Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers the historiographic and dramatic reimagining of the Elizabethan past and present through inscriptive depictions of the feelings, motives, and goals of historical and fictive figures. It considers the emergence of the text/event as a cultural form freighted with specific values and interests. The book offers mediatory representation and narrative perspectivism as truth. It assesses the relationship between the event of Elizabeth I's coronation entry procession and the extant inscriptions of that event. The book begins with Edward Hall's didactic history of the war of the roses, considering his representation of Richard II as the necessary prelude to presenting the "troubled" reign of Henry IV. It concludes by turning to the remarkable intersections, in the insurrection of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, of performance in commercial and street theatre.