Henry VIII is to Henry Frederick as Henry VIII is to James I as Henry VIII is to Elizabeth I...

While I was researching this weekend, I came across an interesting article, entitled Henry VIII, Shakespeare, and the Jacobean Royal Court. This article, written by James Madison University professor Mark Rankin, is an analysis of the ways that Henry VIII’s image was used in plays to give legitimacy to James and James’s son, Henry Frederick. One play is by Samuel Rowley and is entitled When You See Me, You Know Me: this play, Rankin argues, explicitly connects Henry VIII with Henry Frederick, utilizing such language as: “Now [Jane Seymour] God bring me but a chopping boy, / Be but the Mother to a Prince of Wales / Ad a ninth Henrie to the English Crowne, / And thou mak’st full my hopes” (353). James’s son, Henry Frederick, was the Prince of Wales as well, so the connections between the two Henrys would have been very apparent to any modern-day audience. In the second part of his argument, Rankin connects the image of Henry VIII in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII to James I: instead of focusing on doctrine, Henry VIII instead focuses on the supreme religious authority of kings and on factional disputes in the kingdom, both ideas that harken neatly back to James (360).

I think Rankin's point is especially interesting because it is useful to consider how much authority can be given someone by harkening back to the past. In class, we spoke a lot about how much Chaucer enjoyed projecting his own knowledge by using fake etymologies and studding his writing with Greek and Roman references. Furthermore, we talked most recently about neo-classicism in poetry, like Ben Jonson’s “To John Donne,” which makes claims to authority by bringing in references to Phoebus and artistic muses and by privileging intellect over emotion (1541). The Greeks, of course, similarly prized reason over all else in their work. It’s not unusual, then, to see artists harkening back to the past to lend legitimacy to James and his son. What is interesting is that they chose Henry VIII as their past figure. Even though Elizabeth’s legacy was still being cemented in this time period, she was not seen as a suitable figure for comparison. Is this because she was a woman, because she was too recent, or because her image simply wouldn’t have worked for James and Henry Frederick? Similarly, Elizabeth herself harkened back to her father’s reputation when she first took the throne. Could this set Elizabeth and James up instead as parallels, as two great legacies that would stem from the same progenitor?

At any rate, I think that this article could be useful for anyone who is trying to dissect the rhetoric of James I’s reign or anyone who is looking at the legacy of Henry Frederick, which I personally find fascinating. I am going to keep my eyes out for more ways that Henry VIII is elicited in our texts from this time period or more ways that James is depicted, so that I can compare Rankin’s articles to those depictions.

Thanks, everyone!

 

Rankin, Mark. “Henry VIII, Shakespeare, and the Jacobean Royal Court.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 51.2 (2011): 349-366. Print.