SOURCE: Healy, Thomas. “History and Judgement in Henry VIII.” In Shakespeare's Late Plays: New Readings, edited by Jennifer Richards and James Knowles, pp. 158-75. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Healy highlights the theme of historiography in Henry VIII, exploring the drama's concern with the evaluation, interpretation, and malleability of historical “truth.”

I

MOPSA

I love a ballad in print, alife, for then we are sure they are true. 

AUTOLYCUS

Here's one to a very doleful tune, how a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she longed to eat adders' heads and toads carbonadoed. 

MOPSA

Is it true, think 

AUTOLYCUS

Very 

(The Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 251-6)

2ND Gentleman

[D]id you not late days 

A buzzing of a separation 

Between the king and Katherine? 

1ST Gentleman

Yes, but it held not; 

For when the king once heard...