Chapter 6 - European Afterlives 1600–1770

Summary

This sequence of chapter studies concludes with an innovative discussion considering seventeenth-century dramatic texts in Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian which depicted for European audiences vicious court factionalism, illicit amours and military ambitions at the court of the ageing Elizabeth I. Paying particular attention to the religious and political affiliations of the audiences for which these productions were designed, discussion concentrates upon the reception of Elizabeth’s political project and erotic profile in the continent’s playhouses and upon the enduring profiles attributed to her prominent courtiers such as Essex and Ralegh by European counterparts to Shakespeare. By way of a coda to this chapter, brief consideration is also devoted to the ways in which these European narratives of Elizabeth’s court culture from seventeenth-century playtexts and prose romances are then reintegrated into English literary traditions through productions designed for the Georgian theatre in the eighteenth century.