Abstract
Anne Boleyn, the second consort of Henry VIII, holds a controversial place in historical accounts and dramatic representations largely because her marriage to Henry VIII ushered in the English Reformation. Scholars agree that the king withdrew from the Roman Catholic communion because Pope Clement VII refused to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of Emperor Charles V Henry sought an annulment on the grounds that his union with Catherine, his brother’s widow, which he claimed violated divine law, was the cause of the deaths of their male infants. Henry secretly wed the pregnant Anne in January 1533; that spring, by authority of the recently passed Statute of Appeals, Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, annulled the king’s first marriage and validated the second one. In June, Anne was crowned queen and in September her daughter Elizabeth was born. Less than three years later, in January 1536, she miscarried a male fetus.
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Notes
E. W. Ives, Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), pp. 49–52, 87, 358–82;
Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 191–233.
See also Warnicke, “Conflicting Rhetoric About Tudor Women: The Example of Queen Anne Boleyn,” in Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women, ed. Carole Levin and Patricia A. Sullivan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 39–56.
Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England (London: Henry Colburn, 1842), 4:157.
For citations and his sources, see the Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare, King Henry Mil, ed. R. A. Foakes, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1957).
For the controversy over the plays authorship, see G. R. Proudfoot, “Henry VIII (All is True),” in Shakespeare: A Bibliographical Guide, new edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 381–83;
and Hugh M. Richmond, “The Resurrection of an Expired Form,” in Shakespeares English Histories: A Quest for Form and Genre, ed. John W. Velz (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1996, pp. 205–27; John Foxe, The Ecclesiastical History: Containing the Acts and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563);
Thomas S. Freeman, “Research, Rumour, and Propaganda: Anne Boleyn in Foxes ‘Book of Martyrs,’” Historical Journal, 38 (1995), pp. 797–819.
John Banks, Vertue Betray’d: Or, Anna Bullen, ed. Diane Dreher (Los Angeles: for the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library by the University of California Press, 1981).
Two Librettos also appeared: Gaetano Donizetti, Anna Bolean: Libretto. English and Italian (New York: Snowden, 1850); and Conway Edwardes, Anne Boleyn: An Original Historical Burlesque Extravaganza (London: S. French, 187?).
Henry M. Grover, Anne Boleyn: A Tragedy (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1826); Tom Taylor, “Anne Boleyn: An Original Historical Play in Five Acts,” in Historical Dramas (London: Chatto and Windus, 1877), pp. 343–414.
George H. Boker, “Anne Boleyn,” in Plays and Poems (New York: AMC Press Reprint, 1967), pp. 115–236.
Robin Winks, The Historian as Detective: Essays on Evidence (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 229. For the quotation,
see Ira Bruce Nadel, Biography, Fiction, Fact, and Form (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 6.
Nicholas Sander, Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, ed. David Lewis (London: Burns and Oates, 1877), p. 25;
Paul Friedmann, Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History 1527–1536 (London: MacMillan, 1884), especially vol. 2; Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain, ed. G. A. Bergenroth, P. de Gayangos, G. Mattingly, M. A. S. Hume, and R. Taylor (New York: Kraus Reprint, 1969), especially vols. 3, 4, 5 (hereafter CSP Span).
Lajos Biro and Arthur Wimperis, The Private Life of Henry VIII, ed. Ernest Betts (London: Methuen & Co., 1934), scene 48;
Maxwell Anderson, Anne of the Thousand Days (New York: W Sloane Assoc, 1948);
Rosemary Anne Sisson, “Catherine of Aragon,” and Nick McCarty, “Anne Boleyn” in The Six Wives of Henry VIII, ed. J. C. Trewin (New York: Frederick Ungar Company, 1971), pp. 1–186.
Linda McJ. Micheli, “‘Sit By Us:’ Visual Imagery and the Two Queens in Henry VIII” Shakespeare Quarterly, 38 (1987), pp. 452–66;
Kim H. Noling, “Grubbing Up the Stock: Dramatizing Queens in Henry VIII” Shakespeare Quarterly, 39 (1988), pp. 291–306; Jo Eldridge Carney, “Queenship in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: The Issue of Issue,” in Political Rhetoric, ed. Levin and Sullivan, pp. 189–204.
Like Noling, I disagree with Hugh M. Richmond, “The Feminism of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII” Essays in Literature, 6 (1979), pp. 11–20.
Hugh Richmond, Shakespeare in Performance: King Henry VIII (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 5; however, Micheli, “Sit By Us,” pp. 454–57, notes that Anne was compliant.
My thanks to John Watson, University of Minnesota, for the reference to Joan DeJean, Tender Geographies: Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 127–28, 158, 184.
Winston Tolles, Tom Taylor and Victorian Drama (New York: Colorado University Press, 1940), pp. 220, 238. This was the only time it was performed. Adelaide Neilson played Anne, Miss Carlisle, Jane Seymour, and Charles Harcourt, Henry VIII.
Oliver H. Evans, George Henry Boker (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984), pp. 37–38;
Thomas M. Kitts, The Theatrical Life of George Henry Boker: 1823–1890 (New York: Peter Land, 1994), p. 6.
Barbara Lee Horn, Maxwell Anderson: A Research and Production Sourcebook (Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1996), pp. 1–10.
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© 2003 Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, Debra Barrett-Graves
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Warnicke, R.M. (2003). Anne Boleyn in History, Drama, and Film. In: Levin, C., Carney, J.E., Barrett-Graves, D. (eds) “High and Mighty Queens” of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10676-6_15
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