British Museum blog

Shakespeare’s Restless World is currently being broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Today’s episode Life Without Elizabeth: Portrait of the Tudor Dynasty examines the hot topic of who would be next on the throne.

Susan Doran, University of Oxford

In 1571 or 1572 when this painting was made, the question of Queen Elizabeth’s marriage was still alive. There were negotiations for her to marry in the French Royal House; there were the two young princes so candidates for marriage were possible, even though in many ways marriage was unlikely. Of course, Elizabeth could also have married Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. She was young enough still, despite being in her late thirties, to have children and that would have resolved the question of the succession.

At this time there were considerable problems about the succession because there wasn’t only the danger that Elizabeth might die naturally and Mary Queen of Scots, a Catholic, would gain the throne, but that she would actually be assassinated. There had been a Papal bull that called for her deposition and there had been a plot, the Ridolfi plot, which was an international conspiracy designed to supplant Elizabeth and put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne.

A painting by Lucas de Heere,The Family of Henry VII: Allegory of the Tudor Succession, 1571-2.
© National Museum of Wales

Everyone knew that there was an international conspiracy, that there had been a rebellion in 1569 designed to put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne and that Philip II of Spain was behind the Ridolfi plot, so those people looking at the painting would have been aware of the threat to Elizabeth’s own life and therefore the problem with the succession.

In 1571, the Treasons Act was passed which made it treason to discuss the succession, particularly the title of any potential successors to Elizabeth. Another policy was passed in 1581 which reinforced that need for silence on the succession.

The issue of the succession was evident not just in Shakespeare’s plays but in other plays as well, in masques and entertainments. Questions about what kind of succession there should be, whether it should be an elective or hereditary succession are present in Titus Andronicus. They’re there in chronicles, they’re there in plays and they would have been easily read by audiences of Shakespeare’s plays.

Find out more:
National Museum of Wales
Allegory of the Tudor Succession

Filed under: Shakespeare's Restless World, What's on, radio series, Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Restless World is currently being broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Today’s episode Communion and Conscience: The Stratford Chalice explores religion in Elizabethan England.

A communion cup from Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, which features in today's episode.
© Inspired Images

Eamon Duffy, University of Cambridge

Everybody in 16th-century England took religion for granted as a fundamental part of life. In the Protestant state under Elizabeth I, attendance at church and the reception of communion were increasingly enforced. It became, in a way, a test of citizenship.

Catholics would have been required to receive the Protestant communion at least once a year, and Catholics who stayed away from services would have been fined.

For everybody, these were changes that affected fundamental views of the meaning of life and of the afterlife. The Mass was no longer in Latin, but in English. We tend to see this as a move towards intelligibility. Some people were thrilled by it, the arrival of the English Bible. For many, it was a revelation and an empowerment.

But for others, it was tiresome gobbledegook. When the English communion service was first introduced in 1549, most of the people in the west of England were outraged. They felt this was some bizarre game that was being imposed on them and rebelled against it, which led to a horrendous siege at Exeter. The rebels denounced the new service as a sort of Christmas game and demanded the return of the Latin Mass.

So it took people time to accustom themselves to these changes, and the date on this communion cup – 1571 – is one indicator of the time it takes simply to change material culture. When we look at this cup, we are looking at a whole culture in movement, adjusting itself. By 1571 it’s becoming clear to everybody that there is not going to be a return to Catholicism in the near future.

In the late 1560s, even before the sterner [religious] enforcement began, communities all over England are beginning to say, oh well stuff this for a game of soldiers, we better do it. Here in Cambridge in the late 1560s, the church wardens of the main town churches begin to sell off the Catholic vestments, they were beginning to equip themselves properly for Protestantism.

This doesn’t mean to say that Catholicism disappeared. Catholic beliefs remained current in one form or another, especially around things like funerals, for a very long time. When Shakespeare was young, there would still have been old people saying the rosary, crossing themselves when there was thunder, using holy water.

Shakespeare couldn’t have avoided knowing about Catholicism, it’s probable that every family in England had Catholic relatives. Shakespeare himself had a second cousin, Robert Saville, who became a Jesuit priest. Saville was executed at Tyburn and is a Catholic saint.

What is certain is that every literate person in England in the 1590s and early 1600s had some acquaintance with Catholicism, even if it was so that they knew the enemy.

Filed under: Shakespeare's Restless World, What's on, radio series, Shakespeare

Peter Barber, Head of Map Collections, British Library

The most obvious place a person in Shakespeare’s England would have encountered a map would have been in a Bible. Protestant Bibles in particular contained maps to prove the veracity of the scriptures, and this tells us a lot about the role of maps in society. Maps were used sometimes (but not often) to get from A to B, and from about the 1520s onwards for administration purposes, but most of all they were regarded, quite consciously, as stages for human history.

If you were lucky enough, you might have been invited into the home of a merchant. It’s quite likely you would have seen wall maps adorning his parlour and his dining room. The most common maps would have shown the Holy Land as well as maps of the continents of the world. These maps were not there to show where his ships were travelling – their purpose was to show that its owner was a man who knew about the world.

Most wall maps served propagandas purposes. On the whole maps, whatever their size, were much more useful for merchants than for seamen. The merchant could use them for planning purposes but, as English sailors told the authorities repeatedly in the 16th century, charts weren’t much use once you were actually at sea because in the northern Atlantic it was usually so misty you couldn’t see any coastlines: it was far more practical to navigate using a plumb line to measure the depth of the sea, rather like a mole on land.

So rather than maps being navigational tools, maps – when not being used for practical purposes on land – tended to be symbolic, and educational. In 1570 the first modern atlas of printed maps was published, called The Theatre of the Lands of the World. This idea of the world as a stage, picked up by Shakespeare, was around long beforehand.

Find out more:
The unveiling of Britain – maps of the British Isles
Maps at the British Library
Maps at the National Maritime Museum
British Library

Filed under: Shakespeare's Restless World, What's on, radio series, Shakespeare