Historical and Historiographical Implications of Filmic Treatments of Elizabeth I
Created | Updated Aug 8, 2007
Films are a popular method of portraying history, but by so doing, they change the discourse of history. The past is and was static, but the interpretations of the past are fluid. The actual events of the past will never really be known. The information available to historians is scarce at best, and when information is abundant, it is almost invariably contradictory. Elizabeth the First was a personage of much interest in her own time, and her life was well-documented. Many of her speeches were recorded, she was immortalised in portraits, and a large number of letters and poems from her own hand still exist. However, the various films and television adaptations of Elizabeth’s life over the last seventy years depict a different woman each time.
Films have been criticised for inventing the past, but as a visual and audial medium, films must by necessity invent. The famous Tilbury speech may be a documented historical fact, but little else of the various filmic depictions of this particular speech can possibly be authenticated. Elizabeth’s emphases, her posture, her attitude, even such obvious variables as her wardrobe or hair style were not well (if at all) documented. Susan Frye questions whether or not Elizabeth wore armour at all and lists various biographers’ and historians’ differing descriptions of her attire. This is one example of the pervasiveness of the myth of Elizabeth. Despite the lack of contemporary evidence, the belief that Elizabeth wore armour when she addressed the troops at Tilbury has persisted right into the twenty-first century.
Time has made a myth out of Elizabeth I, and films have served to expand and circulate this myth. From the 1937 Fire Over England to the 2005 mini-series Elizabeth I, Elizabeth has been portrayed as a symbol rather than a person. This was especially true in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, wherein the Queen, played by Judy Dench, was merely a backdrop character to the real Elizabeth I, Viola De Lesseps, whose fictionalised life symbolised the real Queen’s within the comedic and parodic story.
The ‘woman in a man’s profession’ theme has held the public’s fascination for centuries. Elizabeth I has been alternately portrayed as either a grotesque parody of a woman with masculine characteristics or a weak ruler dominated by the men in her court and her own feminine defects. Was she, as Thomas Betteridge stated, ‘the Virgin Queen who managed to transcend the limitations of her gender? Or was she a painted Jezebel, one of a monstrous regime of female princes whose rule was inevitably corrupted by their femininity?’ These two options represent the extremities of her portrayals. Was she a heavenly-sent virgin, a religious icon who brought in and maintained the Protestant religion and fostered the prosperous Elizabethan age? Or was she a child playing dress-up with the men, feigning power and struggling to control her own life because of her feminine weaknesses? Neither of these options are likely to be ‘real’, but, while the films depicting Elizabeth tend to run the gamut, they all incorporate some measure of one of these two assumptions and perpetuate the myth that is Elizabeth.
The life of Elizabeth the First continues to be of interest to audiences today, partly because of the various films made about the Queen in the past. In the mid-eighteenth century Elizabeth was vilified in paintings and novels. Renée Pigeon claimed that the Queen ‘was not admired; perceived as manipulating her power in an unfeminine way’. Her popularity increased when films and plays began to portray the woman in a more favourable light. Films raised Elizabeth’s image and myth, and her myth inspired more films.
The romanticised castle, the extravagant costumes and the emotional imagery combined with a story that could have easily been written specifically for the screen provided viewers with the ‘voyeuristic pleasure’ of ‘seeing’ the past in a way no other medium could have provided. Even plays were distinctly two dimensional, unable to thrill the viewer with the illusion of being inside the dark and secretive corridors with the mythical Queen herself.
In films, imagery and symbolism were used to create a semblance of authenticity through the use of familiar ideas and images. For example, in Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth, a number of cinematic images were meticulously created from portraits of Elizabeth I. The film seemed to pause at specific moments to allow the viewer to see the actress Cate Blanchett in a mise-en-scene very similar to various portraits of the Queen herself. James Chapman described how individual shots were ‘composed to resemble visual records of the past’, such as Nicholas Hilliard’s commissioned portraits. While this lent the appearance of authenticity to the visual aspect of the film, the portraits commissioned by the Queen and her court were themselves propagandised, and cannot be taken as historical facts in and of themselves. If not facts, what was the film reproducing but the myth of Elizabeth?
In a similar vein, John Madden used the myth of Elizabeth rather than the facts of her life and reign to make a fictional film out of historical figures. Judy Dench as Queen Elizabeth the First made a number of short but powerful appearances in Shakespeare in Love, but the real Elizabeth was portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s character Viola de Lesseps. Imagery was used to make the comparison, especially in the costumes chosen, some of which were directly taken from portraits of the historical Queen. Judy Dench’s Queen Elizabeth was portrayed as a boorish, bossy woman, who despite being credited at the very start of the film with the words ‘Elizabethan theatre’, was bored with the artistic Shakespearean writing the heroine Viola was enchanted with. She preferred slapstick comedy, and was shown as being uncultured compared with the idealised Elizabeth, the young Viola. The Queen was later shown to be a shrewd but bitter woman who understood Viola’s predicament because she understood her own, that of a ‘woman in a man’s profession’, whose duty overrode the desire for love and happiness. The myth of Elizabeth was told through the fictional Viola, indicating how the myth can predicate the truth in film.
James Chapman claimed that ‘the use of the word ‘myths’ in this context should not imply that historical films have no basis in fact, but rather that they tend to endorse narratives that accord with popular views of history’. Historical films are not films of the past, but about history as the present understands it and wants to view it. Films are made for entertainment and profit, and few conform strictly to the facts. Even when the events of the past are known, universally accepted as facts, and understood, filmmakers must necessarily invent. ‘On the screen, history must be fictional in order to be true!’ Invented conversations and encounters allow the audience to understand aspects of the past that existed but would be difficult or impossible to portray without fictionalisation. Chapman stated that ‘as not everything about the past is or can be known, then it follows that history is an incomplete record of the past’. It would therefore be impossible to portray the past in film without invention and fictionalisation. Kara McKechnie furthered the point with the assertion that ‘the narrative has needs that hardly ever conform to historical developments’. This invention is the major reason for criticism of historical films.
