WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare cover

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Chapter 431: Dramatis Personæ
Open in WeRead

About This Book

This collection gathers dramatic works and lyrical poems spanning comedies, tragedies, histories, and a sonnet sequence, presenting plays in verse and prose alongside narrative poems. The pieces examine human experience through recurring themes of love, ambition, jealousy, power, fate, and the tension between appearance and reality, moving between comic confusion and tragic collapse. Language and theatrical craft are central, employing vivid imagery, rhetorical invention, puns, and varied poetic forms to probe identity, political conflict, and moral choice across intimate moments and public spectacle.

Dramatis Personæ

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH

DUKE OF NORFOLK
DUKE OF SUFFOLK

CARDINAL WOLSEY
SECRETARIES to Wolsey
CROMWELL, servant to Wolsey
CARDINAL CAMPEIUS
GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester
PAGE to Gardiner

QUEEN KATHERINE, wife to King Henry, afterwards divorced
GRIFFITH, gentleman usher to Queen Katherine
PATIENCE, woman to Queen Katherine
Queen’s GENTLEMAN USHER
CAPUTIUS, Ambassador from the Emperor Charles V

DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM
LORD ABERGAVENNY, Buckingham’s son-in-law
EARL OF SURREY, Buckingham’s son-in-law
SIR NICHOLAS VAUX
SURVEYOR to the Duke of Buckingham
BRANDON
SERGEANT-at-Arms
Three Gentlemen

ANNE BULLEN, her Maid of Honour, afterwards Queen
An OLD LADY, friend to Anne Bullen
LORD CHAMBERLAIN
LORD SANDYS (called also SIR WILLIAM SANDYS)
SIR THOMAS LOVELL
SIR HENRY GUILDFORD

BISHOP OF LINCOLN
CRANMER, archbishop of Canterbury
LORD CHANCELLOR
GARTER King-of-Arms
SIR ANTHONY DENNY
DOCTOR BUTTS, physician to the King
Door-KEEPER of the Council-chamber
PORTER, and his Man
A CRIER
PROLOGUE
EPILOGUE

Spirits, Several Lords and Ladies in the Dumb Shows; Women attending upon the Queen; Scribes, Officers, Guards, and other Attendants

SCENE: London; Westminster; Kimbolton