SOURCE: Champion, Larry S. “Shakespeare's Henry VIII: A Celebration of History.” South Atlantic Bulletin 44, no. 1 (January 1979): 1-18.

In the following essay, Champion analyzes the structure, characters, and themes of Henry VIII, suggesting that the play's lack of unity is outweighed by its artistic merits.

To some degree each of Shakespeare's history plays was of political and social relevance to its original audiences. The interest in large part stemmed from the Elizabethans' fascination with their past; and, while on occasion particular contemporary political issues and problems were mirrored in an earlier historical context, in more general terms the dramatization of the preceding years of political turbulence became a means of expressing a new communal sense of identity stemming from present unity and national power. Nowhere, however, do these plays so directly celebrate the contemporary age as in The Famous Victory of the Life of King Henry the Eighth. What...