William Shakespeare - Subject of the Crown? E-Book

Manuela Sonntag

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 309

Beschreibung

Shakespeare and his work have inspired many books by literary scholars and historians throughout the century. What can we know about a man of whom nothing is known, except what he chose to let his characters say and do? Can there really be any certainty about Shakespeare’s opinions, thoughts, ideas, even on the most trivial matters? Isn’t this a dangerous confusion of person and fiction? This essay will not try to find certainty among the many statements made about author and work over the years but try to relate some of Shakespeare’s ‘non-historical’ plays to contemporary politics – one part dedicated to the English Renaissance as a century of change and progress, the other part literary analysis of Shakespeare’s plays with consideration of this political zeitgeist. Shakespeare and his work have inspired many books by literary scholars and historians throughout the century. What can we know about a man of whom nothing is known, except what he chose to let his characters say and do? Can there really be any certainty about Shakespeare’s opinions, thoughts, ideas, even on the most trivial matters? Isn’t this a dangerous confusion of person and fiction? This essay will not try to find certainty among the many statements made about author and work over the years but try to relate some of Shakespeare’s ‘non-historical’ plays to contemporary politics – one part dedicated to the English Renaissance as a century of change and progress, the other part literary analysis of Shakespeare’s plays with consideration of this political zeitgeist.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Introduction

Aims and Confinement

Methods and Structure

The Tudor and Stuart Age

The English Renaissance

The Virgin Queen and the English Protestants

Mary Stuart and the English Catholics

The Elizabethan Age

James I and the Union of the Crowns

The Dawn of Revolution

Elisabeth, James and English Renaissance Theatre

The Author Shakespeare

Shakespeare and English Monarchy

Shakespeare’s Plays

The Merchant of Venice

Merchants and Jews

Portia and the Law

Macbeth

Macbeth and the Scottish Heredity

Witches and Daemons

Measure for Measure

Angelo, the Duke and the Ways of Power

Isabella, the Duke and the Trial Scene

The Winter’s Tale

Shepherds, Women and Courtiers

Leontes, Perdita and the Golden Age

Conclusion

Annex

Introduction

Johannes de Witt“A performance in progress at the Swan theatre in London in 1596“

Aims and Confinement

Alone of the major artists of the Renaissance, Shakespeare has no tangible personality outside his art.1

Shakespeare and his work have inspired many books by literary scholars and historians throughout the century. Yet the problem stated above has been an essential part in all of them. What can we know about a man of whom nothing is known, except what he chose to let his characters say and do? Can there really be any certainty about Shakespeare’s opinions, thoughts, ideas, even on the most trivial matters? Isn’t this a dangerous confusion of person and fiction?

This essay will not try to find certainty among the many statements made about author and work over the years but try to relate some of Shakespeare’s ‘non-historical’ plays to contemporary politics and […] by politics I refer to those social processes in which relationships of power are conveyed.2

This will therefore be a twofold essay – one part dedicated to the English Renaissance as a century of change and progress, the other part literary analysis of Shakespeare’s plays with consideration of this political zeitgeist. Many historians today assume that history does not effectively consist of ‘timeless’ facts. History is what the majority believes; it is a phenomenon of zeitgeist, propaganda and perception. This development of perception can easily be traced in Shakespeare. Nobody in the English Renaissance would have considered Shakespeare to be anti-Semitic – in fact the term did not even exist - but today productions of The Merchant of Venice are to be undertaken with extreme caution and are not considered ‘funny’ anymore. Scotland’s bloody history traced in Macbeth causes horror and repulsion in modern audiences, while in Shakespeare’s time people were terrified of the evil powers of witches and daemons.

This essay will try to find some perceptions of sovereignty and authority in Shakespeare’s more problematic plays - The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale. These four plays were chosen for their ambiguous nature that could suggest a more serious purpose for their production than mere entertainment.

