Title page from The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth

Part of: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare) The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth

Shakespeare’s Henry VIII may be best known not for its plot or poetry, but because during one of its earliest performances a cannon, shot for special effects, caught the theater’s thatched roof on fire, and the Globe burned to the ground. The historical material is equally incendiary, as Shakespeare deals with Henry’s divorce and his creation of the English church.

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This edition comes from the 1916 Oxford University Press edition of all of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.

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