Act 3, Scene 1

London. The Queen's apartments.

[The Queen and her women, as at work.]
Queen Katherine
1511 Take thy lute, wench; my soul grows
1512 sad with troubles.
1513 Sing, and disperse 'em, if thou canst. Leave working.
[SONG]
Queen Katherine
1514 Orpheus with his lute made trees
1515 And the mountain tops that freeze
1516 Bow themselves when he did sing.
1517 To his music plants and flowers
1518 Ever sprung; as sun and showers
1519 There had made a lasting spring.
Queen Katherine
1520 Every thing that heard him play,
1521 Even the billows of the sea,
1522 Hung their heads, and then lay by.
1523 In sweet music is such art,
1524 Killing care and grief of heart
1525 Fall asleep, or hearing, die.
[Enter a Gentleman.]
Queen Katherine
1526 How now!
A Gentleman
1527 An't please your Grace, the two great Cardinals
1528 Wait in the presence.
Queen Katherine
1529 Would they speak with me?
A Gentleman
1530 They will'd me say so, madam.
Queen Katherine
1531 Pray their Graces
1532 To come near.
[Exit Gentleman.]
Queen Katherine
1533 What can be their business
1534 With me, a poor weak woman, fallen from favour?
1535 I do not like their coming. Now I think on't,
1536 They should be good men, their affairs as righteous.
1537 But all hoods make not monks.
[Enter the two Cardinals, Wolsey and Campeius.]
Cardinal Wolsey
1538 Peace to your Highness!
Queen Katherine
1539 Your Graces find me here part of housewife;
1540 I would be all, against the worst may happen.
1541 What are your pleasures with me, reverend lords?
Cardinal Wolsey
1542 May it please you, noble madam, to withdraw
1543 Into your private chamber, we shall give you
1544 The full cause of our coming.
Queen Katherine
1545 Speak it here;
1546 There's nothing I have done yet, o' my conscience,
1547 Deserves a corner. Would all other women
1548 Could speak this with as free a soul as I do!
1549 My lords, I care not, so much I am happy
1550 Above a number, if my actions
1551 Were tried by every tongue, every eye saw 'em,
1552 Envy and base opinion set against 'em,
1553 I know my life so even. If your business
1554 Seek me out, and that way I am wife in,
1555 Out with it boldly. Truth loves open dealing.
Cardinal Wolsey
1556 Tanta est erga te mentis integritas, regina serenissima,—
Queen Katherine
1557 O, good my lord, no Latin;
1558 I am not such a truant since my coming,
1559 As not to know the language I have liv'd in.
1560 A strange tongue makes my cause more strange, suspicious;
1561 Pray, speak in English. Here are some will thank you,
1562 If you speak truth, for their poor mistress' sake.
1563 Believe me, she has had much wrong. Lord Cardinal,
1564 The willing'st sin I ever yet committed
1565 May be absolv'd in English.
Cardinal Wolsey
1566 Noble lady,
1567 I am sorry my integrity should breed,
1568 And service to his Majesty and you,
1569 So deep suspicion, where all faith was meant.
1570 We come not by the way of accusation
1571 To taint that honour every good tongue blesses,
1572 Nor to betray you any way to sorrow;
1573 You have too much, good lady; but to know
1574 How you stand minded in the weighty difference
1575 Between the King and you; and to deliver,
1576 Like free and honest men, our just opinions
1577 And comforts to your cause.
Cardinal Campeius
1578 Most honour'd madam,
1579 My Lord of York, out of his noble nature,
1580 Zeal and obedience he still bore your Grace,
1581 Forgetting, like a good man, your late censure
1582 Both of his truth and him, which was too far,
1583 Offers, as I do, in a sign of peace,
1584 His service and his counsel.
[Aside.]