Many critics can not even agree on whether The Merchant of Venice is supposed to be a comedy or a tragedy, but in addition to that it presents a highly interesting trial, a curiously strong female figure and many insights into the world of merchants and trade – a highly important renaissance topic not only for Venice.

Macbeth is not often listed among the problematic plays, but still it stands apart from the other tragedies in the way of presenting its ‘hero’. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are outside the common conception of vice and virtue, acting under the evil supernatural influence of witches – a curious novelty in English renaissance theatre. The ‘good’ characters are presented only marginally and the fact that all this is based on the half-fictional, half-historical ancestry and the literary works of King James I, makes Macbeth highly relevant for the topic of this paper.

Meanwhile, not many critics disagree with the problem-play aspect of Measure for Measure. The outspoken sexuality and the interesting blend of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters are one major aspect of the play. For this paper, however, its most interesting feature is presented in ‘The Duke of Venice’, who is supposed to be a great believer in contemporary political theory. Here may be a chance to see the author behind the character.

Finally, The Winter’s Tale also qualifies for both categories of comedy and tragedy. In addition it has a lot to say about abandoned daughters, jealous husbands and the general question of the legitimacy of a ruler – concerning both his ancestry and his ability. This major theme is also considered to be the constant struggle of both the Tudor and Stuart lineage, and it will be interesting to see in which way Shakespeare presents his characters and their opinions.

I will try to work out all those hints and perceptions and try to link them to the ‘political persona Shakespeare’. The before mentioned problem of confusing the ‘opinion’ of a character with the opinion of an author must of course be taken into consideration. A certain proof for Shakespeare’s political ambition will not – and cannot – be given in this essay.

In particular, it will focus on finding hints for the following questions:

Was Shakespeare concerned with political developments apart from some minor allusions to entertain the courtiers? Are there allegories criticising or praising the reigning monarch? Is there a possibility that Shakespeare’s plays were used as political propaganda? And who would this propaganda have served – the monarch or the opposition?

1 Worden, Blair. 2004. “Shakespeare and Politics.” In: Alexander, Catherine M. S. (ed.). Shakespeare and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 22–44.; pp. 23

2 Goldberg, Jonathan. 1989. James I. and the Politics of Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.; pp. XI

Method and Structure

Although his plays were well received at Court he did not stoop to flatter the reigning monarch.3

The underlying claim for this essay in particular and historical literary criticism in general is the key assumption that no man lives outside his contemporary social and cultural environment. The zeitgeist influence on the evaluation and perception of history mentioned before has been traced throughout Shakespeare’s works and set in correlation to the political events of his time. Unlike character traits or personal opinions, this general ‘worldview’ is much harder to ‘conceal’ behind the face of a fictional character, for it is assumed that it influences the way how a characters acts and speaks and not only what it does or says.

This paper will therefore focus on giving, on the one hand, a short survey of Tudor and Stuart history, developments of society, law and government. Beginning with the reign of Henry VIII, England and the ‘Crown lands’ of Wales and Ireland were given over to a thorough social process of change and progress. The religious crisis and the import of Protestant ideals deeply affected the political and cultural conditions. With the reign of Elizabeth I England experienced a first ‘Golden Age’ in trade, art and science. Shakespeare arrived in London when this age was already closing and wrote his most famous plays under the reign of James I, but it can be assumed that he was – as were his contemporaries – deeply affected by the so-called ‘Elizabethan World Picture’ and all emerging consequences.

The shaping of an Elizabethan or Jacobean Drama will be discussed separately, to a more detailed extent, and examined for signs of antiroyalist tendencies in the forerun to the civil-war to see if Shakespeare’s drama presents us with an almost constant interrogation of historical transition, regime change, usurpation and tyranny.4

The analysis of the actual plays will provide a short survey of the plot and essential characters, as well as information on the source text and the first known performance. The more detailed analysis will deal with the before mentioned points of historical literary criticism, focussing on the perception of monarchic and religious sovereignty shown by the author. Wherever possible, events and characters will be traced back to historical events described in the first part of the essay, with the confinement mentioned before that a connection can only be suggested and not proven.

