During the fourth scene of the first act of William Shakespeare’s now comparatively rarely performed Henry VIII, the script calls for the firing of a cannon at the moment that a group of masquers is to arrive at the residence of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, whereby the stage direction reads “Drum and trumpet; chargers discharged.” The first recorded performance of the play, though most likely this was the third or four time it was staged, was on June 29th, 1613, at the Globe Theatre in Bankside, across the Thames from the City of London proper. Originally known as All is True, and cowritten with the 49-year-old Shakespeare’s late-career literary partner John Fletcher, the play dramatized the divorce of its titular king and Queen Catharine of Aragon, the catalyst for England’s reformation and a touchstone for narratives of national independence and greatness. Pleasing the audience with pyrotechnics, an actual cannon was fired during that particular scene, and a piece of errant flammable wadding landed amidst the dry water reeds of the thatched roof. “Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot/ That it’ll do singe yourself,” says Norfolk presciently in the first scene of the play, for it was only shortly thereafter that the great Globe itself would go up in conflagration.