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Each trial has a different dynamic with different sets of observers, and in each case the concluding speech is most important. Buckingham’s trial takes place offstage, though we hear about how he tried to defend himself through an eyewitness. Yet the most important part of his trial is his speech he delivers after being sentenced to death, when he forgives those who condemned him. As for Katherine, she is brought before the court, but she pleads with the king before anything can be said, then she storms out of the court. Rather than the trial itself, it’s her final argument with Wolsey that offers the most important window into her feelings about her divorce. We do see Wolsey’s trial when the lords read the charges against him, including his efforts to deny some of the charges. But again, it is his speech afterward, when he understands the implications of his fall, that is most telling. Cranmer never quite gets to the stage of the trial, but merely a preliminary hearing, and we observe it while we also watch the king observing it. The extra eyes watching this turn of events seem to help put a halt to the cycle of blame and accusation as the king descends to stop the trial.
Elizabeth occupies a paradoxical position, in that she has virtually no role at all as a character, and yet the inevitability of her birth guides much of the action of Henry VIII. She is not even born until most of the way through the play, but the effort to get her born is the most important force behind the events in the play. In order for her to be born, anything—or, more precisely, anyone—that might get in the way must be eliminated, including Katherine and Wolsey. Her birth is thus the fate toward which everyone in the play moves. This event is initially foreshadowed when Lord Chamberlain, speaking of Anne Bullen, observes that “from this lady may proceed a gem / To lighten all this isle” (2.3.95–96). The play’s closing scene reaffirms the significance of Elizabeth’s birth by prophesying the bright future that England will enjoy under her reign as well as the reign of the one who succeeds her—that is, James I, who was England’s king when Henry VIII was first written and performed.
Katherine is incredibly outspoken throughout this play. She begins by making a suit to Henry to reduce taxes, as the common people are upset and threatening to rebel. She seems to have a general awareness of events within the kingdom, and she is the only one to recognize that Buckingham has been framed by testimony of his former employee. Yet while she distrusts Wolsey, she is not able to foresee the downfall he plans for her. Still, throughout her divorce she will not acquiesce. She storms out of the court rather than submitting to the corrupt Wolsey, and she holds her own against Wolsey and Cardinal Campeius, insisting on her loyalty and honor. When she is finally divorced, she grows ill, but she approaches her death with characteristic poise. Anne, on the other hand, barely speaks throughout the play and casts a much smaller shadow. She flirts with Sands at Wolsey’s dinner party, and she tells her attendant that she thinks she would not want to be the queen. But somehow, offstage, she changes her mind, is married, crowned, and gives birth, all without speaking another word. Her role above all seems to be to deliver Elizabeth into the world.
