SOURCE: “‘Thou Hast Made Me Now a Man’: Reforming Man(ner)liness in Henry VIII,” in Shakespeare's Late Plays: New Readings, edited by Jennifer Richards and James Knowles, Edinburgh University Press, 1999, pp. 40-56.

In the following essay, McMullan explores Henry VIII's treatment of contemporary definitions of manliness, examining standards of masculinity and appropriate social conduct.

I

‘Thou hast made me now a man’, Henry tells Cranmer after the archbishop has spoken prophetic words over the baby Elizabeth in the christening scene at the close of Henry VIII, announcing ‘never before / This happy child did I get anything’ (V, iv, 64-5). This claim of the king's that his masculinity has only now finally been established by his fathering (or perhaps more accurately, by Cranmer's christening) of a baby girl is a puzzling one, and one which has generally been ignored by critics. Yet Henry's appalling treatment of the...