Queen Katherine
1585 To betray me.—
1586 My lords, I thank you both for your good wills.
1587 Ye speak like honest men; pray God, ye prove so!
1588 But how to make ye suddenly an answer,
1589 In such a point of weight, so near mine honour,—
1590 More near my life, I fear,—with my weak wit,
1591 And to such men of gravity and learning,
1592 In truth I know not. I was set at work
1593 Among my maids; full little, God knows, looking
1594 Either for such men or such business.
1595 For her sake that I have been,—for I feel
1596 The last fit of my greatness—good your Graces,
1597 Let me have time and counsel for my cause.
1598 Alas, I am a woman, friendless, hopeless!
Cardinal Wolsey
1599 Madam, you wrong the King's love with these fears.
1600 Your hopes and friends are infinite.
Queen Katherine
1601 In England
1602 But little for my profit. Can you think, lords,
1603 That any Englishman dare give me counsel?
1604 Or be a known friend, 'gainst his Highness' pleasure,
1605 Though he be grown so desperate to be honest,
1606 And live a subject? Nay, forsooth; my friends,
1607 They that much weigh out my afflictions,
1608 They that my trust must grow to, live not here;
1609 They are, as all my other comforts, far hence
1610 In mine own country, lords.
Cardinal Campeius
1611 I would your Grace
1612 Would leave your griefs, and take my counsel.
Queen Katherine
1613 How, sir?
Cardinal Campeius
1614 Put your main cause into the King's protection;
1615 He's loving and most gracious. 'Twill be much
1616 Both for your honour better and your cause;
1617 For if the trial of the law o'ertake ye,
1618 You'll part away disgrac'd.
Cardinal Wolsey
1619 He tells you rightly.
Queen Katherine
1620 Ye tell me what ye wish for both,—my ruin.
1621 Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon ye!
1622 Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge
1623 That no king can corrupt.
Cardinal Campeius
1624 Your rage mistakes us.
Queen Katherine
1625 The more shame for ye! Holy men I thought ye,
1626 Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
1627 But cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye.
1628 Mend 'em, for shame, my lords! Is this your comfort,
1629 The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady,
1630 A woman lost among ye, laugh'd at, scorn'd?
1631 I will not wish ye half my miseries;
1632 I have more charity; but say, I warn'd ye.
1633 Take heed, for heaven's sake, take heed, lest at once
1634 The burden of my sorrows fall upon ye.
Cardinal Wolsey
1635 Madam, this is a mere distraction;
1636 You turn the good we offer into envy.
Queen Katherine
1637 Ye turn me into nothing. Woe upon ye
1638 And all such false professors! Would you have me—
1639 If you have any justice, any pity;
1640 If ye be anything but churchmen's habits—
1641 Put my sick cause into his hands that hates me?
1642 Alas, he's banish'd me his bed already,
1643 His love, too, long ago! I am old, my lords,
1644 And all the fellowship I hold now with him
1645 Is only my obedience. What can happen
1646 To me above this wretchedness? All your studies
1647 Make me a curse like this.
Cardinal Campeius
1648 Your fears are worse.
Queen Katherine
1649 Have I liv'd thus long—let me speak myself,
1650 Since virtue finds no friends—a wife, a true one?
1651 A woman, I dare say without vain-glory,
1652 Never yet branded with suspicion?
1653 Have I with all my full affections
1654 Still met the King? lov'd him next Heav'n? obey'd him?
1655 Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him?
1656 Almost forgot my prayers to content him?
1657 And am I thus rewarded! 'Tis not well, lords.
1658 Bring me a constant woman to her husband,
1659 One that ne'er dream'd a joy beyond his pleasure;
1660 And to that woman, when she has done most,
1661 Yet will I add an honour,—a great patience.
Cardinal Wolsey
1662 Madam, you wander from the good we aim at.
Queen Katherine
1663 My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,
1664 To give up willingly that noble title
1665 Your master wed me to. Nothing but death
1666 Shall e'er divorce my dignities.
Cardinal Wolsey
1667 Pray hear me.
Queen Katherine
1668 Would I had never trod this English earth,
1669 Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it!
1670 Ye have angels' faces, but Heaven knows your hearts.
1671 What will become of me now, wretched lady!
1672 I am the most unhappy woman living.
1673 Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes!
1674 Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
1675 No friends, no hope; no kindred weep for me;
1676 Almost no grave allow'd me. Like the lily,
1677 That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd,
1678 I'll hang my head and perish.
Cardinal Wolsey
1679 If your Grace
1680 Could but be brought to know our ends are honest,
1681 You'd feel more comfort. Why should we, good lady,
1682 Upon what cause, wrong you? Alas, our places,
1683 The way of our profession is against it;
1684 We are to cure such sorrows, not to sow 'em.
1685 For goodness' sake, consider what you do;
1686 How you may hurt yourself, ay, utterly
1687 Grow from the King's acquaintance, by this carriage.
1688 The hearts of princes kiss obedience,
1689 So much they love it; but to stubborn spirits
1690 They swell, and grow as terrible as storms.
1691 I know you have a gentle, noble temper,
1692 A soul as even as a calm; pray, think us
1693 Those we profess, peacemakers, friends, and servants.
Cardinal Campeius
1694 Madam, you'll find it so. You wrong your virtues
1695 With these weak women's fears. A noble spirit
1696 As yours was, put into you, ever casts
1697 Such doubts, as false coin, from it. The King loves you;
1698 Beware you lose it not. For us, if you please
1699 To trust us in your business, we are ready
1700 To use our utmost studies in your service.
Queen Katherine
1701 Do what ye will, my lords; and, pray, forgive me
1702 If I have us'd myself unmannerly;
1703 You know I am a woman, lacking wit
1704 To make a seemly answer to such persons.
1705 Pray, do my service to his Majesty;
1706 He has my heart yet, and shall have my prayers
1707 While I shall have my life. Come, reverend fathers,
1708 Bestow your counsels on me. She now begs,
1709 That little thought, when she set footing here,
1710 She should have bought her dignities so dear.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1514classical allusion
“Orpheus with his lute made trees”
Orpheus was the supreme musician of Greek myth whose playing could move rocks, trees, and rivers. Here Katherine's attendant sings the song: his power to 'kill care and grief of heart' mirrors Katherine's own need to drown her sorrows in music. The calm of Orpheus's art is immediately shattered by the cardinals' arrival.
