It was not my fault if I did not discover in all that the inner life, the psychology, the introductions, and the explanations which they complain they do not find in _Henri VIII_.
"To Henry VIII," it is stated at the beginning of the work, "nothing is sacred, neither friendship, love nor his word--ill are playthings of his mad whims.

He knows neither law nor justice." And when, a little later, smiling, the King hands the holy water to the ambassador he is receiving, the orchestra reveals the working of his mind by repeating the music of the preceding scene.

From beginning to end the work is written in this way.

But dissertations on such details have not been given the public; the themes of felony, cruelty, and duplicity, and of this and that, have not, as is the fashion of the day, been underlined, so that the critics are excusable for not seeing them.
Not a scene, not a word, they say, shows the soul of Henry VIII.

I would like to ask if it is not revealed in the great scene between Henry and Catharine, where he plays with her as a cat with a mouse, where he veils his desire to be rid of her under his religious scruples, and where he heaps on her constantly vile and cruel insinuations, or even in the last scene with its cruel hypocrisies.