ABSTRACT

Recent scholarly discourse focusing on Elizabeth I and her reign as England’s monarch has explored her life, her role in politics, and her impact as a cultural icon both during her reign and after her death. As the four hundredth anniversary of her death approaches, in the year 2003, it seems hardly surprising that interest in Elizabeth and her reign has intensified. Her father Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church and turned the world of England upside down when he divorced his first wife Catherine of Aragon to marry Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn. Because Elizabeth was Anne’s only living child during her brief marriage to the king, Anne was beheaded on charges of adultery and incest before Elizabeth’s third birthday. Before she became queen, Elizabeth had led a life of danger and intrigue; she had even spent time in the Tower of London during her sister’s reign, suspected as a traitor. Although few thought that Elizabeth would survive to become queen, she did, and with great ability. Elizabeth, one of England’s few queen regnants, demonstrated just how capable a monarch she was by ruling successfully as an unmarried woman for nearly half a century.