The paper will end in a conclusion consisting of a summary trying to give some answers to the questions raised in the introduction and a general consideration of the limits and possibilities that have been encountered and developed in analysing Shakespeare as ‘a royal subject’.

Due to the limited frame of this essay, a complete analysis of either the Elizabethan world or the full impact of the examined plays will not be possible: However, if a statement about Shakespeare’s political motivation can be given at all, it seems important not to draw any conclusions from a more detailed description of only one play but to collect evidence from repeated incidents and suggestions. It is the author’s conviction that Shakespeare, as a man only visible through the contorting mirror of his art, should be glimpsed from as many angles as possible in order to yield a conclusive general picture.

3 Badawi, M. M. 1981. Background to Shakespeare. London: Macmillan Press.; pp. 24

4 Alexander, Catherine M. S. 2004. “Introduction.“ In: Alexander, Catherine M. S. (ed.), Shakespeare and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.; pp. 3

The Tudor and Stuart Age

Elisabeth I of England c. 1575 The "Darnley Portrait", National Portrait Gallery, London

The English Renaissance

No other age in English history has brought to light so many aspects for the construction of an English national identity as the age of the Tudors.5

The Tudor dynasty ultimately arose from a decade of uncertainty and rebellion. The Wars of the Roses between the two ruling houses of Lancaster and York had brought terror and poverty to most of the English lands. Nevertheless, the rise of the Tudor house was unexpected, Henry Tudor having only an evanescently small claim to the Lancaster lineage. Indeed he was one of the few noble persons in the realm who had almost no claim to the throne at all.6

The Tudor line of kings had to trace their legitimacy back to Queen Catherine, a French princess and wife of King Henry V, who was illegally married a second time to her Welsh chamberlain Owen Tudor – the proclaimed kinship to the House of Lancaster did therefore only exist through marriage and neither French nor Welsh nobility was sufficiently respected to support an attempt at kingship. But like many great royal houses the Tudors had mastered the art of political marriage. Thus the son of Queen Catherine, who was not a Lancaster in her own right, was married to Princess Margaret Beauford, who was. The Beaufords were one of the most powerful Lancaster families and provided the support that was needed for Henry VII to finally seize power, both the Lancaster and York clans having lost too many of their princes, after the battle of Bosworth. He then made another clever move in marrying Elisabeth of York. The people of England and Wales were desperate for the civil war to end and their wish for peace became the leading argument for their loyalty to the Tudor house which finally united the ‘two roses’.

Nevertheless, the shadow of unrightful kingship remained constantly hovering behind the Tudor ancestry, as did the accusation of bastardy. As mentioned before, these two are the central themes that unite the Tudors, the Stuarts and some of Shakespeare’s ruling houses.

King Henry’s famous son Henry VIII brought new stability by his long and powerful reign and, incidentally, he was never meant to become king. Kingship should have passed to his older brother Arthur, who had married the rich Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon and thereby restored the relationship between the English crown and Habsburg. Only because Prince Arthur died only five months after his wedding, Henry became king of England and only because of the immense dowry of Catherine was he freed by the pope to marry his brother’s wife7– which would later become the famous Great Matter.8 To include the many aspects of Henry’s reign would certainly go beyond the scope of this essay which is supposed to deal with the rulers of Shakespeare’s time. There are, however, two developments in the history of Henry VIII that are essential to understand the Elizabethan Age and consequently Shakespeare as well: Church and Succession.

