The court of Henry VIII becomes a stage for political ambition and personal destruction as Cardinal Wolsey orchestrates the downfall of the Duke of Buckingham, only to be destroyed himself when he fails to secure the King's divorce from Katherine of Aragon. Katherine's dignified fall and Anne Boleyn's triumphant rise frame a meditation on the fickleness of royal favour, climaxing in a prophetic christening scene for the future Elizabeth I. Shakespeare's pageant-like final history play, written with John Fletcher, balances spectacle with moments of piercing human vulnerability.
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