19 - “The Lady Arbella Stuart, a ‘Rare Phoenix’: Her Re-Creation in Biography and Biofiction”

Summary

Abstract

The Lady Arbella Stuart long has been the subject of biography and fiction, as writers have been drawn to the dramatic story of a royal woman who defied both Queen Elizabeth and King James. The Lady Arbella also was a fine writer whose over 100 letters to relatives, friends, her husband, and the royal family delineate her personal and public drama. This essay explores two centuries of re-creations of the Lady Arbella in biography and fiction, tracing the evolution of the genres of biography and fiction, the increased interest in her when women's roles and rights have been at issue, and the uncertain and sometimes uneasy balance between historical accuracy and fictional invention.

Keywords: Arbella Stuart, biography, biofiction, early modern English women, early modern letters

Unlike some of the early modern women explored in this volume, the Lady Arbella Stuart offers abundant material on which an author can draw for biography or biofiction. Hundreds of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century letters, official papers, dedications, and poems document her life. And she has long been a subject for biography and fiction. Although not as widely known as her kinswomen who reigned, Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth, the Lady Arbella across centuries has been re-created in biographies, poems, ballads, romances, novels, drama, television, and through editions of her letters. Portraits of Arbella and members of her family exist, as do objects such as her Hebrew/Syriac/Greek Bible. At Hardwick Hall, visitors can see Arbella's room and can walk the gallery where she was interrogated by one of Queen Elizabeth's commissioners. On 17 November of 2018, I attended a performance of a new biodrama, Ralegh: The Treason Trial, performed in the Great Hall in Winchester, knowing that Arbella was present there 415 years earlier when Sir Walter Ralegh was convicted of conspiracy to remove King James and place her on the throne. Could anyone not imagine what she might have felt?

Arbella's story of a noblewoman who defied two sovereigns is dramatic. A descendant of Henry VII and thus a member of the royal family, Arbella grew up under the supervision of her grandmother Bess of Hardwick and was educated and guarded as a potential queen. When she was eleven, her aunt Mary Queen of Scots was executed for conspiring with Catholics against Queen Elizabeth.