Last weekend was Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, and almost everywhere here in London was covered in bunting (though really the only sign of celebration in my neighborhood was people out drinking on a Wednesday). So it seemed like a fitting time to highlight the first Queen Elizabeth, who Shakespeare did indeed depict as a character—sort of.
images
There are quite a few characters who have been taken as images of Queen Elizabeth—Titania, who we discussed last week, being one example that imprinted on my youthful brain thanks to Susan Cooper’s novel King of Shadows, where Shakespeare’s company’s decision to dress the character as the queen is an important and daring plot point. Elizabeth herself is probably alluded to directly in the play as well, the ‘fair vestal, throned by the west’ (2.1.158) who Cupid attempts to hit with a love arrow, but instead hits a flower, creating the magic blossom that powers the plot. She also gets a shout-out in Henry V, when the Chorus compares the celebrations upon the return of Henry’s victorious army to those that will greet ‘the general of our gracious empress’ (5.0.31) when he returns from war in Ireland (spoiler: that doesn’t happen).
These kinds of glancing references are pretty par for the course when it comes to Shakespeare’s topicality—the reference to the Earl of Essex’s Irish campaign is pretty strikingly and unusually direct. The play most dramatically associated with a supposed depiction of Elizabeth— and in fact, with the Earl of Essex as well— is Richard II, which the Earl of Essex’s allies commanded a performance of on the eve of an attempted coup, apparently thinking that the story of the deposition of a weak king might inspire some allies. Supposedly, in the aftermath, Elizabeth said, “I am Richard II, know ye not that?” Apocryphal or not (though it probably is), the character has been associated with her ever since, and productions will often allude to her through Richard’s costume design, or especially with white, full-face makeup.
the law
These passing and allusive references are all that would have been permitted. Depicting a living monarch was not allowed, a stricture that was famously put to the test years later with the play A Game At Chess, which staged contemporary political leaders and the tensions between Spain and England through an extremely thinly veiled chess allegory that saw the theatre shut down and the entire company and writer prosecuted.
Very shortly after Elizabeth’s death, the writer Thomas Heywood wrote two plays featuring her as a key if not quite central character: If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, or The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth parts 1 and 2 depict Elizabeth’s youth and accession, and the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the building of the Royal Exchange respectively. Elizabeth is an oddly passive figure, especially in Part 1. Even though it was now theoretically permitted to write about her, it’s pretty clear that the terms in which a writer could do so were still strictly limited— by one’s own common sense, if not by any written law.
infant princess
There are a few prominent babies in Shakespeare plays (and also some very interesting academic writing about the question of the baby doll props that may have been used). Understandably, they tend to be a bit of a centerpiece whenever they’re brought onstage, and Princess Elizabeth is perhaps the most dramatic example. Her presentation as a baby at the end of Henry VIII is one of the play’s most spectacular set pieces, the kind of elaborate pageant scenes that helped make the play fairly popular in the 18th century, when opulent sets and extreme historical accuracy were in vogue. The reverence of this scene is, I think, an example of why this play gets neglected— like with Heywood, Shakespeare and his collaborator John Fletcher’s necessarily reverent tone towards the recently-deceased queen’s father doesn’t seem to leave much room for dramatic nuance. It should be interesting to see how myths about Elizabeth were being made in the first moments when they were allowed, but they toe the partly line from when she was alive so closely, it feels hard to find much to say, theatrically speaking (though there’s more complexity in this play than that, but that’s a subject for a future character).
In the scene, courtiers process in for Princess Elizabeth’s christening. She is presented by Archbishop Cranmer, who has just finally triumphed over the corrupt and Catholic Cardinal Wolsey, whose downfall is one of the key subplots of the play. Cranmer is seized suddenly by a vision: Elizabeth will oversee a reign of peace and plenty, and
as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new create another heir
As great in admiration as herself,
So shall she leave her blessedness to one,
When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness,
Who from the sacred ashes of her honor
Shall starlike rise as great in fame as she was
And so stand fixed (5.1.48-55)
This is, of course, referring to King James VI and I, who was now king and the patron of Shakespeare’s playing company. Cementing James’s somewhat complicated claim to England as perfectly linear and natural was a concern Shakespeare also addressed in Macbeth, with the image of Banquo’s heirs eventually wearing two crowns. A far cry from the supposed political commentary of Richard II, Elizabeth functions as a visible symbol of continuity in a period that seems characterized by rupture: the transition from Catholic to Protestant, from Tudor to Stewart, from a chain of non-linear successions in Henry to Elizabeth to James. The generations and connections that this narrative needs to skip to remain smooth— James’s clam deriving from his troublesome mother, Mary Queen of Scots; Elizabeth’s own older sister Mary’s reign, and their disinheritance by their younger brother, Edward—are glossed over by the glorious image of Elizabeth’s inevitability—even just as a baby doll in christening clothes.