Henry the Eighth is a play by William Shakespeare, one of his historical chronicles dedicated to the life of English monarchs. The plot of Henry the Eighth is mostly built around the process of the king’s divorce. Shakespeare knew from open sources that for the first time Henry’s fancy for Anne Boleyn and rumours about the divorce were mentioned in 1526—1527, and christening of Elisabeth, that became the final scene, was in September 1533. Although the author in his play describes two episodes that don’t belong to this period (one of them is the execution of Buckingham in 1521, another one is the conflict between Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Gardiner and other persons of title, but historically this happened after the christening of Elisabeth), nevertheless they are naturally braided to the plot of the play.