Do not flatter the great.
That’s easy to say, but hard to do and even William Shakespeare fell for the desire to simplify history and tell a patron what they wanted to hear. Charles Dickens had Henry VIII dead to rights:
The plain truth is, that he was a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the History of England.
Shakespeare turned him into God’s chevalier which was not accidentally what Queen Elizabeth (his daughter) wanted to hear. Yet Shakespeare was also on to something and that something is important to us just now.
Shakespeare titled the play we call Henry VIII: All is True and I see some mawkish humor there. He is going to say things that are not quite true about the Beast Man, but is sentimental enough toward the brilliant daughter that he will go ahead anyway. Shakespeare (and his helpers) warn us that they will not make us laugh at the very start and they do not.
There is nothing funny about the time of Henry VIII when the English church was divided to sate one man’s lust.
The play begins with the meeting at the field of the cloth of gold . . . a giant party for peace, a medieval Woodstock, put on by the King of France and England. No sooner had the playing at peace been concluded, then France was false and war stirred up.
Nothing is true when vain men use important issues to sooth their vanity.
When a man who could be great goes bad, then the temptation is to blame his advisers. Sack the cabinet. Get rid of the vice-president. Shakespeare blames Cardinal Wolsey for all Henry’s sin, but Henry was the king who gave him power. Wolsey may have helped Henry rid himself of one wife, but Henry would repeat the process without him later. Shakespeare was wrong and must have known he was wrong because he makes Queen Katherine the most virtuous and noblest person in the play.
Queen Katherine says: “Truth loves open dealing.” One way to spot a bad leader is when he runs an operation given to whispering and slander . . . like a seventh grade gossip fest with grownups.
She is a bold truth speaker and Henry is made the liar by her boldness. She, at times she alone, dares speak the truth. She is old and loveless, but she is true to God and her church. She has the power of virtue and this power gives her a force nobody else in the play has . . . certainly not the goat-king.
Nothing is true when bad rulers escape censure by blaming their lieutenants.
At last in the play, scheming men trap Cardinal Wolsey and he is undone. The truth is told about him by men who cannot tell the truth about themselves. Wolsey is removed from power and for the first time sees the truth about himself and power.
He learns that power cannot be trusted and wealth is a vanity.
Nothing is true until a man stops seeking money and power.
How bad is the king that a man is improved when he feels his displeasure? How false is a ruler that when he finally sees the truth about a false councilor, the councilor is helped, but he is not?
Yet Henry did one thing that was good . . . and Shakespeare captures it well. He fathered Elizabeth . . .who kept England on a middle course and out of the religious wars. God used Henry as he uses every king, even if the greatest thing that king does is father a child, a daughter that he did not want.
If Elizabeth was imperfect, and she was, leaving Christendom divided, she did what she could. She left England orthodox in doctrine, if divided from the patriarchs. She defended her land from foreign conquest and allowed a golden age of arts and letters. She was not good, but she was good enough for the times. If the fires still burned, they did not burn as fiercely for heretics’ flesh as on the continent.
Arthur was dead, Charlemagne was gone, and Elizabeth did the best that a ruler could do in a horrific time. Her father did the nation the favor of siring her and then dying . . . and her two siblings did the nation the of favor of reigning a short time. Nothing so befit Henry VIII as dying and getting his bloated, greasy corpse out of the way.
He left Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. Mary was twisted by suffering and Edward was a pliable tool for extremists who would have riven England like Germany was torn. Mary, Queen of Scots, was ill treated, abused by her times, and unable to unite the Kingdoms. Elizabeth was the imperfect that was the best that could be. And so it goes in history. Shakespeare may not have liked the truth, but the truth was that the church was divided, the witness frail, and only one woman’s life stood between England and the horrors the Reformation unleashed in Europe.
Elizabeth got the big thing right and so God save Good Queen Bess.
If asked about Henry VIII, Charles Dickens say of him: “I shall take the liberty to call (him), plainly, one of the most detestable villains that ever drew breath.”
Shakespeare made him more than he was, but also saw something true about him. God used nasty Henry VIII to do great good for England in the midst of his swinishness. There is hope in this for us, since heroes are rare in our government right now and swine we have in abundance.
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William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter, Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power, and Henry V is a hero. Richard II shows us not to presume on the grace of God or rebel against authority too easily. Coriolanus reminds us that our leaders need integrity and humility. Our life can be joyful if we realize that it is, at best, A Comedy of Errors. Hamlet needs to know himself better and talks to himself less. He is stuck with himself so he had better make his peace with God quickly and should stay far away from Ophelia. Shakespeare gets something wrong in Merchant of Venice . . . though not as badly as some in the English Labour Party or in my Twitter feed. Love if blind, but intellectualism is blind and impotent in Love’s Labours Lost. Brutus kills Caesar, but is overshadowed by him in Julius Caesar. We should learn not to make Much Ado about Nothing. We might all be Antony, but if we would avoid his fate then we must avoid flattery and the superficial love of Troilus and Cressida. We are fools, but our goal should be to accept it and not to degenerate into Biblical fools during our Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard III is a symptom of a bad leadership community, but be careful that use Measure for Measure to guide your reaction to the mess. The modern university is Iago in Othello playing on our sins to destroy the nation. You can’t accumulate your way to a great leader and personal piety in Henry VI (Part I) is not enough to make a great king. God will save the King, not our stupid partisan squabbles seen in Henry VI (Part 2) and not kingmakers as existed in Henry VI (Part 3). Fortunately, in God’s world All’s Well That Ends Well. Two Gentlemen remind me that being in love is grand. King John keeps winning and so loses. Slander always gives way to truth in Cymbeline. We need patrons, but God help us if we flatter them and lose them as Athens did with Timon of Athens. We need good leaders and not have to hope against reason that one turns out well like young Prince Hal in Henry IV Part One. Being powerful is all fun and games, until it isn’t as Henry learns in Henry IV Part Two. Virtue can be jolly and edgy, as The Merry Wives of Windsor show. We can all be shrews and need The Taming of the Shrew. Pericles did not live in a Zootopia, his world was more realistic. No revenge lest we end like Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare shows what the fusion of Christianity and classicism did for all of us in Venus and Adonis. It is hard to be delivered from evil, if we pursue it as did the evil man in The Rape of Lucrece. God save us from the leader like King Lear who rules by tricks and fear, though God will make things the best they can be, usually be sending us a Cordelia. Even she cannot win without a community, as Edward III demonstrates. God can use anyone to be a hero . . . even Henry VIII.
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