Queen Elizabeth 1 Research Paper

In the course of English leadership, the sixteenth century citizens of the island nation were long accustomed to an ever-revolving door of institutions, families, and people struggling to gain and maintain power, particularly with the volatile temperament of King Henry VIII and instability of the reigns of his first two children. However, Queen Elizabeth I served as a stable, much-beloved pause in the wheel of authority that provided the country with a dependable figurehead for a 45-year reign. English citizens felt the deafening hardship of her death all the more as a result. Because Elizabeth I did not leave an heir with close consanguineal ties, history suggests a return to the revolving door of governance with a Scotsman newly on the English

The infection is also sometimes referred to as blood poisoning and characterized by chills, rapid breathing, and an overall ill complexion (Septicemia). This depiction of a frail, infirm woman presents a much different identity from the one of regal stability Elizabeth had become known for. The queen is both the origin point and explanation for the identity crisis among her nation. In the forethought of nostalgia, Middleton christens the skull of Vindice’s former beloved Gloriana, a name attributed to the late queen. In Edmund Spencer’s “The Faerie Queene”, the title character is an allegory for Queen Elizabeth, “the ‘glorious-one,’” (Finin) an apt characterization of the monarch’s public image. In Tragedy, Middleton’s use of the same name “invokes Elizabeth’s royal persona” and “an idealized reference…[which] suggests a nostalgia for this queen who reigned for nearly half a century”(Finin). Doing so provides Gloriana with several identities within the play: Gloriana the character, Gloriana the prop, Gloriana the Faerie Queen, and Gloriana as Queen Elizabeth. Just as the English nation is facing a crisis of identity with the demise of their queen, Vindice faces the same crisis with the demise of his Gloriana, struggling between the character and the prop skull. This creates a juxtaposition for Vindice evident in his opening

Spurio, short for spurious, has an expansive manner of implications—bastardry, superficiality, and counterfeit—all revolving around the word false (“Spurious, adj.”). In his essay “Bastardy, Counterfeiting, and Misogyny in The Revenger’s Tragedy”, Michael Neill fittingly characterizes Spurio as “a kind of living emblem for the usurping appetite which dominates…[the] world of courtly counterfeits” (389). Spurio’s anger stems from his father’s adultery, a bastardization of lovemaking which resulted in a false son and prevented the inheritance of the dukedom even before his birth. Eventually persuaded by the feminine wiles of the duchess and a nock at his manhood, the bastard is induced to “be revenged of such a father” (1.2.157) by means of incest and cuckoldry. However, even Spurio’s pretense of interest for the duchess is false despite their threadbare union. Alone on stage, he declares, “Stepmother, I consent to thy desires./ I love thy mischief well, but I hate thee” (1.2.93-94). This occurs shortly after Spurio professes, “Adultery is my nature” (1.2.179), leaving no question to the audience where his loyalties lie. Being born of deception and finding revenge in deception, it is no surprise that Spurio’s death comes at the hand of an armsman when he falsely lays claim to the title of