The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1123 Wednesday, 31 May 2000.
[1] From: David Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 30 May 2000 17:01:38 GMT
Subj: Re: SHK 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
[2] From: Joseph 'Chepe' Lockett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 30 May 2000 12:16:46 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
[3] From: Marcus Dahl <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 31 May 2000 06:01:14 EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 30 May 2000 17:01:38 GMT
Subject: 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
Comment: Re: SHK 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
At the risk of prolonging what might seem a tangential issue for this
list, a few more thoughts about the transition from Elizabeth to James.
I'm sure the picture was a complicated one - and certainly fear,
mistrust and dislike of the Scots surfaced quite quickly - James himself
recognised as much in his 1607 speech to Parliament. (The 'Loyal
Subjectes Advertisement' objected that 'respect at the court of the Scot
by all the attendant officers their is so partial as the English find
themselves much disgraced - ed. J.D. Mackie, SHR 23, 1925)). So too,
Cecil complained that 'I wishe I waited now in her Presence chamber,
with ease at my foode and rest in my bedde. I am pushed from the shore
of comfort, and know not where the wyndes and waves of Court will bear
me'.
Political and religious objections to James's policies, too, could be
and were articulated early. But I would still want to maintain that the
systematic deployment of a nostalgic recreation of the days of Elizabeth
(one conveniently forgetting the hardships and disillusionment of the
1590s) took a few years to get going. Geoffrey Goodman, admittedly
himself writing many years later, said: 'But after a few years, when we
had experience of the Scottish government, then in disparagement of the
Scots, and in hate and detestation of them, the Queen did seem to
revive; then was her memory much magnified'.
So it would seem to me important to distinguish who it was that objected
to James, and on what particular and private respect, and then to trace
carefully the growth of the rhetoric of retrospective idealisation of
Elizabeth.
Where, in all this, one might ask, does Cranmer's eulogy at the end of
Henry VIII fit?
David Lindley
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Joseph 'Chepe' Lockett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 30 May 2000 12:16:46 -0500
Subject: 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
Comment: Re: SHK 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
Quoth Florence Amit:
> Surely the "he- bona", he is good, poured into a dying monarch's ears,
> was the daily dose that Elizabeth had to endure during her last days.
Ms. Amit's suppositions on Shakespeare's Hebrew are always interesting,
if often far-fetched, but here she does violence to the Latin as well.
Latin adjectives are gendered. "He-bonus" is the required form, else we
become subject to much the same sexual confusion that seems to
characterize James and this thread. :-) "He-bona" is purely sloppy
reaching at shadowy linguistics.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Marcus Dahl <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 31 May 2000 06:01:14 EDT
Subject: 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
Comment: Re: SHK 11.1113 Re: James and Elizabeth
A few questions for those more in the know than myself re: James and
Elizabeth
(1) What primary sources do you use for your knowledge of 'popular' (as
opposed to 'courtly') dislike of James' rule in contrast to the
*romantic* popularity of Elizabeth ?
(2) What sources do you have as to the firm dates of Shakespeare's texts
supposedly relevent to the issue: ie: Hamlet (1587?1602? etc) King Lear,
Measure For Measure?
(3) On what evidence do you pejoratively contrast the *favouritism* of
James to that of Elizabeth? ie Dudley, Essex vs Villiers, Carr, etc.
Raleigh's opinion for example is surely to be treated with several
pinches of salt given his imprisonment for complicity in the Main
Treason (Arrabella Stuart).
(4) Why the personal tone of diasapproval (Barton et al) directed toward
complex historical figures? (whether James or Elizabeth) Have you all
developed 20/20 historical hindsight?
