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Summary
The queen is in her apartment when the arrival of Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeius is announced. The cardinals request to speak in a private room, but the queen’s conscience is clear, so she is content to converse in a public space. Wolsey says he has not come to accuse her of anything, but to learn her thoughts on the dissolution of her marriage and to offer advice. Katherine doesn’t believe that they are on an honorable errand, but she nevertheless thanks them for their efforts. Katherine declares that she is a woman alone, without friends or hope. Wolsey insists that she does have friends in England, but she disagrees. Campeius advises Katherine to put her hope in the king and to believe that he will protect her after they are divorced. Katherine accuses them of being corrupt, and she reminds them that there is still a higher force to judge them all: God.
Katherine tells the cardinals that she thought they were holy men, and she is shocked to see their apparent pleasure in making her life wretched. She can’t believe they would advise her to put her future in the hands of one who has already rejected her. The cardinals tell her she is mistaken. But the queen speaks of how obedient and honorable a wife she had been, only to be rewarded with a dishonorable divorce. Thus, she says, even being a constant woman and a good wife cannot save a marriage. Katherine says only death will take the title of queen from her. She wishes she had never come to England, a world of flattery and untruth.
Wolsey breaks in to insist that their ends are honorable, that they want to relieve her sorrow, and that she misunderstands them in thinking evil of them. As peacemakers, they suggest that she not aggravate the break with the king but try to stay in his good favor. Campeius assures her that the king loves her, and he promises they will try to help her. Katherine tells them to do whatever they want, declaring sarcastically that if she has misunderstood their intentions, it is because she is a woman and therefore lacks understanding.
Analysis
Unlike Buckingham, who went to his death without a significant fight, Katherine refuses to submit quietly to the future dictated by the cardinals’ scheming. Facing off with the cardinals in her chamber, the queen accuses them of mistreating her for sport and of falsely claiming they can aid her. She voices her anger at her lost position, and she forcefully declares that she will not give up her title while she lives. While Buckingham forgave those who turned on him, the queen does not. That said, she does withhold a critique of her husband, who has so clearly been swayed by the cardinals’ influence. Instead, she reserves all her wrath for those who have done her wrong, and especially Wolsey.
Katherine’s fierce resistance is certainly about maintaining her honor and her station. As a woman born into a royal family, she is no doubt motivated to preserve her reputation as well as the material comforts of her current life. However, it’s equally important to underscore her fear. Though she isn’t doomed to death like Buckingham, she is all too aware of her status as a foreigner without real protection. Thus, even if she lives, her new status as an unmarried woman in a foreign kingdom will essentially make her into a prisoner.
It is this vision of herself as an imprisoned and stigmatized divorcée that motivates Katherine to fight. Ironically, part of her strategy in contesting the cardinals comes in her frequent appeals to the weakness of her age and her gender. She openly acknowledges that the king’s disfavor is likely because, as she plainly states, “I am old” (3.1.134). Here and elsewhere she also downplays her womanhood: “You know I am a woman, lacking wit” (3.1.196). Although these statements reference her relative lack of power in a world dominated by men, her words may also be read as dissimulating. That is, they offer a deception meant to counter the trickery she repeatedly identifies the cardinals, who appear pious but are fundamentally irreligious. “You have angels’ faces,” she tells Wolsey and Campeius, “but heaven knows your hearts” (3.1.161). Yet Katherine’s critique never seems to faze the cardinals, who persist in presenting their case as a matter of concern for her well-being as well as the king’s.
