Research Paper - UCLA Library

and Fletcher’s purpose of endowing James with his predecessor’s authority. The phoenix trope
thus factors heavily in the imagery of the final seventeen lines of Cranmer’s monologue, which
shift from the accomplishments of her reign to the queen’s posthumous legacy. The duke
prophesizes that when “the bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,/ Her ashes new create
another heir/ As great in admiration as herself” (V.4.40-42). At the moment of her birth in the
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play, the court is already looking towards Elizabeth’s death. In the late 1590s, towards the end of
the historical reign of Queen Elizabeth, public concern grew over who would succeed the
childless aging queen. Despite the proliferation of sonnets and other poetry in praise of the
queen, underlying cultural tensions festered as the English people worried about factional
struggle and civil war if no clear heir was named when Elizabeth died. Shakespeare and Fletcher
avoid this ambivalence by addressing the succession issue as soon as the princess is born in the
play. The play acknowledges that Elizabeth never actually biologically gives birth to an heir;
instead “her ashes new create another heir” (V.4.41). The phoenix imagery is especially powerful
as a portrayal of asexual regeneration in which the essence of Elizabeth becomes manifested in
her successor. 11 As in Hooke’s sermon, all of the virtues described in the virgin monarch are thus
transferred to James: “Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,/ That were the servants to this chosen
infant,/ Shall then be his” (V.4.47-49). In Henry VIII, the infant Elizabeth overpowers the king’s
legacy as the shining moment of glory for Henry in the play is the birth of his daughter; and yet,
this event is also overshadowed by the looming presence of James in the concluding lines of the
play.
What first appears as a simple glorification of the deceased queen turns into praise and
hope for the reigning monarch for whom history had not yet been written. The play reckons back
11 For more reading on maternal imagery in Henry VIII, see Jo Eldridge Carney’s essay “Queenship in
Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: The Issue of Issue,” and Helen Hackett’s essay “‘Gracious be the issue’: maternity and
narrative in Shakespeare’s late plays.”