King Henry VIII; Or All Is True: The New Oxford Shakespeare

’Men’s evil manners live in brass, their virtues
We write in water.’

Henry VIII or All is True is Shakespeare’s retelling of one of the defining periods in English history: the marriage and divorce of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Written in the wake of the sudden death of Henry Stuart, King James I and VI’s oldest son and heir, Shakespeare’s most ’contemporary’ history play offers provocative parallels between the Tudor past and Stuart present. The play examines the rise and fall of Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cranmer, and Anne Boleyn, providing both a meditation on history as a narrative dictated by Church and State, and on the tragic lives of those who become collateral damage to greater forces.

The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare’s works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare’s work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare’s work.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

William Shakespeare

Laura Jayne Wright is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University, working on sensory and visionary experience in drama. Her current project, Sounds of Distress, investigates women’s screams, moans, and complaints in performance. Her first monograph, Sound Effects: Hearing the Early Modern Stage (2023), examines early modern sound effects and their capacity to unsettle the spatial dynamics of the playhouse.

Will Sharpe is a full-time Teaching Fellow in Shakespeare at the University of Birmingham. He contributed a monograph-length study on ’Authorship and Attribution’ to the RSC volume William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays (2013), and edited All Is True: Or, King Henry VIII for The New Oxford Shakespeare (2016). He is a revising editor of the updated Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2015).