SOURCE: “The Rhetoric of Politeness and Henry VIII,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 4, Winter, 1992, pp. 391-409.

In the essay below, Magnusson examines the “social rhetoric of politeness” in Shakespeare's Henry VIII. The critic maintains that gender and class have an effect on speech patterns and attempts to “help us toward a new understanding of the social construction in language of dramatic character.”

In Henry VIII, when the class-conscious Duke of Buckingham, conversing with the Duke of Norfolk and the Lord Abergavenny, becomes increasingly heated in his criticisms of the upstart Cardinal Wolsey, Norfolk offers this advice:

                                        I advise you (And take it from a heart that wishes towards you Honor and plenteous safety) that you read The cardinal's malice and his potency Together; to consider further, that What his high hatred would effect wants not A minister in his power. 

(1.1.102-8)¹

In the construction of Norfolk's speech, two...