancing act. I didn't want to interfere with the dynamics of the play as written but to bring them out. I thought the best way was to be as physically close to the characters as possible.
Our Henry was as powerful and capricious as we could make him. We wanted to show the man and the monarch and consciously imitated the known portraits and popular images of Henry. Antony Byrne is a powerful, intelligent, and leonine actor with an RSC pedigree and I knew would give us a look of Henry in his prime. The play does not cover Henry's decline into illness and obesity and so I wanted a younger stronger Henry than has been cast in the past.
Similarly, Anthony O'Donnell is an award-winning actor with a history with the RSC and enjoys t
he same physical stature as Wolsey. He is a rich comic actor and is more usually considered for lighter roles. I had a hunch that he would capture the tragedy of Wolsey's loss.
For Katherine, the common choice is for a British actress to play Spanish. I was attracted to the authenticity of hearing a foreigner trying to speak English beautifully. I remembered Corinne Jaber from Peter Brook's Mahabharata. The sense of the queen as both an insider and outsider in the court, both at home and far from home, was a given as soon as she spoke.
Having made the casting decisions the next step is to set up a framework so that all three characters are as powerful as can be. Actors gain power in the theater by going on a journey so we needed to play the forcefulness of Wolsey where his look could silence even the aristocrats of court and he's second only to the king; the potency of Katherine as she marches into Henry's court to fight her case; the vitality of Henry as he never tires but runs from hunting to court to party and dance and then show how Wolsey, the man who has lost all he has strived for, seeks to preserve some dignity; how Katherine's fierce energy even at her last breath affords her a spiritual awakening; and how Henry despairs of providing an heir and is desperate to find a courtier he can trust and rely on. I believe the balance in dramatic terms is achieved by playing the twists and turns of fortune to the maximum so that the joy is joyous and the tragedy terrible.
Shakespeare is kinder to Henry than history has been--he doesn't blame or criticize his actions; did you play up the image of him as "bluff King Hal," Bluebeard in a fatsuit, or did you see him as growing in stature as king in your production?
Doran: Henry is at this stage in his vigorous youth; not the fat old man of the later Holbein image. He has vigor and he grows throughout the role. There are some potentially subversive moments within the play. I learnt a very important lesson: it is possible to over-produce these plays. It tends to be done either by changing scenery between scenes or by putting musical cues between scenes. It's very common practice but you can miss extra elements of the writing by doing it. You can do the same if you put an interval in the wrong place. At the end of Act 2 Scene 2, just before the first entrance of Anne Bullen, Henry is debating what he's going to do about Queen Katherine. Finally he says that he must leave her: "O, my lord, / Would it not grieve an able man to leave So sweet a bedfellow? But, conscience, conscience: O, 'tis a tender place, and I must leave her." The end of that scene seems to suggest that Henry VIII is basing his decision to divorce Katherine entirely upon his conscience. The next scene begins with Anne Bullen talking to the Old Lady character: her first line is "Not for that neither: here's the pang that pinches." It's in the middle of a conversation they are already having. If you run the two scenes together, it's as if Anne is answering the last line of the previous scene, saying it's nothing to do with conscience--which of course is what many of the people in the audience are thinking. That is a rather subversive thing to do, but it allowed us to keep questioning the "All Is True" nature of the piece, and try to see what the perspective of the writers to the material was: what their attitude was in suggesting to the audience to keep questioning the historical "facts."