4. Life without Elizabeth

Read a transcript of the programme: Shakespeare's Restless World / Life without Elizabeth

Date: c.1572

Size: H:1312mm, W:1840mm

Made in: Unknown

Made by: Lucas de Heere

Material: Oil paint on panel

In the 1590s, the nation was gripped by a constitutional crisis in waiting. As Elizabeth I drew closer to her three score years and ten, the question of who would succeed her to the throne became a pressing matter.

But the queen herself was a little tetchy on the subject. In 1571, she made it an act of treason to discuss the issue of succession, and in later years added further laws to guarantee silence.

If the issue couldn’t be spoken or written about in words, then it could be pictured. This portrait of the Tudor dynasty from 1571 (and a popular print version issued 20 years later) demonstrates the power of metaphor and allegory in exploring such sensitive subject matter. And on stage, Shakespeare too was exploring ideas of dynasty – but behind the veil of ancient Rome and historical England.

This object is from the National Museum of Wales

British Museum Blog: Why was a picture like this made? by Susan Doran, Historian, University of Oxford

'England hath long been mad, and scarred herself;/The brother blindly shed the brother's blood,/The father rashly slaughtered his own son,/The son, compelled, been butcher to the sire:/All this divided York and Lancaster'

Richard III, Act 5 Scene 5

• The succession crisis in 16th century England spanned the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I
• Elizabeth famously refused to name a successor
• Shakespeare would not have been permitted to write about the specifics of the English succession but the general topic was acceptable and a regular feature of his plays
• The purpose of this painting is to assert the legitimacy of Elizabeth's reign and her place in the orderly succession of Tudor rulers

How the monarchy has dealt with a series of dynastic crises, and a look at some objects that are being brought into the service of both Queen and country today.

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Melvyn Bragg discusses the role of the Tudor dynasty in reshaping the British state and whether their government of England laid the political foundations of our own age.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.

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