The 'sexual everyman'? Maxwell Anderson's Henry VIII

Henry VIII is the most famous king in English history. The extraordinary details of his six marriages and his break from Rome have given him five centuries of notoriety, unequalled by any other English sovereign. In the last century, the king’s life has made it on to cinema and television screens in lavish style and generations of actors have given portrayals that invariably focus on his marriages and that all extrapolate to a greater or lesser extent upon the iconic image of Henry VIII first created by Hans Holbein. Given the lucrative preoccupation with Henry, and his own penchant for public performance, it is perhaps surprising that his life story has only rarely been presented on stage. We still await Henry VIII – The Musical! Anne of the Thousand Days, written in 1948 by Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959) which was one of only two significant plays about the events of the king’s reign written in the twentieth century. Anderson was a highly successful American journalist, poet and playwright