Chapter V ‘Griped By Meaner Persons’?

Chapter V

‘Griped By Meaner Persons’?:

Wolsey in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII

Though the play is ostensibly about the iconic Henry VIII and the events leading to the birth of the future Elizabeth I, it is Thomas Cardinal Wolsey who dominates the first three acts. Wolsey’s fall from power is the central structural feature of the first half of the text, on which the other characters are inextricably focused. The first scene, which features the Dukes of Buckingham and Norfolk discussing with the Lord Abergavenny the recent Field of Cloth-of-gold summit, is centered on Wolsey by line 45; the Cardinal goes on to dominate the discussion for nearly 200 lines until the scene ends. Wolsey appears in seven of the ten scenes to the end of Act 3; in two others (1.3 and 2.1) he is the topic of the dialogue but does not appear on stage. Only in 2.3 is Wolsey totally absent (excluding Acts 4 and 5, after Wolsey’s death). No other character in the play appears with such frequency: in these same scenes, Katherine appears three times and is discussed in a further four scenes; the Duke of Buckingham only appears twice and is mentioned once; the Duke of Norfolk appears four times, and Anne Boleyn participates in two scenes and is mentioned in one other. The only figure whose presence even approaches Wolsey’s is Henry himself: though he is at least discussed in all ten scenes to the end of Act 3, he only actually appears in five of these. In these three acts, Wolsey has 411 lines—the most of any character up until this point—whereas Henry only has 288: even though Wolsey does not appear in the final two acts, only Henry himself has more lines over the entire play. The impact of Wolsey’s constant presence is significant, both in a specifically textual sense and as an indicator of the relevance that Wolsey still had in early Jacobean England, nearly eighty years after his death.

Of course, the manipulation of Wolsey’s image was not an innovation by Shakespeare or Fletcher; as we have seen, as early as 1515 John Skelton was applying generic satirical insults to the Cardinal which, as the century wore on, gradually came to typify public conceptions of Wolsey. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, the public had a firm grip on a characterization of Wolsey that was unkind, to say the least: reinforced by anti-Roman sentiment and the effects of texts like Godly Queene Hester, Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and Skelton’s satires of the 1520s, the dominant public image of Wolsey was of a grotesquely obese, greedy, pompous cardinal. It was in this environment that Henry VIII was composed. As is true with so many aspects of Shakespeare’s works, it is difficult to state with any certainty exactly what either Shakespeare or Fletcher might have believed about Wolsey: the character can either be played as a pompous schemer repentant only once he has been caught, or as a hard-working and long-suffering agent of a capricious king. That this second interpretation—which would undercut the generally accepted and dominant sixteenth-century characterization of Wolsey—has heretofore largely been ignored both by literary critics and by directors and actors alike invites a more rigorous analysis of the Cardinal in order to promote a more nuanced understanding of Henry VIII.

This study will analyze the depictions of Wolsey in Henry VIII to understand better how this particular text engages with the evolving nature of sixteenth-century portrayals of Wolsey. It will first consider how Wolsey is constructed in the text itself, following the chronological sweep and cumulative effect of the text. Recurring images familiar from earlier texts will be highlighted, along with features unique to this text. The central discussion will focus on not just Wolsey’s character, but also on the impact of other characters on Wolsey. To highlight these interactions, this chapter has also been roughly structured by means of subcategories demonstrating the linear nature of Wolsey’s characterization. The first section deals with Buckingham and how he impugns Wolsey (and, by implication, himself). The second considers the impact of the elaborate processions for which Henry VIII is famous. The third section reconsiders Katherine’s relationship with Wolsey, while the fourth is devoted to an analysis of Wolsey’s self-representations at his fall. Finally, the fifth section analyzes the eulogies of Wolsey given by Katherine and Griffiths in Act 4.

Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII represents a dynamic confluence of conflicting early modern perspectives. With his flair for the dramatic he is a prime vehicle for pageantry and elaborate speeches, and is a seemingly paradoxical combination of a humanist homo novus and a lofty medieval prelate. His base birth and talent for politics are causes for wonder and ridicule for many of the noblemen in the text, but these are features which could endear Wolsey to a modern audience. Yet Wolsey is routinely portrayed as an obese blusterer, as in the Globe Theatre’s 2010 production. In his otherwise extremely critical review of that production for the Telegraph, Charles Spencer wrote that, “Best of all is Ian McNeice’s grotesque Cardinal Wolsey, who hisses out his lines like a poisonous snake and slithers across the stage like a disgustingly plump slug. When he’s on stage, this often inert play comes alive.”³⁹⁰ Negative portrayals of Wolsey are hardly a recent phenomenon: according to Gordon McMullan, the 1628 revival was noteworthy for the then-current Duke of Buckingham—the play’s sponsor—walking out after his predecessor’s beheading, indicating his belief that “his namesake in the play died as a result of being framed”.³⁹¹ If Buckingham has been framed in the play, then Wolsey is necessarily the author of Buckingham’s betrayal and therefore is the villain of the play. McMullan also demonstrates that the overwhelming trend of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to place a sympathetic Katherine at the center of the play; as with Buckingham, if Katherine is to be the sympathetic focus of the text, then it is difficult—but not impossible—to dismiss her anti-Wolsey position.³⁹² If Wolsey’s character is not fleshed out to include the same sympathetic textual treatment, then the Cardinal is again the villain of the play.

