The character of Henry VIII is drawn with great truth and spirit.  It is like a very disagreeable portrait, sketched by the hand of a master.  His gross appearance, his blustering demeanour, his vulgarity, his arrogance, his sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of common decency and common humanity, are marked in strong lines.  His traditional peculiarities of expression complete the reality of the picture.  The authoritative expletive, ‘Ha!’ with which ne intimates his indignation or surprise, has an effect like the first startling sound that breaks from a thunder-cloud.  He is of all the monarchs in our history the most disgusting:  for he unites in himself all the vices of barbarism and refinement, without their virtues.  Other kings before him (such as Richard III) were tyrants and murderers out of ambition or necessity:  they gained or established unjust power by violent means:  they destroyed their or made its tenure insecure.  But Henry VIII’s power is most fatal to those whom he loves:  he is cruel and remorseless to pamper his luxurious appetites:  bloody and voluptuous; an amorous murderer; an uxorious debauchee.  His hardened insensibility to the feelings of others is strengthened by the most profligate self-indulgence.  The religious hypocrisy, under which he masks his cruelty and his lust, is admirably displayed in the speech in which he describes the first misgivings of his conscience and its increasing throes and terrors, which have induced him to divorce his queen.  The only thing in his favour in this play is his treatment of Cranmer:  there is also another circumstance in his favour, which is his patronage of Hans Holbein.—­It has been said of Shakespeare, ’No maid could live near such a man.’  It might with as good reason be said, ’No king could live near such a man.’  His eye would have penetrated through the pomp of circumstance and the veil of opinion.  As it is, he has represented such persons to the life—­his plays are in this respect the glass of history—­he has done them the same justice as if he had been a privy counsellor all his life, and in each successive reign.  Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage.  In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters:  it is only while living that they are ‘the best of kings’.  It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen as they were, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.  The charge brought against modern philosophy as inimical to loyalty is unjust because it might as well be brought lover of kings.  We have often wondered that Henry VIII as he is drawn by Shakespeare, and as we have seen him represented in all the bloated deformity of mind and person, is not hooted from the English stage.