It is often said that Henry VIII broke with Rome because he was madly in love with Anne Boleyn – this reason alone, however, would not have been sufficient for a skilled politician to cause such a disruption with one of the most powerful authorities of that time. In addition, the Roman emperor Charles V was a considerable strength in himself too, and he was closely related to Queen Catherine. The real problem in the king’s marriage was succession. It was feared that if the king died without a male heir to suceed him, civil war would inevetably ensue.9 The terror of a new civil war was still a major fear in Tudor England and the stability of the male Tudor heritage was to be secured at all costs. The only other woman ever to inherit the English throne, Mathila, mother of the later King Henry II, had lead to a dreadful civil war with her cousin Stephen I and thus served only to underline the skeptical view of female rulers in England.10

Queen Catherine had not succeeded in that respect, her only surviving child was a daughter and she herself was considered to be beyond fertility. Technically the kings wish would therefore not have been much of a problem, infertility being a common justification for ‘divorce’ – or rather the pontifical annulment of a marriage. However, the pope was in deep trouble and effectively a hostage of Charles V at that time, who saw his influence on the English policy fading should his aunt be sent back to Spain. This correlation of powers on the continent seemed to have escaped Henry completely, for he was surprised and outraged when the pope sent his refusal of annulment. Henry had used his considerable reputation to support the papal authority against Luther and his adherence. No he believed it was time for the pope to support him in turn.11

Until this point his religious doubts concerning his marriage were of no serious political importance, the queen’s infertility ought to have been reason enough for judicial purposes. With the pope’s refusal, however, a plan evolved that would make the ‘King’s Conscience’ the central point of argument.

In 1521 Henry had been made defensor fidei by the Vatican in reward of his treatise against Martin Luther; a little more than ten years later in 1533, when the pope had not grated him his favour in return, the parliament was presented with the Act in Restrain of Appeals – an official law persecuting all inhabitants of the British Isles to seek any but the king’s judgement in matters of marriage and inheritance. A small concession to the Vatican remained in the exception from questions of heresy, which remained under pontifical judgement for the time being. Archbishop Cramner was instructed to secure the annulment of the king’s marriage as soon as possible. It may be disputed if it was a mistake to rush these affairs in such a rude way, for Queen Catherine was as popular in London as Anne Boleyn was not. Her trial and impressing strength of devotion to a husband that had already replaced her caused some uproar on her behalf throughout the country and greatly diminished the king’s popularity. However, in the given circumstances there was no way of taking more time over the decisions, because by 1533 Anne Boleyn was pregnant and it was of the utmost importance that her son was born in a legal marriage. In truth, Henry and Anne were secretly married, so suddenly and with so few witnesses that the legitimacy of their bond was in question from the start and the Vatican officially anathematised Henry as a result. This decision washed away all compromises and religious concerns that may have been left in the king and in 1534 the parliament officially passed his Act of Submission of the Clergy and the Act of Supremacy. For the monarchy itself the rupture with Rome resulted in a tremendous gain of power. The Act of Supremacy made Henry a god-given ruler, who had to fear no other authority over him – other than God's of course.12

All decisions concerning the English church were now under supreme rule of the king – the substitution of bishops, the persecution of heresy and the charge of tributes. But the fear of revolution and rebellion was a central feature in the reigns after the civil war and therefore the king insisted that all his courtiers and counsellors had to take a vow onto the Act of Supremacy, insuring their loyalty to the king as Head of Church. 45 members of court refused and were consequently put to death on charge of high treason – most notably among them the former Lord Chancellor and noted author Thomas More. The reckless rooting-out of opposition is another feature often seen in Shakespeare too.

In the Elizabethan Age, the breach with Rome gave rise to a special pride in national identity, evolving from Roman and Norman backgrounds rather than continental Christian history.13 The problem of succession, however, remained unsolved after Queen Anne gave birth to only another daughter – Elisabeth. Henry’s older daughter Mary had been proclaimed illegitimate when his marriage with Catherine was annulled so the status quo was unchanged; the king was still the father of only one legitimate daughter. After another pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage in 1535, Anne was beheaded under charge of adultery and high treason in 1536. She was tried by a tribunal of 22 peers but only her musician, who was submitted to torture, confessed to the crime.

It has to be said however that the surviving documents used in the trial show that the charces were supported with flimsy and in parts obviously fabricated evidence. If there ever was a true ground for the accusations can therefore not be determined today.14

The king married again in secret and Anne Boleyn’s daughter was declared illegitimate, just like her half-sister.

