SOURCE: Leggatt, Alexander. “Henry VIII and the Ideal England.” Shakespeare Survey 38 (1985): 131-43.

In the following essay, Leggatt examines the idealized image of England and its history intimated in the body of Henry VIII and fully expressed in Cranmer's prophecy at the end of the drama.

At the end of Henry VIII Cranmer delivers a prophecy of the golden age of Queen Elizabeth, in a speech that seems designed both as the last in a series of striking set-pieces and as the culmination of the play's action. The elaborate and sometimes devious historical process the play has shown has been designed, we now realize, to allow Elizabeth to be born and to make this golden age possible. For the characters in the play, however, the age of Elizabeth lies in the future and, we are told, ‘Few now living can behold that goodness’ (5.4.22).¹ For the audience it lies in...