Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree

“ In his policy of the reform of the Church, Wolsey dealt as a giant with his gigantic task. To quote a passage from Taunton: “Ignorance, he knew, was the root of most of the mischief of the day; so by education he endeavoured to give men the means to know better. Falsehood can only be expelled by Truth.... Had the other prelates of the age realized the true cause of the religious disputes, and how much they themselves were responsible for the present Ignorance, the sacred name of religion would not have had so bloody a record in this country.” ”

“ History, like Nature itself, is ruled by brutal laws, and to play the round game of politics with single-handed honesty would be to lose at every turn. Henry was born into an inheritance of blood and blackmail. Corruption has its vested interests. It is useless to attempt to stem the recurrent tide of corruption by sprinkling the waves with holy water. ”

“ It is, I contend, better to reserve Shakespeare for the study than to see him presented half-heartedly.
The merely archaic presentation of the play can be of interest only to those epicures who do not pay their shilling to enter the theatre. The contemporary theatre must make its appeal to the great public, and I hold that while one should respect every form of art, that art which appeals only to a coterie is on a lower plane than that which speaks to the world. ”

“ There can be little doubt that as a man of God, Wolsey strongly disapproved of the divorce, but as the King’s Chancellor he felt himself bound to urge his case to the best of his ability. He was in fact the advocate—the devil’s advocate—under protest. One cannot imagine a more terrible position for a man of conscience to be placed in, but once even a cardinal embarks in politics the working of his conscience is temporarily suspended. In world politics the Ten Commandments are apt to become a negligible quantity. ”

“ Of the much-debated Divorce, Henry said: “The law of every man’s conscience be but a private Court, yet it is the highest and supreme Court for judgment or justice.” As the most unjust wars have often produced the greatest heroisms, so the vilest causes have often produced the profoundest utterances. ”

“ In fact, it is difficult to determine whose genius was greater—Wolsey’s as the diplomatist and administrator, or Henry’s as the man of action, the figurehead of the State. Around him he gathered the great men of his time, and their learning he turned to his own account, with that adaptiveness which is the peculiar attribute of genius. Shakespeare himself was not more assimilative. In Wolsey, Henry appreciated the mighty minister, and this is one of his claims to greatness, for graciously to permit others to be great is a sign of greatness in a King. ”

“ Opposed as they were to the divorce, the English people were of one mind with Wolsey in this attitude.
Henry was not slow to avail himself of the new development, and he made the divorce become in the eyes of the people but a secondary consideration to the pride of England. He drew the red herring of the Reformation across the trail of the divorce. The King and his Parliament held that the Church should not meddle with temporal affairs. The Church was the curer of souls, not the curer of the body politic. ”

“ Wolsey did not show his genius to the best advantage in local politics, but in diplomacy. He could only be inspired by the gigantic things of statecraft. When he was set by Henry to deal with the sordid matter of the divorce, he felt restricted and cramped. He [Pg 40] was better as a patriot than as a royal servant. It was this feeling of being sullied and unnerved in the uncongenial skirmishings of the divorce that jarred on his sensitive nature and made his ambitious hand lose its cunning. A first-rate man cannot do second-rate things well. ”

“ It was suggested that he should marry a royal Princess. Another suggestion was that he should marry his half-sister, an arrangement which seems to have commended itself to the Pope, on condition that Henry abandoned his divorce from Queen Katharine! But this was not to be, and Mary was betrothed to the French prince. An heir must be obtained somehow, and the divorce, therefore, took more and more tangible shape. A marriage with Anne Boleyn was the next move. To attain this object, Henry applied himself with his accustomed energy. His conscience walked hand in hand with expediency. ”

“ Henry confessed his sins every day during the plague. When it abated, his spirits revived, and he wrote daily love-letters to Anne Boleyn, whom he had previously banished from the Court.
As Moralist
A stern moralist in regard to the conduct of others, he had an indulgence towards himself which enabled him somewhat freely to interpret the Divine right of Kings as “Le droit de seigneur.” But it is human to tolerate in ourselves the failings which we so rightly deprecate in our inferiors.
So strong was he in his self-assurance, that he made even his conscience his slave. ”

“ If Katharine could not obtain justice in England, [Pg 75] Henry should not have his justice in Rome. The Pope and the Emperor kissed again, and Henry finally cut himself adrift from Rome. It was the failure of the divorce that made England a Protestant country.
Henry now openly defied the Pope, by whom he was excommunicated, and so “deprived of the solace of the rites of religion; when he died he must lie without burial, and in hell suffer torment for ever.” ”

“ Henry sometimes lacked regal taste. The night Anne Boleyn was executed he supped with Jane Seymour; they were betrothed the next morning, and married ten days later. It is also recorded that on the day following Katharine’s death, Henry went to a ball, clad all in yellow.
The commendation or condemnation of Henry’s public life depends upon our point of view—upon which side we take in the eternal strife between Church and State.
In this dilemma we must then judge by results, for the truest expression of a man is his work; his greatness or his littleness is measured by his output. ”

“ It is the painter, not the frame-maker, who upholds the art of painting; it is the poet, not the book-binder, who carries the torch of poetry. It was the sculptor, and not the owner of the quarry, who made the Venus of Milo. It is sometimes necessary to re-assert the obvious.
Now there are plays in which symbolism is appropriate—those of Maeterlinck, for instance. But if, as has been said, Maeterlinck resembles Shakespeare, Shakespeare does not resemble Maeterlinck. Let us remember that Shakespeare was a humanist, not a symbolist. ”

“ Henry’s conscience was becoming more and more tender. Much may be urged in favour of the divorce from a political point [Pg 68] of view, and no doubt Henry had a powerful faculty of self-persuasion—such men can grow to believe that whatever they desire is right, that “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” It is a pity, however, that Henry’s scruples did not assert themselves before the marriage with Katharine took place, for the ethical arguments against such an union were then equally strong. ”

