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4. Life without Elizabeth

Neil MacGregor uses a 1571 painting of Elizabeth I to explore what life was like in Shakespeare’s turbulent world. From 2012.

A portrait was painted in 1571 to justify and celebrate Elizabeth I's position in the Tudor succession.

Yet by the 1590s, with no direct Tudor heir, this image had very different implications in Shakespeare's Restless World.

Object-based history series presented by Neil MacGregor, former Director of the British Museum.

Taking artefacts from William Shakespeare's time, he explores how Elizabethan and Jacobean playgoers made sense of the unstable and rapidly changing world in which they lived.

With old certainties shifting around them, in a time of political and religious unrest and economic expansion, Neil asks what the plays would have meant to the public when they were first performed.

He uses carefully selected objects to explore the great issues of the day that preoccupied the public and helped shape the works, and he considers what they can reveal about the concerns and beliefs of Shakespearean England.

Producer: Paul Kobrak

First broadcast on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 in April 2012.

Available now

15 minutes

Last on

Fri 20 Oct 2023 02:15

Transcript

Read a transcript of the programme:ÌýShakespeare's Restless World /ÌýLife without Elizabeth

Portrait of the Tudor Dynasty

Date: c.1572 Ìý

Size: H:1312mm, W:1840mm Ìý

Made in: Unknown Ìý

Made by: Lucas de Heere Ìý

Material: Oil paint on panel

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In the 1590s, the nation was gripped by a constitutional crisis in waiting. As Elizabeth I drew closer to her three score years and ten, the question of who would succeed her to the throne became a pressing matter.

But the queen herself was a little tetchy on the subject. In 1571, she made it an act of treason to discuss the issue of succession, and in later years added further laws to guarantee silence.

If the issue couldn’t be spoken or written about in words, then it could be pictured. This portrait of the Tudor dynasty from 1571 (and a popular print version issued 20 years later) demonstrates the power of metaphor and allegory in exploring such sensitive subject matter. And on stage, Shakespeare too was exploring ideas of dynasty – but behind the veil of ancient Rome and historical England.

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This object is from the National Museum of Wales

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Quotations

'England hath long been mad, and scarred herself;/The brother blindly shed the brother's blood,/The father rashly slaughtered his own son,/The son, compelled, been butcher to the sire:/All this divided York and Lancaster' Ìý

Richard III, Act 5 Scene 5

Background

  • The succession crisis in 16th century England spanned the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I
  • Elizabeth famously refused to name a successor
  • Shakespeare would not have been permitted to write about the specifics of the English succession but the general topic was acceptable and a regular feature of his plays
  • The purpose of this painting is to assert the legitimacy of Elizabeth's reign and her place in the orderly succession of Tudor rulers

More from Radio 4: Legacy

More from Radio 4: Legacy

How the monarchy has dealt with a series of dynastic crises, and a look at some objects that are being brought into the service of both Queen and country today.

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More from Radio 4: The Tudor State

More from Radio 4: The Tudor State

Melvyn Bragg discusses the role of the Tudor dynasty in reshaping the British state and whether their government of England laid the political foundations of our own age.

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More from Radio 4: The Death of Elizabeth I

More from Radio 4: The Death of Elizabeth I

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.

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Broadcasts

  • Thu 19 Apr 2012 13:45
  • Thu 19 Apr 2012 19:45
  • Thu 11 Oct 2012 14:15
  • Thu 12 Mar 2015 14:15
  • Fri 13 Mar 2015 00:15
  • Thu 16 Jun 2016 13:45
  • Thu 19 Apr 2018 14:15
  • Fri 20 Apr 2018 02:15
  • Thu 19 Oct 2023 07:15
  • Thu 19 Oct 2023 12:15
  • Thu 19 Oct 2023 17:15
  • Fri 20 Oct 2023 02:15

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