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The Facts
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- Before the time that our play starts, Mary Stuart was
held, at the command of Elizabeth 1st, by the Earl of
Shrewsbury for fifteen years. He was relieved of his post
as warden because Elizabeth feared he had become overly
affectionate to his charge. Indeed, even the Earl’s
wife, the indomitable Bess of Hardwick, accused him of
having an affair with Mary. However, after Bess and Shrewsbury
had been separated for some time, Bess declared that her
accusations had been no more than “malicious mischief-making”.
- Schiller wrote his Mary and Elizabeth considerably younger
than they would have been at the actual time that the
historical facts of the play take place. Schiller insisted
that on stage Mary should appear about 25 years old and
Elizabeth no more than 30, whereas in fact Mary was 45
and Elizabeth 53 at the time of the execution.
- After years of waiting on the Queen as her favourite,
Lord Leicester, desperate for an heir, finally married
his mistress, Lettice, when she fell pregnant. When Lettice
attended court in the sumptuous attire that befitted a
countess, Elizabeth descended on her like an avenging
angel. She boxed her ears, shouting, “As but one
sun lights in the east, so shall I have but one Queen
in England!” Following this public humiliation,
Lettice did not dare venture to court again for many years,
nor would Elizabeth have allowed it, despite Leicester’s
frequent pleas.
- The French court in which Mary was raised was notorious
and she was exposed from an early age to its promiscuity
and corruption. The moral laxity of the court is reflected
in two paintings that apparently show a teenaged Mary
in the nude. One is the erotic allegorical work, “The
Bath of Diana” and the other is “A Lady at
her Toilet”, showing a bare-breasted sister in a
ruff and headdress. Whether Mary sat for these pictures
or if her portrait was superimposed on the body of nude
models, the portrayal of her in such poses belies the
later image she fostered of a prim and virtuous princess.
- Mary had three husbands, each of whom suffered an unpleasant
end. The first was the Dauphin Francis, a difficult and
withdrawn youth who Mary grew up with in the French court.
The syphilis that had killed the royal grandfathers on
both sides of Francis’ family had tragic effects
on the health of the Dauphin. His growth was stunted and
he suffered from eczema that was so terrible it was reported
as leprosy. Mary and Francis were very attached to one
another and she referred to him as her “sweetheart
and friend”. When he fell ill with a virulent inflammation
of the ear that spread to his brain and caused an abscess,
Mary nursed him devotedly and was inconsolable at his
death at not quite seventeen years old.
- Mary’s second husband was the young Lord Darnley
who was killed in a massive explosion at his quarters
in Holywood planned and executed by other members of the
Scottish nobility. Although the explosion was so large
it reportedly shook the whole town, Darnley’s body
was found a little way from his lodgings with not a mark
on it. Historians now think that he was either blown clear
of his home by the force of the blast and died of internal
injuries, or that he escaped before the explosion, only
to be waylaid by the waiting assassins and suffocated.
- Perhaps the most unfortunate of all, however, was Lord
Bothwell, Mary’s final husband. He was implicated
in Darnley’s murder and then proceeded to capture
and incarcerate Mary, possibly raping her in order to
force her to marry him. After civil war and county-wide
rebellion, Bothwell was forced from Scotland and was detained
by the King of Denmark in Dragsholm. As Bothwell began
to show signs of insanity, he was kept in increasingly
vile conditions. He was apparently deprived of any company
other than those who brought him scurvy-infected meat
and drink, which was pushed in at a small window in his
cell. Local legend even states that he was chained to
a pillar in such a manner that he could not stand. Contemporaries
report that he was “overgrown with hair and filth”
and that the Lord was being “driven mad by the filth
and other discomforts of his dungeon.” After being
held like this from 1523 to 1528, Bothwell “died
miserably” from his cruel treatment.
- Despite the dramatic scene in Schiller’s play,
the two Queens never actually met in real life. They did,
however, keep up a warm, often sisterly, correspondence
by letters written in French. An excellent example of
this can be seen in a letter Elizabeth wrote to Mary on
hearing of Darnley’s death, urging her to take instant
action to disclose his murderers in order to preserve
her reputation:
“Madam: my ears have been so
astounded and my heart so frightened to hear of the horrible
and abominable murder of your former husband, our mutual
cousin, that I have scarcely spirit to write; yet I cannot
conceal that I grieve more for you than him. I should
not do the office of a faithful cousin and friend if I
did not urge you to preserve your honour, rather than
look through your fingers at revenge on those who have
done you that pleasure, as most people say. I exhort you,
I counsel you, I beg you, to take this event so to heart
that you will not fear to proceed even against your nearest.
I write thus vehemently, not that I doubt, but for affection.”
However, after the murder Mary was in a state of extreme
emotional distress and failed to take Elizabeth’s
advice. At the time, this was seen as an admission of
her guilt, but modern historians have speculated on the
terror she must have been in of her own nobility, as well
as her possible breakdown following Darnley’s murder;
these are presented as more likely explanations than outright
guilt.
- Elizabeth often reminded her chancellors who her father
was and how much sterner he had been than she. When crossed,
she would rail, “Had I been born crested, not cloven,
you would not speak to me thus!”
- Elizabeth also used her grandfather Henry VII’s
claim that her family was related to King Arthur. She
also evoked the imagery of her age to bolster herself
as monarch. She took for her personal emblems symbols
associated with Mary the Virgin, such as the rose, the
moon, the ermine and the phoenix and surrounded herself
with poets and dramatists who wrote of her as, amongst
many other accolades, Diana, Virgo, Oriana and Judith.
Despite her attention to image and ceremony, Elizabeth
was also famed and loved for her more personal touches.
One of the most public of these was when she tickled Dudley’s
neck when she created him Earl of Leicester.
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