Aristocratic, dilettante biographers do not 400-year-old court testimony and trial verdicts make. And it won't change that Augustine Phillips testified before the privy council on 18 February, 1601, that Robert Devereux's conspirators paid the Lord Chamberlain's Men 40 shillings more than their going rate to perform "Richard II" complete with deposition scene.
The absurd, overreaching yarn is not that Devereux led a rebellion and perhaps sought to use a Shakespeare play to incite the people against Elizabeth I, it's that Shakespeare was a secret seditionist, and that he and his troupe had the faintest idea Devereux was planning a revolt.
And the goalpost is that he, through the authorship and performance of his plays, stood accused of it. They did, and there's receipts.
They did, which was why several of Shakespeare's plays were censored by Edmund Tilney for their inflammatory political content. Most notably in this case, the deposition scene from "Richard II" which did not appear in print until the fourth quarto. To wit, this very trial and testimony is the basis of argument the deposition scene originally was in "Richard II", and not something Shakespeare added to the play after the Essex Rebellion in protest.
Now, granted, I could give a fuck about matters of English succession and English wars of succession, and it certainly wasn't my field of study in university because I was more interested in Russian and Japanese history. But even then with my near-absolute dearth of education on the topic, I can't help but find myself wondering why Tudor monarchs would consider as seditious plays that obliquely assert Lancastrian succession to be illegitimate, least of all at a period in which an unpopular, ailing, sitting monarch had no clear heir. And, why the first Stuart monarch, who happened to be the son and heir of Mary I, might have had a bit of a bone to pick with the Tudors least of all the monarch he succeeded.
I accept your moved goalpost, because the incidental infringement of the censor's preferences is a far cry from "playing a lifelong game of cat-and-mouse that extended as far as outright sedition against the throne", which indicates active intent in a way your evidence cannot support.
James I was the son of Mary I of Scotland ("Mary Queen of Scots"), who derived her claims to the English throne from the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, and therefore required Tudor legitimacy as much as his predecessor. He certainly might not have been impressed with Elizabeth for ordering his mum's head removed. But on the other hand, Mary Queen of Scots really did conspire to replace Elizabeth I on the English throne so her execution wasn't undeserved, and nobles of the time were pretty used to accepting that sort of thing and moving on.
What part of "he wrote a play implying Henry IV's succession was illegitimate" isn't getting through here? Elizabethan censors clearly were able to crack that code, considering the scene of Richard II's deposition was censored from the play until at least Elizabeth croaked.
We're arguing about what caused the Wars of the Roses.
Richard II de jure abdicated (albeit obviously under duress), and it's this scene that was removed. Shakespeare wrote the historical fact. The censors decided they might prefer to do without it given the potential comparison that Elizabeth should likewise abdicate for similar reasons of poor governance. Something she was very sensitive to, what with being a woman who'd faced an entire reign of suspicion for being weak due to being female.
You were clearly talking about the attitude James I may have had towards Shakespeare and why James might not have liked the Tudors. I think the fact James' claim to the throne depended on being an offshoot of the Tudors is pretty important. Their legitimacy was his legitimacy.
Its a contest to see which one of them deserves to be beatup in the hallway for their lunch money more.
What else is there to discuss in this thread? The OP is little more than a tempest in a teacup being presented as the apocalypse (again).
Shhhh! I always learn something new when they debate. It's like I'm in the halls of Rome seeing the great orators of the time engage in top tier nerdery.
"Guys, we were talking about fixing up the aquaduct. Why are you squabbling over the details of the Illiad?"
That's the point.
And a bungled invasion of Ireland thanks to the idiot who tried to usurp her later, giving everybody and their pet cat a monopoly over some enterprise, appointing some grade-A fuck-ups as councilors, running up some big-ass debts, bad harvest years, having managed to piss off all the Catholics, and letting the Puritans run around the countryside acting the damn fool. Now I'll grant not all of that was Elizabeth's fault, but on the other hand, having a vagina doesn't prevent one from making some stupid-ass choices as a monarch.
The ones whose claims he tried to invalidate, you mean.
Not to mention the overabundance of coital misadventure on the part of certain "later Tudors".
In the big picture we still are, because the Wars of the Roses boiled down to Henry IV's usurpation
It's important to point out that wasn't James only claim, it was just the one not 200 years old and without being invalidated multiple times. He was a descendant of John the Gaunt, through Joan Beaufort. It's relevant in this case because the parallels between Henry IV's barring the Beauforts from succession, to Henry VIII's ignored posthumous attempt to all but delegitimize Margaret Tudor's children.
Because it's fucking awesome, that's why.
"Piss off" is downplaying it somewhat. People going on about how she was a great Queen cause she was played by lots of respected actresses in the 20-21st centuries, conveniently forgetting the whole murdering Catholics bit, or how she treated the navy.
One might point out that her predecessor and sister, Mary I, executed about five times as many Protestants as Elizabeth did Catholics in a reign about a tenth as long. Although this is excluding all the people Elizabeth executed for raising arms against her in rebellion.
Really? Because that's not what you were arguing. And it still doesn't indicate deliberate sedition on the part of Shakespeare.
That's all very well for the origins of the Wars of the Roses, but still nothing that indicates sedition on Shakespeare's part.
Not really. He was clearly the most legitimate candidate from both Lancastrian and Yorkist perspectives.
True, though, one is generally remembered as Bloody Mary on the basis of killing people for their religion, and the other is generally remembered as Good Queen Bess rather than Bloody Bess.
That depends on whether you're reading a Catholic history or not.
