Shakespeare Anagram: Henry VIII
I did this one already, but I wanted to respond to a search that brought a reader here yesterday:
“how did queen elizabeth feel about shakespeare play king henry the 8th”
It’s a good question, since Henry was Queen Elizabeth’s father, and it would be interesting to get her reaction to the play that bears his name. But Elizabeth died in 1603, and it is believed that the play was first performed in 1613, so we can only speculate as to how she might have felt about it.
The play retains the pro-Tudor slant on history that characterized Shakespeare’s earlier history plays, and whitewashes some of the uglier aspects of Henry’s story. As for Elizabeth, her birth is depicted at the very end of the play, and the happy father swells with pride at the event.
From Henry VIII:
O lord archbishop!
Thou hast made me now a man: never, before
This happy child, did I get any thing.
This oracle of comfort has so pleas’d me,
That when I am in heaven, I shall desire
To see what this child does, and praise my Maker.
But if you shift around the letters, you probably get much closer to what he actually would have said:
O lord archbishop!
Fact: I wanted to have a son.
So I, cross Henry the Eighth, must kill this wife, Madam Anne Boleyn, with promptest speed.
So I shall, in a flash, remove and discard her doomed head apace!
I am Henry the Eighth, I am!