I think this is my least favorite of Shakespeare’s histories (if you saw me say tragedies no you didn’t, I’m not burnt out and sleep deprived, i’m fine).

This is a very rhetoric-driven play, which I think was an interesting change of pace and style for both Shakespeare and Fletcher, but I think it holds more use as a lens through which to view early modern perspectives than as an entertaining play in and of itself. This play is so much about Elizabeth I and James I through Henry VIII, and it's fascinating to see Shakespeare and Fletcher tread difficult lines of history in telling a non-offensive tale.

But none of the characters really fully took shape (maybe Wolsey or Catherine, to some degree) and I found myself neither finding tragedy or romance or comedy in moments or in the narrative at large. Just a lot of political back and forth, which wasn't really my favorite thing.