England's Elizabeth An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy

by Dobson, Michael; Watson, Nicola J.

• ISBN13: 9780198183778
• ISBN10: 0198183771
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-11-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

No monarch is more glamorous or more controversial than Elizabeth I. The stories by which successive generations have sought to extol, explain, or excoriate Elizabeth supply a rich index to the cultural history of English nationalism--whether they represent her as Anne Boleyn's suffering orphan or as the implacable nemesis of Mary, Queen of Scots, as learned stateswoman or as frustrated lover, persecuted princess or triumphant warrior queen. This book examines the many afterlives the Virgin Queen has lived in drama, poetry, fiction, painting, propaganda, and the cinema over the four centuries since her death, from the aspiringly epic to the frankly kitsch. Exploring the Elizabeths of Shakespeare and Spenser, of Sophia Lee and Sir Walter Scott, of Bette Davis and of Glenda Jackson, of Shakespeare in Love and Blackadder II , this is a lively, lavishly-illustrated investigation of England's perennial fascination with a queen who is still engaged in a posthumous progress through the collective psyche of her country.

Author Biography

Michael Dobson is Professor of Renaissance Drama at the University of Surrey, Roehampton, and co-editor of The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Nicola J. Watson is a Lecturer at the Open University. She has also taught at Oxford, arvard, and Northwestern Universities.

Table of Contents

List of Plates	viii
List of Figures	x
Introduction: The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen	1	(31)
Chronology	32	(11)
Gloriana Revives	43	(36)
The Private Lives of the Virgin Queen	79	(37)
Good Queen Bess and Merrie England	116	(31)
The Faery Queen and Victorian Values	147	(32)
An Empress and her Adventurers	179	(37)
Elizabeth Modernized	216	(52)
Afterword: Virginia in the New World	268	(20)
Notes	288	(44)
Acknowledgements	332	(3)
Index	335