Henry viii was written in collaboration with John Fletcher. I didn’t really like it.
It deals with the time around the separation from Katherine of Aragon and the early times with Anne Boleyn , the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey and all that business.
I don’t think it worked because there was no focus to the play. It didn’t really do a thorough job of any of the many threads it picked up so it left me unravelled.
*Maybe co-writing doesn’t work. I think creativity is mainly a solo enterprise.
*Maybe the story was too squeezed around a public desire for Elizabethmania at the time it was written (during James Vl’s reign but there was nostalgia for Elizabeth the first at that time). It is certainly very much loaded in Elizabeth’s favour at the end.. the birth of a goddess and sympathetic to Anne Boleyn( aren’t we all).
*And maybe Shakespeare was just done with writing, maybe his cup was half empty rather than overflowing with creative juice.
Henry V111 doesn’t really walk off the page.. bearing in mind it is his play, he was a bit wishy washy.
So an ok play but not exciting and engrossing .
Only one more play to go.. onwards with The Two Nobel Kinsmen.. another play of duel authorship.