Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was active as monarch of Scotland for just six years between 1561 and 1567, but her impact as a ruler in Scotland is much less important than her subsequent role in popular culture and imagination. Her story has enjoyed perpetual retelling and reached a global audience over the past four and a half centuries. This collection surveys the exceptionally varied range of objects, literature, art and media that have been produced to commemorate Mary between her own time and the present day. Why is her story so enduring, pervasive, and of such interest to so many different audiences? How have the narratives associated with these objects evolved in response to shifting cultural attitudes? The collection offers a much-needed novel perspective on the Queen of Scots, using an approach at the intersection of early modern, gender and cultural history, museum and heritage studies, and memory studies.

"Superb.... A perceptive, suspenseful account." --The New York Times Book Review "Dunn demythologizes Elizabeth and Mary. In humanizing their dynamic and shifting relationship, Dunn describes it as fueled by both rivalry and their natural solidarity as women in an overwhelmingly masculine world." --Boston Herald The political and religious conflicts between Queen Elizabeth I and the doomed Mary, Queen of Scots, have for centuries captured our imagination and inspired memorable dramas played out on stage, screen, and in opera. But few books have brought to life more vividly the exquisite texture of two women’s rivalry, spurred on by the ambitions and machinations of the forceful men who surrounded them. The drama has terrific resonance even now as women continue to struggle in their bid for executive power. Against the backdrop of sixteenth-century England, Scotland, and France, Dunn paints portraits of a pair of protagonists whose formidable strengths were placed in relentless opposition. Protestant Elizabeth, the bastard daughter of Anne Boleyn, whose legitimacy had to be vouchsafed by legal means, glowed with executive ability and a visionary energy as bright as her red hair. Mary, the Catholic successor whom England’s rivals wished to see on the throne, was charming, feminine, and deeply persuasive. That two such women, queens in their own right, should have been contemporaries and neighbours sets in motion a joint biography of rare spark and page-turning power.

Presents a new way of examining the historical significance and endurance of Mary, Queen of Scots

Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was active as monarch of Scotland for just six years between 1561 and 1567, but her impact as a ruler in Scotland is much less important than her subsequent role in popular culture and imagination. Her story has enjoyed perpetual retelling and reached a global audience over the past four and a half centuries. This collection surveys the exceptionally varied range of objects, literature, art and media that have been produced to commemorate Mary between her own time and the present day. Why is her story so enduring, pervasive, and of such interest to so many different audiences? How have the narratives associated with these objects evolved in response to shifting cultural attitudes? The collection offers a much-needed novel perspective on the Queen of Scots, using an approach at the intersection of early modern, gender and cultural history, museum and heritage studies, and memory studies.

As an historical figure Mary Queen of Scots has been perpetually represented on canvas, page and stage, and has captured the British imagination since the time of her death in 1587. The 'real' Mary Stuart however has remained an enigma. Mary Queen of Scots: Romance and Nation sheds light on Mary's life by exploring four main themes: * the history of Mary's representation in Britain from the late Tudor period focusing on key periods in the formation of the British identity and closely analysing several texts against a background of the visual, musical and literary works of each period * the reasons why those representing Mary have been so conscious that her image was largely a debatable fiction * the identification of symbolic styles, using Mary to reveal the habits of representation in each historical period * The link between the image of Mary Stuart and Britain's long struggle to define itself as a single nation, focusing on the roles of gender and religion in this development.

A modern classic about the bitter rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots, and her cousin and fellow ruler, Elizabeth I of England - retold by Scotland's most popular playwright. Mary and Elizabeth are two women with much in common, but more that sets them apart. Following the death of her husband, the Dauphin of France, the beautiful, and staunchly Catholic Mary Stuart has returned from France to rule Scotland, a country she neither knows nor understands. Ill-prepared to rule in her own right, Mary has failed to learn what her protestant cousin, Elizabeth Tudor, knows only too well - that a queen must rule with her head, not her heart. All too soon the stage is set for a deadly endgame in which there can only be one winner and one queen on the one green island.

No monarch is more glamorous or more controversial than Elizabeth I. The stories by which successive generations have sought to extol, explain, or excoriate Elizabeth supply a rich index to the cultural history of English nationalism - whether they represent her as Anne Boleyn's suffering orphan or as the implacable nemesis of Mary, Queen of Scots, as learned stateswoman or as frustrated lover, persecuted princess or triumphant warrior queen. This book examines the many afterlives the Virgin Queen has lived in drama, poetry, fiction, painting, propaganda, and the cinema over the four centuries since her death, from the aspiringly epic to the frankly kitsch. Exploring the Elizabeths of Shakespeare and Spenser, of Sophia Lee and Sir Walter Scott, of Bette Davis and of Glenda Jackson, of Shakespeare in Love and Blackadder II, this is a lively, lavishly-illustrated investigation of England's perennial fascination with a queen who is still engaged in a posthumous progress through the collective pysche of her country.