King Henry VIII was clearly one of the most impressive rulers of his century. He laid out the concept for the Anglican Church, the Privy Council, the English Bible and the practise of parliamentary legislation.15 The story of the king’s wives and his desperate attempts on securing the stability of the Tudor lineage meanwhile have filled many books already and are no further topic of this essay. It remains to constitute that at the end of his life and in his sixth marriage he had still ‘achieved’ just one surviving son, who was only nine years old by the time his father died, and two illegitimate daughters no one really considered as heirs to the throne. His last Act of Succession in 1546 nevertheless listed them in second and third place and left detailed instructions for the formation of a privy council for the young king Edward VI. Most of his testament, however, was ‘reinterpreted’ after his death, which gave way to what is sometimes called the Mid-Tudor Crisis.16

Whereas Edward's rule, as in the case of most regencies, led to fierce power struggels between the leading nobles of his court, his sister Mary's reign remains overshadowed by the often brutal reintroduction of the catholic faith she instigated.17 The reign of King Edward VI was in some respects even more insignificant than that of his older sister Mary. He was constantly overshadowed by the great lords that proclaimed themselves Lord Protector – Somerset and Northumberland. Nevertheless, he succeeded in strengthening the Protestant aspect of the Anglican Church, which was in the conception of Henry VIII mainly Catholic without yielding to the Vatican. In 1549, Archbishop Cramner was allowed to publish the first Book of Common Prayer which was supported by the Act of Uniformity – the attempt of installing one prayer book, one dogma and one belief in England. Later, in 1552, both book and law were given over to an even more thorough Protestant revision, forbidding for example the performance of requiems, liturgical vestments and religious idols. These religious matters seemed to be of more importance to the young king than the struggles and revolts of the English nobility. He had to put to death two of his uncles under charge of high treason. The Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour had tried to overpower his almighty brother, the Lord Protector, by marrying the king’s widow Catherine Parr and trying to take Edward hostage. But the Lord Protector’s position was crumbling from within as his cabinet was unable to cope with the vast inflation, the unstoppable increase of population, years of war expenses in Scotland and France and crop failures in England.

Thus the threat of revolts among the poor or social uheavel in the city of London grew steadily.18 The fall of the Lord Protector was imminent when his successor Northumberland achieved a bloody but total defeat of the rebellions in East Anglia 1549. In 1551, Somerset was sentenced to death after a half-hearted attempt on rebellion and two years imprisonment.

The king’s death, however, offers the really interesting perspective on English history. In awareness of his illness and with the prospect of handing his crown to his crypto-Catholic sister Mary, he tried to change the Act of Succession laid out by his father and to make his cousin Jane Grey queen instead. He would naturally have preferred to pass kingship to his promising Protestant sister Elisabeth, however, he could not proclaim Mary illegitimate without ruling out Elisabeth as well – both their mothers’ marriages were annulled by common law. It can be assumed that the plan covering this dilemma was greatly influenced by Northumberland, who had readily married one of his sons to the queen-to-be, but it turned out to be a desperate attempt. Mary was forewarned of her planned imprisonment, while the death of King Edward was being kept secret, and escaped to Suffolk. There she quickly found more than 2000 followers to march against Northumberland. Despite of her Catholic conviction and her sex, the loyalty towards the Tudor house was so overpowering that Northumberland’s troops deserted almost immediately.

