King Henry VIII has one of the fullest theatrical histories of any play in the Shakespeare canon, yet has been consistently misrepresented, both in performance and in criticism. This edition offers a new perspective on this ironic, multi-layered, collaborative play, revealing it as a complex meditation on the progress of Reformation which sees English life since Henry VIII`s day as a series of bewildering changes in national and personal allegiance and represents `history` as the product of varied and contradictory testimony. McMullan makes a powerful claim for the rehabilitation of Henry VIII, providing the fullest performance history of any edition to date and reading the work not as a marginal `late` Shakespeare play but as a play which is paradigmatic of the achievement of Renaissance drama as a whole.


Table of contents
List of illustrations
General Editors preface
Preface

Introduction
Authenticities: performance history
- Date and early performances
- Performances 1660-1916
- Performances 1916-2000
All is true: cultural history
- Truth and topicality
- Royal reputations
- The conscience of the King
- Truth and temperance
- Truth and tragicomedy
- The character of the Queen
- Hidden reformations
- Truth and topicality: coda
Originals: textual history
- Text and modernization
- Resources
- Sources
- Analogues
- Collaboration

KING HENRY VIII (ALL IS TRUE)

Longer notes

Appendices
1) Contextual chronology for the events of Henry VIII
2) Comparative chronology (1603-13) for plays in Fletcher and Shakespeare canons
3) Attribution and composition
4) The Maids Tragedy
5) Uncollected sources/analogues
6) Music
7) Doubling chart

Abbreviations and References
Index