Multiple Histories

Cultural Memory and Anne Boleyn in Actes and Monuments and Henry VIII

Authors

Allison Machlis Meyer Seattle University

Abstract

This essay examines Shakespeare and Fletcher's appropriation of varied intertextual sources for their depiction of Anne Boleyn in Henry VIII. Through attention to the play's intertextual relationship with John Foxe's Actes and Monuments as well as early modern historiography, poetry, and popular literature about Anne, I show that some of Henry VIII's distinguishing characteristics — including its consideration of audiences and privileging of multiple perspectives — cue early modern readers and audiences to remember contrasting histories gleaned from diverse cultural memories. In spite of their divergent representations of events from Henry VIII's reign — Henry VIII avoids depicting Anne's death in favor of the spectacle of her coronation, while Actes and Monuments emphasizes eyewitness accounts of Anne's trial and execution and represents her death as Protestant martyrdom — the play conjures Anne's Foxean ghost through audience awareness of alternative intertexts, and intertwines Anne with her rival, Katherine, and the Duke of Buckingham, so that Anne's off-stage history permeates the play's account of the falls of Katherine and Buckingham as well as the births of the English Reformation and the monarch Elizabeth I.

Author Biography

Allison Machlis Meyer, Seattle University

Allison Machlis Meyer is an Assistant Professor at Seattle University. Her research focuses on gender and politics in early modern historiography and drama. She has written about Thomas More, Francis Bacon, John Ford, and Shakespeare, and her work has been published in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England and Studies in Philology. She is working on a book about intertextuality and royal women's political agency in historical narratives and history plays of the early modern period.