Indeed the respect for the Tudor succession remained significant enough to bring Mary Tudor to the throne, despite her catholic faith and her string bonds to Spain, which were frowned upon by her council.19 Also for some surely the succession of Queen Mary I was a ray of light in the strict, pre-puritan, Protestant court of King Edward. Had Edward survived and been able to pursue his puritan ideals, maybe there would have been no court entertainments, no anglican church musik, no theaters and no Shakespeare plays today.20 It is of course idle to discuss whether Queen Mary was the saviour of art and music in the Tudor lineage, but it must be said that her plans for a return to Catholicism did not meet with the opposition expected from a wholeheartedly Protestant country. Of course, the more outspoken Protestant privy counsellors were banned and replaced with trustworthy representatives of the ‘Old Faith’. But for the common people it still made little difference whether they listened to the service in Latin or English. The first serious drop in popularity emerged instead from the queen’s Spanish Marriage.21 It was a woman’s foremost duty to marry and bear children, and for a queen there could be even less doubt about that. Still, Mary’s choice of Prince Phillip, who was to be Phillip II of Spain before long, caused a serious uproar among the population. As the second most important duty of a woman was loyalty and obedience to her husband, the English peers and gentry feared the imminent influence of Habsburg on queen and country. In the year 1544, when Mary was desperately awaiting her husband, the Wyatt Rebellion marched against London and for the first time in living memory a revolution army reached the capital.22 The rebellion marched in the name – but not with the assistance – of Princess Elisabeth, which nevertheless lead to her imprisonment. ‘Queen’ Jane and her husband where charged with high treason and beheaded and some of Mary’s counsellors tried to persuade her that her sister was a threat to the succession of her children. Yet Mary decided to leave her sister in custody and gained her title ‘Bloody Mary’ elsewhere.

Many historians agree that the reign of Queen Mary I was a catastrophe. Only in recent years efforts are made to explain – if not to justify – her political decisions. Mostly she behaved like a good Catholic and wife, but unfortunately not like a good ruler. Her support for Phillip’s war against France lost England his long-time continental beachhead Calais. In her devotion to purify the country from Protestant heresy almost 300 men and women were burnt alive at the stake, among them some of the most able thinkers of the time, like Cramner and Latimer.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Channel 5 included Mary Tudor in a series labelled The Most Evil Men and Women in History, which aired in time for the golden jubilee of Queen Elisabeth II.23 Today some more differentiated accounts stress the stability of succession, the attempts on stopping inflation and the queen’s devotion to her people. Still, good intentions count for very little in the ruling of a country – as will be seen in Macbeth – and it must be concluded that Mary was unsuccessful in all her attempts – she could not produce a catholic heir and her hopes that her sister Elisabeth would continue her catholic agenda prooved naive.24

Still, Queen Mary I perhaps has had more influence on Elizabethan policy as was acknowledged for a long time. She – like Elisabeth – had been Princess of Wales in her childhood, but unlike Edward or Elisabeth nobody had given her what could be called a political education. Then she was – again like her sister – declared a bastard, sent away from court, humiliated and ignored for a very long time.

Her reign is largely associated with terror, religious oppression and the fear of foreign rule, because of her desperate marriage. Her sister Elisabeth was forced to witness all of these failures and wrong decisions and tried to avoid them rigorously. And most importantly, Mary’s reign smoothed the way for Queen Elisabeth’s succession, for in the nine days of Queen Jane it had become obvious that the people of England would rather face a female Tudor on the throne than allow a new outbreak of war among the nobility.

5 Esser, Raingard. 2004. Die Tudors und die Stuarts. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Urban.; pp. 15 [translation my own]

