It is, of course, a disappointment to one who has just read _I Henry IV_. On the other hand, this play may be regarded as a kind of pageant, as the word is used nowadays in England and America. It presents, in the manner of a modern pageant, a series of brilliant scenes telling of Buckingham's fall, of Wolsey's triumph and ruin, of Katherine's trial and death, of Anne Bullen's coronation, and of Cranmer's advancement, joined together by the well-drawn character of the King, powerful, masterful, selfish, and vindictive, but not without a suggestion of better qualities. The gayety of the Masque, in the first act, where King Henry first meets Anne Bullen, is also in perfect harmony with the modern pageant, which always employs music and dancing as aids to the picture. In Queen Katherine we have a suffering and wronged woman, gifted with queenly grace and dignity, and with strong sympathies and a keen sense of justice. From her first entrance, when she ventures, Esther-like, into the presence of the king to intercede for an oppressed people, through all her vain struggle against the King's wayward inclination and the Cardinal's wiles, up to the very moment when she is stricken with mortal illness, she holds our sympathy. If in her great trial scene she is weaker and more impulsive than Hermione in hers, yet the circumstances are {209} different; she is not keyed up to so high an endeavor as that lady, nor in so much danger for herself or her children. +Authorship+.--Differences in style and meter, and the fragmentary quality of the whole play have long confirmed the theory that Shakespeare in _Henry VIII_ engaged in a very loose sort of collaboration. Only the Buckingham scene (I, i,), the scenes of Katherine's entrance and trial (I, ii, II, iv), a brief scene of Anne Bullen (II, iii), and the first half of the scene in which Wolsey's schemes are exposed and Henry alienated from him (III, i, 1-203) are confidently ascribed to Shakespeare. The rest of the play fits best the style and metrical habit of John Fletcher, at this time one of the most popular dramatists of London. +Date+.--The Globe Theater was burned on June 29, 1613, when a play called _Henry VIII or All is True_ was being performed. So far as stylistic tests can decide, this was not long after the composition of the play. Sir Henry Wotton, the antiquarian, writing from hearsay knowledge, says that the play being acted at the time of the fire was "a new play called All is True." Shakespeare's scenes in this drama may thus have been his last dramatic work. A praise of King James in the last scene was probably written not later than the rest of the play, and thus insures a date later than 1603. The earliest print of the play was the First Folio, 1623. +Source+.--Holinshed was the chief source. Halle furnished certain details. Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_ tells the Cranmer story. {210} CHAPTER XIV FAMOUS MISTAKES AND DELUSIONS ABOUT SHAKESPEARE