ABSTRACT
The five-hundredth anniversaries of Lucrezia Borgia’s marriage to Alfonso d’Este in 1501–1502, and of Alexander VI’s death in 1503 triggered the most recent surge of Borgia-inspired publications, including surveys of the family’s afterlives in fiction, often with reference to the best-known works, Hugo’s Lucrèce Borgia and the resulting Donizetti opera. This chapter complements that emphasis on Hugo and other continental authors by focusing on the evolution of Borgia fictions published in Britain from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. In terms of genre, plays gradually gave way to novels. For the most part those texts are set in Rome and count Alexander and Cesare among their leading characters, thereby creating opportunities to explore clerical lives and ecclesiastical culture. While these Borgia interpretations originated in a Catholic culture, any works published in Britain in the early modern period and most of the subsequent era had a predominantly Protestant readership. The authors of the most recent Borgia fictions – whether presented on stage, page or screen – have a new challenge, because their audiences are assumed to be indifferent towards or ignorant of the Holy See and its occupants. Thus Borgia fictions are illustrative of wider cultural trends.