“ Henry, in his infatuation for the attractive Lady-in-Waiting to his Queen, as she was then, wished Wolsey to become the aider and abettor of his love affairs, Wolsey found himself placed in the double capacity of man of God and man of Kings. In these cases, God is apt to go to the wall—for the time being. But it was Wolsey’s vain attempt to serve two masters that caused his fall, which the French Ambassador attributed entirely to the ill offices of Anne Boleyn. This is another proof that courtiers should always keep on the right side of women. ”

“ France and Spain were the rivals for Imperial dominion. England was in danger of falling between two stools, such was the eagerness of each that the other should not support her. Henry, through his marriage with [Pg 8] Katharine, began by being allied to Spain, and this alliance involved England in the costly burden of war. Henry’s resentment at the empty result of this warfare, broke the Spanish alliance. Wolsey’s aim was to keep the country out of wars, and a long period of peace raised England to the position of arbiter of Europe in the balanced contest between France and Spain. ”

“ It is this incident of the christening of the future Queen Elizabeth that brings to an appropriate close the strange eventful history as depicted in the play of Henry VIII. And thus the injustice of the world is once more triumphantly vindicated: Wolsey, the [Pg 109] devoted servant of the King, has crept into an ignominious sanctuary; Katharine has been driven to a martyr’s doom; the adulterous union has been blessed by the Court of Bishops; minor poets have sung their blasphemous pæans in unison. ”

“ There were beasts, birds, fowls of divers kinds, and personages, most lively made and counterfeit in dishes; some fighting, as it were, with swords, some with guns and crossbows; some vaulting and leaping; some dancing with ladies, some in complete harness, justing with spears, and with many more devices than I am able with my wit to describe. ”

“ It is wonderful to reflect that this one brain should have controlled the secular and ecclesiastical destinies of Christendom.
To reform the Church would seem to have been an almost superhuman undertaking, but to a man of Wolsey’s greatness obstacles are [Pg 38] only incentives to energy. He was “eager to cleanse the Church from the accumulated evil effects of centuries of human passions.” A great man is stronger than a system, while he lives; but the system often outlives the man. Wolsey lived in a time whose very atmosphere was charged with intrigue. ”

“ In [Pg 13] international politics, as in public life, when self-interest steps in, Christianity goes to the wall.
To-day we grind our axe with a difference. A more subtle process of dealing with our rivals obtains. To-day the pen is mightier than the sword, the stylograph is more deadly than the stiletto. The bravo still plies his trade. He no longer takes life, but character. To intrigue, to combine against those outside the ring is often the swiftest way to fortune. By such combination do weaker particles make themselves strong. To “play the game” is necessary to progress. ”

“ Wolsey, although averse to the Queen’s divorce and the marriage of Anne Boleyn, expressed himself in terms of the strongest opposition to the overbearing Pope. A few days before the Papal revocation arrived, the Cardinal wrote thus: “If the King be cited to appear at Rome in person or by proxy, and his prerogative be interfered with, none of his subjects will tolerate it. If he appears in Italy, it will be at the head of a formidable army.” ”

“ At the banquet held after the Coronation of Anne Boleyn, we read that two Countesses stood on either side of Anne’s chair and [Pg 60] often held a “fine cloth before the Queen’s face whenever she listed to spit.” “And under the table went two gentlewomen, and sat at the Queen’s feet during the dinner.” The courtier’s life, like the burglar’s does not appear to have been one of unmixed happiness.
In the same year she bore Henry a child, but to everyone’s disappointment, it proved to be a girl, who was christened Elizabeth, and became the great Queen of England. ”

“ The King began to indulge in the superstition that his marriage with a brother’s widow was marked with the curse of Heaven. It is perhaps a strange coincidence that Anne Boleyn should have appeared on the scene at this moment. Katharine seems always to have regarded her rival with charity and pity. When one of her gentlewomen began to curse Anne as the cause of the Queen’s misery, the Queen stopped her. ”

“ I hold that whatever may tend to destroy the illusion and the people’s understanding is to be condemned. Whatever may tend to heighten the illusion and to help the audience to a better understanding of the play and the author’s meaning, is to be commended. [Pg 106] Shakespeare and Burbage, Betterton, Colley Cibber, the Kembles, the Keans, Phelps, Calvert and Henry Irving, as artists, recognised that there was but one way to treat the play of Henry VIII. It is pleasant to sin in such good company. ”

“ A Catholic estimate of him would, of course, have been wholly condemnatory, yet it must be remembered that his quarrel was entirely with the supremacy of the Pope, and that otherwise Henry’s Church retained every [Pg 20] dogma and every observance believed in and practised by Roman Catholics.
His Greatness
His learning was great, and it was illuminated by his genius. Gradually he learned to control others—to do this he learned to control his temper, when control was useful, but he was always able to make diplomatic use of his rage—a faculty ever helpful in the conduct of one’s life! ”

“ The lives of great men compose themselves dramatically; Wolsey’s end was indeed a fit theme for the dramatist.
His Fall
In his later years, Wolsey began to totter on his throne. The King had become more and more masterful. It was impossible for two such stormy men to act permanently in concord. In 1528, Wolsey said that as soon as he had accomplished his ambition of reconciling England and France, and reforming the English laws and settling the succession, “he would retire and serve God for the rest of his days.” In 1529 he lost his hold over Parliament and over Henry. ”

“ Though the archæologist with symbolic leanings may cry out, the theatre is primarily for those who love the drama, who love the joy of life and the true presentation of history. It is only secondarily for those who fulfil their souls in footnotes. ”