6 Rex, Richard. 2006. Die Tudors. Englands Aufbruch in die Neuzeit 1485–1603. Essen: Magnus.; pp. 11

7 Suerbaum, Ulrich. 1989. Das elisabethanische Zeitalter. Stuttgart: Reclam.; pp. 70–71

8 Esser, Raingard; Die Tudors und die Stuarts; pp. 41

9 Maurer, Michael. 1997. Eine kleine Geschichte Englands. Stuttgart: Reclam.; pp. 97

10 Esser, Raingard; Die Tudors und die Stuarts; pp. 41

11 Rex, Richard; Die Tudors. Englands Aufbruch in die Neuzeit 1485–1603.; pp. 62

12 Esser, Raingard; Die Tudors und die Stuarts; pp. 45

13 Suerbaum, Ulrich; Das elisabethanische Zeitalter; pp. 521

14 Suerbaum, Ulrich; Das elisabethanische Zeitalter; pp. 89

15 Rex, Richard; Die Tudors. Englands Aufbruch in die Neuzeit 1485–1603.; pp. 48

16 Maurer, Michael; Eine kleine Geschichte Englands; pp. 114

17 Esser, Raingard; Die Tudors und die Stuarts; pp. 60

18 Maurer, Michael; Eine kleine Geschichte Englands; pp. 117

19 Maurer, Michael; Eine kleine Geschichte Englands; pp. 123

20 Rex, Richard; Die Tudors. Englands Aufbruch in die Neuzeit 1485–1603.; pp. 137

21 Suerbaum, Ulrich; Das elisabethanische Zeitalter; pp. 102

22 Suerbaum, Ulrich; Das elisabethanische Zeitalter; pp. 103

23 Esser, Raingard; Die Tudors und die Stuarts; pp. 67

24 Esser, Raingard; Die Tudors und die Stuarts, pp. 67

The Virgin Queen and the English Protestants

She was a natural-born queen as her sister had never been – the most masculine of all female sovereigns in history.25

That Elisabeth I should one day be famous because of the mystical quality of her virginity was not to be expected when she became queen in 1558. Many plots – the Wyatt Rebellion among them – had used her name in connection to one aristocrat or another in order to present an alternative to Mary’s reign and the Spanish domination. Elisabeth promised to be an able and strong ruler; she had been well educated and shown considerable political tact during the Wyatt affair. She was also adept in financial matters, her means having been very limited throughout her youth, and showed considerable skill in image policy. In later years her summer passages through the country would be celebrated like folk festivals, providing her with huge popularity, but being paid for by her noble hosts. Yet her childhood had suffered like her sister Mary’s from the constant uncertainty of her position. She was declared a bastard by her own father, reinstated into heritage in 1546, favoured by her brother in his days of power, declared a bastard again in his attempt to secure the Protestant religion and she had suffered humiliation, imprisonment and constant threats from Mary’s counsellors. Her true legal position was not to be proven, for the reopening of her mother’s case was out of question. She compromised by emphasizing her strong resemblance to her father and hurried to form a trustworthy cabinet, reducing the number of Mary’s privy counsellors from more than 50 to only a dozen. She could not, however, issue any proclaimation to clear up the chaos of Henry VIII marital maneuvers without endangering her own position as heir to the throne.26

One of her first legal acts was instead the dismissal of all trials of heresy throughout the country, before she and her cabinet forged what is today known as the Elizabethan Settlement.27

This treaty is commonly understood to be the final compromise between the old Catholic traditions and Elisabeth’s own Protestant belief. The Alteration of Religion28 enforced by her father was reinstated, as well as the Acts of Uniformity and Supremacy. However, there were concessions made to the Catholic population, such as the tradition of sacrament, celibacy or chorals. Cramner’s first Book of Common Prayer became the official dogma, but in return the queen disclaimed the title of Supreme Head of Church in favour of the more diplomatic Supreme Governor. All these decisions were constantly discussed during the first season of parliament in 1559, marking a new beginning of democratic political processes.

Elisabeth’s second legal act was the ending of the war with Scotland and France to stop the vast inflation in England. The Convention of Edinburgh in 1560, devised by secretary of state William Cecil, was largely satisfactory for the English crown. It succeeded in establishing a cordial government in Scotland, even if the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France could not be broken up completely. The relations with Scotland became even more important in 1561, when the young queen Mary Stuart returned to her native country after her husband – King Francis I of France – had died. The re-established reign of a Catholic monarch on the English border became a topic of constant concern for the English government and lead to heated discussions about the marriage of Queen Elisabeth. It was widely agreed that the queen should marry as soon as possible to provide an heir to the throne – Mary Stuart had proclaimed herself to be the rightful queen of England already in 1558, because she was the granddaughter of King Henry VIII older sister Margaret. Marrying one of her lords, however, seemed difficult; it was feared that this would lead to new outbreaks of hostility among the nobles. A foreign prince was the alternative but, as the Spanish Marriage had shown, held the danger of rejection among the population. Elisabeth held cordial ties with many royal houses on the continent by lengthy considerations of their proposals, never quite agreeing to anyone. During those years the myth of the ‘Virgin Queen’ began, skilfully put in place to emphasize the queen’s affection for her people. In the perceived 'relationship' between people and sovereign, the fact that the Queen had no family of her own, and could claim to embrace all her subjects as her children instead, played a major part.29

