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Summary
A porter and a large group of men enter the scene. The crowd has arrived to see Elizabeth’s christening. The porter converses with another man about how to keep the rabble from blocking the entrance to the palace yard. The porter thinks the crowd is made up of the same louts who go to public executions or who cheer loudest at the playhouse. The Lord Chamberlain enters and yells at the porter for letting the crowd block so much space, for soon royal ladies will need to pass. Lord Chamberlain suspects that the crowd is made up of folks from the suburbs, and he tells the porter to take care of them. Finally, the royals arrive, and the porter shouts to the crowd to make way.
Cranmer, Norfolk, Suffolk, and other noblemen enter the scene with the child Elizabeth. Then, Henry enters. Cranmer baptizes Elizabeth and makes a speech about her future greatness. He says the infant holds great promise for England, and few now can imagine the great things she will accomplish. She will be loved and feared, and she will be a great ruler. When she dies, she will be reborn like a phoenix, such that all her good attributes will carry on in the next ruler. The king is amazed at the wonders of which Cranmer speaks. Cranmer goes on to announce that Elizabeth will bring happiness to England, and when she dies a virgin, the world will mourn her.
Henry is pleased with Cranmer’s words and says that with this child he finally feels he has accomplished something great. He looks forward to seeing what she will do from his future post in heaven.
As the stage clears, the Epilogue enters, saying it is likely that the play didn’t please everyone in the audience. Some may have come to doze for a few acts but were awoken by the trumpets. Others came to hear the court made fun of but were disappointed. The only praise the Epilogue anticipates must come from good women, who will have been pleased with the play’s portrayal of Katherine. And, if the ladies clap, then their men must surely follow.
Analysis
Henry VIII ends with the triumphant conclusion that the play has been moving toward since the beginning: the baptism of the newborn Elizabeth, the future queen of England. Now that the political and religious scheming has been quelled (or, at least, seems to be), the whole kingdom can gather for the celebration of the newborn princess. And it does indeed seem like the whole kingdom has shown up. The comic scene featuring the porter as he attempts to organize the crushing crowd of commoners beautifully expresses the celebratory atmosphere that attends the ceremony of baptism.
This boisterous scene is immediately followed by one of high formality and gravitas, in which Archbishop Cranmer delivers an eloquent speech about England’s future prosperity. It is this scene that perhaps most clearly reveals the historical and political context of the play’s original composition and performance. At this point, Elizabeth had already passed away, and James I now occupied the throne. It is for this reason that Cranmer doesn’t simply prophesy a prosperous rule for the celebrated Virgin Queen. He also invokes the stunning image of a “maiden phoenix” (5.4.48) to suggest that everything that will be great about Elizabeth will be spiritually reborn in her successor. This heir, Cranmer elaborates, “Shall starlike rise as great in fame as she was / And stand so fixed” (5.4.54–55). The play’s triumphant conclusion thus doubles as a celebration of the current sovereign. As such, all the imagery proffered here is bright and ascendent, carefully eschewing any suggestion of the dark times that, historically, would have come shortly after the events depicted in the play—perhaps most notably the arrest and execution of Anne Bullen.
The epilogue offers a conventionally amusing conclusion in which a player addresses the audience and makes something like an apology for any offense, disappointment, or boredom the evening’s performance may have caused. It’s notable, however, that the speaker singles out the play’s portrayal of Katherine: “I fear / All the expected good we’re like to hear / For this play at this time is only in / The merciful construction of good women, / For such a one we showed ‘em” (5.Epilogue.7–11). The speaker comically leverages this point to suggest that the good women in the audience will happily applaud, thereby pressuring the men to clap too. This observation implicitly acknowledges that Katherine has been the play’s truly outstanding role, one that in the centuries following the premiere has made the careers of numerous actresses. In the end, then, it isn’t simply Elizabeth who is symbolically triumphant; it’s also Henry’s noble and unfairly cast-off first wife, Katherine of Aragon.
