Henry VIIIShakespeare’s First Folio
Scans: Bodleian Libraries, Arch. G c.7.
The First Folio
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On the page
Source transcription. Original spelling retained.
Reading Henry VIII
Histories · First Folio, 1623
Henry VIII presents a court in which proximity to the monarch offers influence without lasting security. Buckingham, Katherine, and Wolsey face changes of fortune that public ceremony cannot prevent. Katherine's defence of her marriage gives particular weight to the difficulty of speaking before judges whose authority shapes the hearing itself. Read the Folio's processions and formal encounters alongside the accounts people give of them. Spectacle can establish a person's standing, but it can also make their loss visible. The play asks its audience to watch people become exposed within institutions that once seemed to sustain them.
The Prologue asks for a serious response and distinguishes the coming performance from the comic entertainment some spectators may expect. Its appeal to pity also asks the audience to imagine powerful people as vulnerable. Begin with that instruction before reading the court's displays of magnificence.
Context: Henry VIII at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Scans and transcription: Bodleian Libraries, Arch. G c.7.
On the opening page
The Famous History of the Life of King HENRY the Eight. THE PROLOGVE. I Come no more to make you laugh, Things now, T[gap]at beare a Weighty, and a Serious Brow, Sad, high, and working, full of State and Woe: Such Noble Scœnes, as draw the Eye to flow We now present. Those that can Pitty, heere May (if they thinke it well) let fall a Teare, The Subiect will deserue it. Such as giue Their Money out of hope they may beleeue, May heere finde Truth too. Those that come to see Onely a show or two, and so a gree, The Play may passe: if they be still, and willing, Ile vndertake may see away their shilling Richly in two short houres. Onely they That come to heare a Merry, Bawdy Play, A noyse of Targets: Or to see a Fellow In a long Motley Coate, garded with Yellow, Will be deceyu'd. For gentle Hear[gap]s, know To ranke our chosen Truth with such a show As Foole, and Fight is, beside forfeyting Our owne Braines, and the Opinion that we bring To make that onely true, we now intend, Will leaue vs neuer an vnderstanding Friend. Therefore, for Goodnesse sake, and as you are knowne The First and Happiest Hearers of the Towne, Be sad, as we would make ye. Thinke ye see The very Persons of our Noble Story, As they were Liuing: Thinke you see them Great, And follow'd with the generall throng, and sweat Of thousand Friends: Then, in a moment, see How soone this Mightinesse, meets Misery: And if you can be merry then, Ile say, A Man may weepe vpon his Wedding day. Actus Primus. Scœna Prima. [Act 1, Scene 1]
An opening excerpt from the Bodleian transcription, with original spelling retained. Continue in the reader. Text CC BY 3.0.