Most historians today see the religious changes that took place during the reign of Henry VIII as a series of discrete events that only gradually were understood to constitute a Protestant Reformation. The text that was published in the Shakespeare first folio with the title, The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight, is part of that process of interpretation. Performed first in 1613, it appeared while rumours of a second Spanish Armada were kindling anti-Catholic feeling and a few months after the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, an alliance intended to strengthen the Protestant cause in Europe. Produced at a time of widespread nationalistic and Protestant fervour, the play interprets events in the reign of Henry VIII as the legitimating origins of Stuart England.

Despite the folio title, the play dramatizes not the life of Henry VIII but a series of individual changes of fortune that taken together chart Henry's emergence as a powerful king. Henry takes no direct part in the first major episode, the Duke of Buckingham's conviction for treason, which seems to be orchestrated by Cardinal Wolsey. Initially, Wolsey also seems to be the source of Katherine of Aragon's problems, intruding between Henry and Katherine as he intrudes between the King and his subjects. Although Henry later traces his doubts about the legitimacy of his marriage to the French ambassador rather than to the Cardinal, he still seems to rely heavily on the judgement of others and possibly to be an unwitting pawn in games of international intrigue. Clearly, his will is frustrated by the power of the ecclesiastical court.