SOURCE: Smidt, Kristian. “All Is True, or The Honest Chronicler—King Henry VIII.” In Unconformities in Shakespeare's History Plays, pp. 145-58. London: Macmillan, 1982.

In the following essay, Smidt contends that unlike Shakespeare's other histories, Henry VIII is a play of character rather than of action and pageantry—a quality it shares with some of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies.

Probably a majority of critics have seen Henry VIII as a play separated not only in time but in kind from the early histories. It is certainly different, but not because of the amount of pageantry it contains, as is often asserted, nor because of its use of mythic elements, Christian or pagan, nor because of its alleged looseness of plot.¹ Henry VIII is unlike Shakespeare's English history plays of the 1590s because of its new approach to the treatment of character.

The pageantry is there, and the prologue apparently draws...