Historically, these two productions demonstrate the standard interpretations of this particular text. Productions both before and after the Interregnum tended to favor characterizations that linked Wolsey to rising anti-Catholic sentiments and to Archbishop William Laud (1573–1645): bluntly, these comparisons were not meant kindly to either man. Henry Harris’s Wolsey in the Duke’s Company’s 1663 revival featured a “distinctly Anglican” costume, perhaps seeking to evoke Laud in the tensions of post-Restoration England.³⁹³ Henry VIII was also performed throughout the eighteenth century as a patriotic set-piece, notably in 1727 and in 1761 to celebrate the coronations of George II and George III.³⁹⁴ The 1727 production was put on by Colley Cibber at Drury Lane, and given Cibber’s association with the Cavendishes in 1688 (and thus his antipathy towards Catholicism, as William Cavendish was one of the disaffected noblemen who invited the future William III invade England) allows a reasonable supposition that Wolsey was not presented in a positive light.³⁹⁵

Nineteenth-century productions saw an increased importance placed on the role of spectacle, including Covent Garden revivals in 1803, 1811, and 1822, followed by Charles Kean’s 1855 production at the Princess’s Theatre.³⁹⁶ An American production in 1859 featured a female Wolsey—ostensibly to highlight the doomed relationship between Wolsey and Henry—and Samuel Phelps’s Sadler’s Wells performances in 1865 continued the trend of ever more spectacular productions.³⁹⁷ Henry Irving’s 1892 production featured a Wolsey who was “cultured and crafty”, with “majesty in his lineaments”, and notably not obese, as most interpretations have cast the Cardinal.³⁹⁸ This image of a lean Cardinal would be reflected in Sir John Gielgud’s adoption of the role in 1958.³⁹⁹

After the grandeur of the ninteenth-century revivals, many twentieth-century productions followed Terence Grey’s 1931 minimalist production, which sought to highlight the cutthroat politics of the era by cutting away the pomp and grandeur that runs throughout the text. Greg Doran’s landmark 1996 RSC production signaled the return of the elaborate processions which typified productions of this play throughout the nineteenth century, but Doran injected satirical elements to “reclaim the fullness of spectacle at the same time as demonstrating (and in order to demonstrate) its emptiness”.⁴⁰⁰ Doran’s portrayal of the dichotomy of spectacle also compels the audience to view Wolsey as either fundamentally immoral or, more generously, as being seriously misguided. To further mark out Wolsey, Ian Hogg (as Wolsey) adopted a Suffolk accent, which contrasted with the more polished courtiers’ accents and immediately indicated the Cardinal was, at heart, an outsider at court.⁴⁰¹ In keeping with traditional productions, Hogg portrayed “Wolsey's worldliness and appetite for fleshly pleasures” and less emphasis was placed on Wolsey’s emotional final scene with Cromwell.⁴⁰²

Wolsey is thus something of an anomaly in this play; he has no obvious parallels with other characters within the text, and, as we will see, is routinely misunderstood or misinterpreted by the other characters (and thus, often by the audience). As mentioned previously, there are—generally speaking—two main interpretations of Wolsey, which can be classified as either sympathetic or unsympathetic. This distinction is particularly relevant for a stage production of this play: if the director portrays Wolsey as the industrious (if somewhat self-serving) victim of a fickle monarch, then his enemies necessarily have to be depicted as untrustworthy and ignoble. If Wolsey is rendered less sympathetically, then he appears as a manipulator whose deceptions eventually catch up with him. As with so many aspects of Shakespeare’s works, this dichotomy makes his own opinions difficult to gauge, as well as increasing the difficulty of assigning passages to either Shakespeare or Fletcher. However, this ambiguity is itself revealing: while the overwhelming majority of Wolsey-related material in the sixteenth century painted a distinctly two-dimensional and negative picture of the Cardinal, the Wolsey of Henry VIII can easily be interpreted sympathetically. The popular image of the bloated, cunning Cardinal is undercut in this text by Wolsey’s extended and emotional speeches, set both in dialogue and monologue.

Alongside the image of the obese, pompous Wolsey is that of the bureaucratic, work-driven Lord Chancellor; the negative impact of Wolsey’s pompous displays of wealth are potentially complicated by the subtle and occasional references to his considerable work ethic. Paperwork is a recurring theme throughout the play and crucially it is only the commoners like Wolsey, Cromwell, and Gardiner who give any indication of the day-to-day workings of the state. By discussing Wolsey as he appears in the text itself—with an added emphasis on non-prejudicial interpretation—this study will demonstrate that Shakespeare and Fletcher provided for an altogether more nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of the Cardinal: a characterization which undercuts decades of negative imagery reinforced throughout the sixteenth century.