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This book approaches the rich and diverse figure of the earl by looking at a wealth of diverse visual and textual manifestations of Essex produced during the sixteenth century and up to the present day. It resituates his life and career within the richly diverse contours of his cultural and political milieu. Included in the discussion are not just those texts of which Essex is the subject, such as poems, portraits or films, but also those texts produced by Essex himself, including private letters, poems and entertainments. The book first offers important insights into the composition and ethos of the Essex circle. It then provides an important intervention in the debate about the relationship between Essex and the theatre and Essex and Shakespeare, considering his role as a patron of a company of players. The book also explains Essex's use of non-professional theatrical entertainments at court in 1595 to promote an agenda he had shared with Sidney by campaigning for an increased level of English involvement in international affairs. It deals with a frequently neglected entertainment called the device of the Indian Prince, referred to here as Seeing Love as it dramatises the story of the blind Indian prince. Finally, the book offers a detailed examination of Essex's relationship with another dangerously public discourse, 'politic history', by tracing the influence of a range of competing texts.
The Earl of Essex was one of the most prominent courtiers of Elizabeth’s reign but in the later 1590s he was increasingly absent from the court itself, the central venue of power politics. At a time when access to the monarch was both a vital mark of favour and a key means of exercising influence, these episodes away from presence chamber and council table had a significant
In the aftermath of his abortive Irish campaign of 1599, the Earl of Essex brooded bitterly on the damage that the whole sorry episode was doing to his reputation. After several months in deep disgrace, he complained that Elizabeth’s continued displeasure had made him an object of ridicule, pity and scorn. ‘The prating tavern haunter speaks of me what he lists’, he groused
Few aspects of Essex’s extraordinary career have fired more debate than his association with political history. 1 The play staged at the Globe Theatre about ‘Kyng Henry the iiiith, and of the kyllyng of Kyng Richard the Second’, commissioned and watched by a handful of Essex’s supporters on the eve of his revolt, continues to fascinate scholars with its tantalising
In the autumn of 1595, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was poised to attain political greatness, and he knew it. The international political climate had become sufficiently precarious that a statesman with Essex’s particular expertise in foreign intelligence and military matters possessed skills well-tailored to address England’s current crises. Spain was once again
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1939) is usually described as an adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s 1930 play Elizabeth the Queen , and there are certainly similarities. In Anderson’s play, Raleigh wears ostentatious silver armour and Essex buys some exactly like it for the rest of the guard, as happens in the fim. The Essex of the film says
Literary critics and historians have primarily examined the relationship between Robert Devereux ( 1565 – 1601 ), 2nd Earl of Essex, and the early modern English stage in one of two possible ways. The first was to analyse plays that they thought were written about him, including William Shakespeare’s Henry V , and the second was to historicise plays that they thought were staged for
The short tenure of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, as Lieutenant of Ireland from 15 April to 25 September 1599 involved a complex web of connections, linking senior political figures, such as Robert Cecil and Hugh O’Neill, the ‘rebel’ Earl of Tyrone; persons from then-recent history, such as Robert’s father, Walter Devereux; canonical literary heavyweights, including
The life of Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, has often been refracted through the biographical lens of two other figures from the period: Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare. In many ways Essex’s career has served as an adjunct to the dominant narratives created for these two iconic figures and as a consequence our understanding of the earl and his life is overshadowed and constrained by
By May 1600 the Earl of Essex had been under house arrest – first at York House, and latterly at Essex House, in the custody of Sir Richard Berkeley – ever since his unauthorised return from Ireland the previous September. Ahead lay the quasi-judicial hearings on his actions at York House, and the stripping of his offices; the months of diminishing prospects for