King Henry VIII, or All Is True

Halio gives a useful historical summary of the split from Rome (Years Work in English Studies)

Textual apparatus is of a high standard ... the commentary provides succinct notes on chronological and historical detail, pointed reference to sources used and works that supplement the playwrights' sources, and a comprehensive gloss to problematic words and phrases usefully keyed to a separate index. This is an excellent edition for undergraduate study: the introduction works to consolidate previous critical approaches without itself ever offering restrictive pronouncements on how to read the play, while the text and commentary are set out in a clear, uncrowded manner. Attention to the working needs of the student is evident throughout (Matthew Woodcock, University College, Oxford, Sixteenth Century Journal)

King Henry Viii has one of the fullest theatrical histories of any play in the Shakespeare canon, yet has been consistently misrepresented, both in performance and in criticism. This edition offers a new perspective on this ironic, multi-layered, collaborative play, revealing it as a complex meditation on the progress of Reformation which sees English life since Henry Viii's day as a series of bewildering changes in national and personal allegiance and represents 'history' as the product of varied and contradictory testimony. McMullan makes a powerful claim for the rehabilitation of Henry Viii, providing the fullest performance history of any edition to date and reading the work not as a marginal 'late' Shakespeare play but as a play which is paradigmatic of the achievement of Renaissance drama as a whole.