" ... this interpretation of The Virgin Queen is not to be missed. "
Barbara Peters
The Poisoned Pen
Scottsdale and Phoenix
The Virgin Queen - Part 2
I need to start this with an Oops… I read the press materials too fast. The actress who plays Elizabeth Tudor is not Joanne Whalley, who plays Queen Mary, but Ann-Marie Duff. But I stand behind what I said about the way Duff's looks could change and in the way her elaborate costumes and makeup made her regal. The scene with the portrait painter underlined how she wanted her subjects to view her. It's fascinating to review the many formal portraits, many of which were hung at the Greenwich exhibit in 2003.
My other oops is not an oops but a clarification. Lettice Knollys, one of the two ladies-in waiting we see in Part 1, married as her first husband Walter Devereux in something like 1562. Some historians believe she had already started an affair with Robbie, and that her son Walter, and very likely her son Robert, were fathered by the Earl of Leicester. When Devereux died in 1576, Lettice and Robbie continued their liaison and eventually married in 1578 but kept it secret from Elizabeth. We see how badly she took it when she found out, not to mention her fury over Lettice's fabulous wardrobe. Elizabeth tolerated no rivals, sartorial or otherwise.
Anyway, this is how Lettice was so major a figure in Elizabeth's life: Lettice was the granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne Boleyn and the mistress of Henry VIII who is said to have been Lettice's mother's father; lady in waiting to the young princess; Robert Dudley's wife; and Robert Devereaux's mother. And if, as the production indicates and some historians believe, Robert Dudley was in fact the real father of Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, it goes a long way to explain why the queen was so partial to a young man who had, besides his father's charm, little to really recommend him. It can all drive you crazy speculating whether Elizabeth really loved Robbie and it was lousy timing (he being married when she became free to make decisions, then the scandal of Amy Robsart's death so soon after), that prevented her from marrying him, or whether she wasn't in love him but found him a useful foil in the power games she so enjoyed.
The importance of the question of her own legitimacy and with it her right to the throne can't be overestimated. Once Amy Robsart died, Elizabeth was never going to risk a marriage that could rock the boat or cast the legitimacy of children of her own into question. You can thus argue she loved Robbie all her life but put her role as queen first, or that she had a period of youthful lust and outgrew it, or that her affection for him was just that of a childhood friend… there are no answers to it. This interpretation however, raising the issue of Essex being Robbie's child, does argue Door Number One. Isn't it amazing that once can still actually debate the whole 400 years after this enigmatic, fascinating woman died?
For viewers who enjoyed the portrait of Sir Francs Walsingham, the spymaster: his daughter Francis married this very Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and became his widow after his execution in 1601. She is the mother of his son, another Robert, the third Earl of Essex.
A terrific feature of Part 2 is the way the Queen ages, going into heavier and heavier maquillage to hide her smallpox pits and age's wrinkles. That heavy white makeup was dangerous stuff, being made of white lead (and perhaps mercuric sulphide). The heavy wigs are wonderful, creeping back on her scalp. And the way the ruffs stand up to hide the back of her neck and head is arresting. The contrast between the costumed Elizabeth and the old woman in her bath is poignant.
I do think Lettice was aged in a bit of a heavy handed way. She was 7 years younger than Elizabeth, born in 1540, and she lived to a great age, dying at age 94 in 1634. Her third husband, Christopher Blount, whom she married when Robbie died in 1588, was executed with Essex.
The Tudors were real soap opera figures, larger than life, flamboyant, imperious, hot tempered (that Plantagenet blood), and led messy lives. This production derives most of its tension from the interplay of Bess and Robbie—it loses some steam when he dies—but it succeeds well in showing a very human Elizabeth rather than eulogizing her, as well as giving some idea of how complex life was for her court.
For those fascinated with the Tudor story, you can Google all kinds of websites, some of real use, some not.
But to read for background, here are some suggestions:
For the story of Mary Boleyn, elder sister of Anne, and mistress of Henry VIII, and mother of his son Henry, born 1524 and known as Henry Carey from Mary's marriage and later Lord Hunsdon, read Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl. She gives us a look at Anne via The Queen's Fool and of Catherine of Aragon, mother of Elizabeth's sister Queen Mary, in The Constant Princess.
For a brilliant series about Robert Carey, Lord Hunsdon's son and the man whose hand you saw at the very end of the Virgin Queen when Robert Cecil sent him off on a mad ride to Scotland to tell James VI he had become James I of England, read my favorite Elizabethan series ever. It's authored by PF Chisholm: A Famine of Horses, A Season of Knives, A Surfeit of Guns, A Plague of Angels . The first has an Introduction by medievalist Sharon Kay Penman; the second by Dana Stabenow, the third by me, and the fourth by Diana Gabaldon. We four are united in our love for this rowdy, iconoclastic, and historically accurate look at the later years of Elizabeth's reign up on the Scottish border and down in London.
