SOURCE: “History, Romance, and Henry VIII,” in Iowa State Journal of Research, Vol. 53, No. 3, February, 1979, pp. 177-83.

In the following essay, Uphaus examines how the historical facts of Henry VIII are absorbed by Shakespeare's use of romantic convention, and claims that the play “presents an historical confirmation of the literary experience of romance.”

There are several ways that we can see how Henry VIII conjoins the events of history with the conventions of romance in such a way that the play presents an historical verification of the literary experience of romance. The first way is to examine the falls of Buckingham, Wolsey, and Katherine, all of which draw on Holinshed's Chronicles. The second way is to note the religious drift in the play which, albeit anachronistically, steadily implies and anticipates a turn away from Catholicism to the rise of Protestantism,¹ and this turn is not only evident within...