It is uncertain if Elisabeth really refused to marry from the beginning of her reign. Surely her mother’s fate and her sister’s desperate affection for a stranger had been the worst examples. The relations to the Spanish crown had never recovered from the tumult caused by the Spanish Marriage. Phillip himself had proposed to marry Elisabeth after his wife had died but her political intuition was to well developed even to consider this. While Elisabeth worked for a stabilisation of the Protestant belief in England – Cramner’s 39 Articles became the official dogma in 1563 – it seemed that a Catholic alliance was forming against her. The relations with Spain were tested to breaking point when English troops supported the Dutch rebellions in 1566 and English ships were charging the Spanish trade monopoly concerning the ‘New World Trade’. In this political climate the message that Mary Stuart had fled from Scotland and was now seeking English sanctuary reached the queen and caused a turmoil that kept both council and parliament constantly busy for the next 20 years. Opinions varied as to what was the bigger threat to the realm:

Reclaiming the Scottish throne for Mary Stuart seemed a highly risky vernture and politically absurd. Shipping her on to the continent would enable her to return with a French or Spanish army to claim not only the Scottish, but also the English throne. Keeping her in England made her the automatical center of all catholic plots against Elisabeth's reign.30

Mary Stuart had not succeeded in establishing a trustworthy cabinet after her arrival in Edinburgh. All her privy counsellors were Protestant and her insistence to celebrate her own Catholic services caused civil commotions in the streets. However, she was not politically skilled enough to ensure a kind of compromise like her cousin in England. The idea of parliamentary monarchy was inaccessible for her, probably because she had left her native country at the age of five and had been educated in France at the most absolutistic court of the age. The worst decision of her political career, however, was the rushed marriage with the English aristocrat Henry Lord Darnley, which caused not only a serious breach in her cordial relation with Elisabeth – who understood this move as base treachery against all agreements concerning the English succession – but also presented her with a politically useless and mentally unstable husband.

Within a few months their marriage failed and Mary found a new confidant in her Italian secretary David Riccio. King Henry was outraged and killed Riccio in his wife’s rooms, almost causing her to lose the child she was carrying. Nevertheless, James Stuart – James VI of Scotland and I of England later on – was born in 1566. It was often said that he was not the son of the mentally unstable Darnley but of Riccio, who, like him, was very gifted in the fine arts.31

So James too was not unfamiliar with the accusation of bastardy. His mother would surely have liked to get rid of her husband, but never sought an annulment of her marriage, probably because it would have endangered James' legal status.

However, when in 1567 the house to which Mary had brought her husband to recover from a serious fever exploded and the body of King Henry was found strangled in the yard, not James’, but her own position crumbled. It was widely acknowledged that she had not herself ordered the assassination, but her refusal to investigate and punish the rebels and their assumed leader James Bothwell, compromised her. Mary Stuart allowed herself to be abducted by Bothwell to Dunbar, where it was believed he raped her and forced her to marry him. Bothwell was thus the villain of this story, but a French-minded, catholic queen, who – apparently – did so little to evade the accusations of murder and adultery, still prooved too controversial for her subjects.32

Mary’s half-brother, the Earl of Murray, lead the rebellion against her and her new husband and Mary was defeated and forced to flee to England, where she expected the help of her cousin Elisabeth.