TLN 1527historical topical
“the two great Cardinals Wait in the presence”
The 'two great Cardinals' are Wolsey, Henry's Lord Chancellor, and Lorenzo Campeggio (Campeius), the papal legate sent from Rome to co-judge the divorce case. Their joint mission at Blackfriars in 1529 — the legatine court — is the central legal event of the 'King's Great Matter.' They now come to Katherine's private apartments to pressure her out of court.
historical The King's Great Matter (Henry's divorce)historical Cardinal Wolsey
TLN 1534rhetorical device
“a poor weak woman, fallen from favour”
Katherine's calling herself 'a poor weak woman' is a deliberate rhetorical move — captatio benevolentiae, the bid for sympathy by stressing one's helplessness, here edged with irony. She is in fact the rightful queen of England, a princess of Spain, and niece to the Holy Roman Emperor. The formula of feminine weakness lets her expose the cardinals' bullying of someone they assume cannot fight back on equal terms.
TLN 1537archaic vocab
“all hoods make not monks”
A proverb meaning that wearing the costume of a holy man does not make one holy — 'the habit does not make the monk.' Katherine suspects the two cardinals of hidden motives even before they speak. The line also glances at Wolsey's specific failure: he is a Church prince who serves a very worldly master.
TLN 1556historical topical
“Tanta est erga te mentis integritas, regina serenissima”
Wolsey opens in Latin: 'So great is the integrity of mind toward you, most serene queen.' Katherine cuts him off instantly — demanding plain English, not a language that flatters her while confusing her ladies. The Latin opener was a real diplomatic courtroom convention; beginning a formal address to a queen in scholarly Latin signalled the gravity of the embassy and subtly asserted clerical authority over the vernacular court.
historical The King's Great Matter (Henry's divorce)
TLN 1558archaic vocab
“not such a truant since my coming, As not to know the language”
'Truant' here means a shirker or negligent student — someone who skips lessons. Katherine says she has not been so lazy a learner since she came to England as to forget the language she has lived in for over twenty years. She arrived from Spain in 1501 as a young bride; it is now 1529. The barb is pointed: she speaks English better than Wolsey speaks plain truth.
TLN 1563rhetorical device
“she has had much wrong. Lord Cardinal, The willing'st sin I ever yet committed May be absolv'd in English”
Katherine's declaration that even her worst sin can be confessed in English is doubly devastating. It asserts her clear conscience (she has no Latin-requiring enormities to hide) and implies that if the cardinals need to speak in Latin to conduct their business with her, their business may be the shameful thing — not hers. 'Absolv'd' evokes the Catholic sacrament of confession, appropriate for two cardinals, and turns the language of the Church against the churchmen.
TLN 1574historical topical
“the weighty difference Between the King and you”
Wolsey's euphemism for the divorce suit — 'difference' meaning a formal legal and theological dispute, 'weighty' meaning both serious and, literally, loaded with precedent. Henry's argument was that Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21 forbade marrying a brother's widow, making the marriage to Katherine (who had briefly been Prince Arthur's wife) void from the start. The entire legal and ecclesiastical machinery of the legatine court turns on this 'difference.'
historical The King's Great Matter (Henry's divorce)
TLN 1579historical topical
“My Lord of York, out of his noble nature”
'My Lord of York' is Wolsey's formal ecclesiastical title — Archbishop of York, the second see in England after Canterbury. The play regularly uses these titles to remind the audience of who holds what power. Wolsey was appointed Archbishop of York in 1514, and the title is his even after his fall (he died while traveling to face charges, still technically retaining it). Campeius's obsequious praise of Wolsey's 'noble nature' is what Katherine privately deflates in her aside at TLN 1585: 'To betray me.'
historical Cardinal Wolsey
TLN 1596historical topical
“the last fit of my greatness”
A 'fit' is a turn or bout — usually of illness, but here of fortune. Katherine senses this is the last moment she will be treated as a great lady. The line belongs to the play's sustained de casibus pattern — the fall of the mighty from the heights of prosperity — which claims three victims in Henry VIII: Buckingham, Wolsey, and Katherine herself. Here Katherine, unlike the others, sees her fall clearly and with open eyes.
historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)
TLN 1601historical topical
“In England But little for my profit. Can you think, lords, That any Englishman dare give me counsel”
Katherine explains her isolation: no English subject would risk the king's displeasure by counselling or befriending a woman he has publicly set aside. Her real advisors and supporters are in Spain — her nephew Emperor Charles V held enormous leverage over the papacy (Rome was under imperial occupation in 1527), which is exactly why Pope Clement VII could not grant Henry's annulment and had to send Campeius to stall instead.
historical The King's Great Matter (Henry's divorce)
TLN 1621biblical allusion
“Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon ye! Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge That no king can corrupt”
Katherine appeals to a divine court above the earthly one. The idea that God is the ultimate judge who cannot be bribed or manipulated by kings is a standard biblical principle. Her fury breaks the cardinals' smooth diplomacy open: they have urged her to put herself in the hands of a husband who has already banished her from his bed, framing this as good advice, and she calls it what it is — counsel designed to ruin her.
TLN 1626wordplay
“two reverend cardinal virtues; But cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye”
Katherine builds an extended pun on the word 'cardinal.' In Christian theology the four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance; the seven deadly sins are sometimes called cardinal sins. She had hoped the men before her were 'reverend cardinal virtues' — holy men embodying the virtues of their rank. Instead she suspects them of 'cardinal sins,' which are also, literally, sins committed by cardinals. The pun is bitter and exact.
TLN 1629archaic vocab
“The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady”
A 'cordial' was a medicinal drink or restorative believed to strengthen the heart (from Latin cor, heart) — a warm, sweet tonic given to the sick. Katherine is being savagely sarcastic: the cardinals have just advised her to surrender her case to the king who has already discarded her, and she calls this supposed comfort their 'cordial.'
TLN 1638archaic vocab
“all such false professors”
A 'professor' in Shakespeare's time meant one who openly professes or avows a belief — specifically a religious vow or office. 'False professors' are men who claim to be what they are not: men who wear the habit of Christian churchmen but act as political agents. The word has not yet narrowed to its modern academic meaning.
TLN 1640archaic vocab
“If ye be anything but churchmen's habits”
A 'habit' is a long robe or gown — specifically the distinctive garment identifying a religious order or rank. Katherine is saying: if you are more than your clerical costumes, if there is a real man of conscience under the cardinal's red robes, then show it. 'Habits' were instantly identifiable on the Elizabethan stage, marking monks, friars, bishops, and cardinals by distinctive colors and cuts — red for cardinals, black for Benedictines, grey for Franciscans.
TLN 1654rhetorical device
“lov'd him next Heav'n? obey'd him? Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him? Almost forgot my prayers to content him”
Katherine's speech here builds into a formal rhetorical list — the device of anaphora, each item piled on the last to create cumulative emotional weight. She loved the king 'next Heaven' (second only to God, the proper order for a Christian wife), obeyed him, was 'superstitious' in her devotion (so fond she performed rituals of faithfulness beyond what duty required), and almost neglected her own prayers. The scale of the sacrifice makes the injustice of her reward vivid.
TLN 1663historical topical
“I dare not make myself so guilty, To give up willingly that noble title Your master wed me to. Nothing but death Shall e'er divorce my dignities”
Katherine refuses to voluntarily surrender her title of Queen of England. She argues that to accept the divorce would make her an accomplice to her own wrong — 'guilty' of abandoning a lawful marriage. The phrase 'nothing but death shall e'er divorce my dignities' is the scene's moral climax and its most famous single line. Historically Katherine maintained her title and refused to call herself anything but Queen until her death in 1536.
historical The King's Great Matter (Henry's divorce)
TLN 1674rhetorical device
“Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity, No friends, no hope; no kindred weep for me; Almost no grave allow'd me. Like the lily, That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd, I'll hang my head and perish”
Katherine extends her distress into a sequence of images: a shipwreck (disaster on arrival in a foreign land), followed by the lily — the flower of royal majesty and purity — that has flourished in the field but now hangs its head in death. The lily was a standard emblem of royalty and of female virtue; to 'hang the head' is both the natural drooping of a cut flower and a gesture of mourning. 'Almost no grave allow'd me' is not hyperbole — in exile, without the king's favor, she genuinely feared she would be denied a queen's burial.
TLN 1688historical topical
“The hearts of princes kiss obedience, So much they love it; but to stubborn spirits They swell, and grow as terrible as storms”
Wolsey advises Katherine that kings reward submission and punish resistance — a truth dressed in the language of royal doctrine. 'The hearts of princes kiss obedience' means that princes are most affectionate toward those who obey them; their love flows naturally to compliance. The warning that they 'swell and grow terrible' to 'stubborn spirits' is a barely-veiled threat from a man who already knows Henry will move against those who cross him. Wolsey himself will learn this lesson within the play.
historical The divine right of kings