Refashioning Gloriana: Elizabeth I in contemporary drama and film

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to offer a portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I through a body of contemporary plays and movies, and to investigate the reasons behind the lively interest amongst today’s audience, more than four centuries after her death. The topic of this dissertation will be divided into three chapters. The first chapter provides an overview on Elizabeth’s life, focusing on the question of religion and on her relationships with the Earls of Leicester and Essex, and Mary, Queen of Scots. The second chapter deals with theatre. After an introduction on the fictional meeting between Shakespeare and Elizabeth, and an analysis of gender roles on the Elizabethan stage, this chapter explores Elizabeth’s "androgynous" role in Timothy Findley’s Elizabeth Rex (2000) and Lee Hall’s Shakespeare in Love: The Play (2014). The last chapter is devoted to a selection of biopics about Elizabeth and analyses the various manners in which the key events and figures of her life are explored in Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and the miniseries: Elizabeth R (1971), Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen (2005) and Elizabeth I (2005), and how they diverge from historical truth.