Other authors to read include Alison Weir who has penned many histories on the Tudors; Derek Wilson; Jean Plaidy, the novelist; and mystery novelist Fiona Buckley whose To Shield a Queen focuses on Amy Robsart and whose later books will convince you that Elizabeth had no real choice but to behead her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, Karen Harper with a series where Elizabeth is the sleuth. The Hunsdons figure into this series; and Edward Marston who writes a long-running series about a company of Elizabethan actors. Jan Westcott's The Walsingham Woman is good on Robert Devereux and a new biography of Sir Francis Walsingham, Stephen Budiansky's Her Majesty's Spymaster , lets you admire his modern approach to an ancient craft. It's likely that Christopher Marlowe worked for Walsingham. Novelist Robin Maxwell shows us a bit of the Irish issue in The Wild Irish .
The Virgin Queen - Part 1
No lover of history or mystery can ignore Elizabeth Tudor. It speaks volumes for her character that no one has ever really had a handle on her, or her story. While the facts are known, the speeches recorded, accounts written, at heart who was she?
The 400th anniversary of her death in 2003 excited great attention. I was fortunate enough to be in Greenwich when the great Exposition on Elizabeth I opened. The artifacts, documents, and exhibits were superb, ranging over countless facets of her personality, her rule, and her kingdom, revealing how extraordinary was her personal command.
A central mystery to her life has to do with sex, always riveting reading or viewing. Did she as a girl bed with, or just flirt with, Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral and husband to Henry VIII's widow Katherine Parr? There is a school that suggests the very young Elizabeth in fact did, became pregnant, and through miscarriage or abortion rendered herself sterile. Thus, as an adult and queen, why marry if there could be no heir?
Then again, perhaps her experience if any with sex led her to believe she would never bear children, so again, why marry? There's also the school that suggests the fate of her mother and stepmother's simply scared her off wedding so virgin she remained.
And finally, there's the theory that the only man she loved was Robert Dudley who, by the time Elizabeth could call her shots, was married to Amy Robsart. This was not an ultimate bar to the union between the two childhood friends since Amy was already ill, but Amy's mysterious death—she was found dead at the bottom of serious stone stairs, but did she fall, jump, or was she pushed?—ended any hope of a marriage by its potential scandal. Elizabeth's claim to legitimacy was always shaky; she couldn't afford a dicey marriage.
What happened to Amy Robsart? You can read many accounts including a mystery by Fiona Buckley entitled To Shield a Queen. I myself have always acquitted Elizabeth and Robert of any malice or murder; they knew too well how it would go. And besides, Amy was clearly mortally ill and going to die; they could just wait. It seems clear she had breast cancer.
So, was the pain so terrible ( it wasn't an age of analgesics or morphine), that Amy ended it herself? Seems reasonable to me. I've also read a medical theory that her bones were so fragile from the cancer that her pelvis may simply have broken, thrusting her into the fall, or perhaps she had such a pain attack she doubled over and fell. The odd thing is that she was alone in the house, having sent the servants off to something, maybe a fair. It's this feature more than any other that caused the talk.
Then there's the theory that enemies of Dudley, or of Elizabeth, contrived to murder Amy to split the queen and her flirt, either to keep him from power or to push Elizabeth into a foreign alliance.
There are so many agendas, so many people seeking position and power, that the truth is probably forever obscured.
In this dramatic and very well cast production by Masterpiece Theatre, the sexual charge between Elizabeth and Robert (has Tom Hardy had collagen injections to his lips?) is palpable. And Joanne Whalley is both homely and striking, much like the actual Elizabeth, and very believeable, though I find she grows impenetrable once she gets the smallpox. Perhaps there's no other way to play it.
For mystery fans, Sir Francis Walsingham, the spymaster who keeps tabs on Mary, Queen of Scots, is the father of modern espionage, introducing double agents and techniques we think of as modern. Did Christopher Marlowe work for Walsingham and was he murdered in the Great Game of his day, or was it about being gay or professional rivalry or just over the bill in the Deptford Tavern.
I have only watched the first part of the production so far, so how it goes with Elizabeth's lady in waiting Lettice Knollys who not only marries Robert Dudley but in time produces Elizabeth's last great favorite, the Earl of Essex, and how Essex comes across, not to mention Robert Cecil, son of the William we see in Part I, is to come. But based on the first two hours, this interpretation of The Virgin Queen is not to be missed.
I can recommend another book, British author Philippa Gregory's "The Virgin Lover," which novelizes the events in Part I of The Virgin Queen, focusing on the impact Elizabeth's intense relationship with Dudley had on her reign. Gregory's latest, The Constant Princess, just out, asks another keen question: Why did Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, worn out with miscarriages (one has to suspect an RH factor), not as a good Catholic retire to a convent and allow Henry to marry Anne without a divorce? In fact, asks Gregory, why did Katherine clearly lie in the first place about her marriage to Henry's older brother Arthur, which always cast doubt on her union to Henry? British author CJ Sansom who writes of the Tudors, has discussed this question with me, pointing out the impact Katherine's retreat would have had on both her own daughter Mary and on Elizabeth.
That's the fun of history, not only the Once Upon a Time, but the What If?
Barbara Peters,
The Poisoned Pen Bookstore, Scottsdale
www.poisonedpen.com
Masterpiece Theatre "The Virgin Queen" airs Sunday, November 13 and 20, 2005 at 9 p.m. on Channel 8.