As historiography changes, the understanding and portrayal of Elizabeth I in films also changes. It is almost universally understood that historical films show the time in which they were made more than the time they are supposedly portraying, and some directors openly incorporated contemporary issues into their films. Fire Over England was unabashedly a propagandist film, in which small, wretched and defenseless England defeated powerful and rich Spain, and was seen as such even by contemporary audiences. In the pre-war years, a parallel was easily found between Spain and Germany to give the centuries-old story a contemporary meaning. The very title of the movie invoked images of the coming war, though it is debatable as to whether or not this was intentional. This film, as well as the other films and plays made about Elizabeth I between 1912 and 1955, including The Sea Hawk, described as an ‘explicit call to arms’ with ‘overt propagand-ism’, perpetuated the myth of the woman who held control of the country in the midst of political intrigues and military threats. Chapman claimed that Korda’s films (Fire Over England and The Sea Hawk) displayed ‘a remarkable level of consistency in their representation of the past’, were a ‘romantic, populist view of history’ and demonstrated ‘the flexibility of the historical film as a genre for responding to ‘the burning questions of the day’’.
Fire Over England and The Sea Hawk were fictional films with some real characters, however, the historians Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw and John Ernest Neale wrote that ‘no one will go far wrong who takes his idea of the historical Queen Elizabeth from Flora Robson. Her interpretation, even her words, ring true; and indeed sometimes, as in the supreme moment at Tilbury, her words are the very words spoken by Elizabeth’. This interpretation of a fictional film by two historians, professors and authors is extremely suspect. Is a true and balanced view of the past to be taken from a film because a few speeches are accurate? Should the viewer take the two historians’ words for it? Are they not historians of their own time, subject to the same prejudices? Chapman wrote that ‘all films are products of their own times and cannot escape being informed by their own social, cultural and industrial circumstances’. Thomas Betteridge made the point that ‘perhaps historians are more influenced by what is going on in popular culture than they would perhaps want to admit’. Historians are now more aware of their own objectivity, or lack of it, than ever before. Filmmakers, however, appear to lack this skill. The 1998 film Elizabeth ‘had more to do with the late Princess Diana and Indian mythology than with the real Elizabeth Tudor’ and was affected by the mid-nineties preoccupation with the role of royalty in England and their rights to happiness and privacy and control over their own lives. This was especially evident when Walsingham stated: ‘Her Majesty's body and person are no longer her own property. They belong to the State’.
F.J.C. Hearnshaw and J.E. Neale’s assertion that Flora Robson’s portrayal of Elizabeth was an accurate one because ‘her interpretation, even her words, ring true’, is problematic. Several films about Elizabeth depict famous scenes and speeches, however they are rarely identical. Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth I has the Queen declare that ‘I will not make windows into men’s souls’. Glenda Jackson in Elizabeth R said ‘I have no wish to open windows into men’s souls’, and Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth stated in parliament ‘I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls’. Similarly, while the original quote is believed to be ‘I will have here but one mistress and no master’, Glenda Jackson stated ‘I will have no master and only one mistress here’ while Cate Blanchett intoned ‘I will have one mistress here and no master!’ These are small differences, but they highlight the difficulties faced by historians and filmmakers alike. While Elizabeth’s words were recorded, several versions of the same speeches may exist, and even when a consensus can be reached among historians, filmmakers change the words to suit the context of their film. Larger inventions cause larger problems. When filmmakers invented a secret meeting between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots it became a widely-believed fact.
Films have portrayed the myth of Elizabeth more than the actual woman. When modern films show very similar themes and ethos to films made almost a century ago, it raises several questions. It is unlikely that different films made over nearly a century could all have been accurately portraying Elizabeth the First’s life centuries after her death. Given advances in historiography and societal mores, it is almost impossible that a film made in 1912 or 1937 could have portrayed a sixteenth century monarch in the same light as a film made in 1998 or 2005. Both historical knowledge and the status of women had progressed in this time. Equally, it is unlikely that modern films have been remaking earlier films. The similarities between different films spanning nearly a century are most likely to be because all the films are reenacting the myth of Elizabeth I.
Films are such a popular medium and reach more people than any academic book would because of the emotions manipulated through the use of images, music and actors. Skilled directors include symbolism to subconsciously reach the audience and manipulate the facts to resonate with the contemporary lay audience. Every word put into the mouth of an actress playing the Queen is carefully chosen for the emotional and subconscious effect it will have on the audience. In order to emotionally attach the audience to the fictionalised character on the screen, emotions, events and characters are invented or altered. By necessity filmmakers invent dialogue, and this dialogue creates a personality that did not necessarily exist, but which adds to the myth of Elizabeth. As many people will learn more about Elizabeth I from films than from primary sources, many myths will be incorporated into the layperson’s understanding of the ‘facts’ of the past. Repetition of certain ideas or events in various versions of Elizabeth films continue the myth and encourage wrong ideas. The belief that oft-reinforced portrayals of events must be factual is a common one.
The myth of Elizabeth could not have been so widely spread without the visual medium of films. The 1995 mini-series Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren begins with a symbol of Elizabeth’s reign that would be difficult to show in an academic report. Elizabeth was first seen as simply a gown, a symbol and a figurehead, but not a person. She was shown from the neck down as her clothes were slowly removed, layer by layer, with her acquiescence but not her assistance. This first view of the Queen, headless and stripped, then submitted to a cervical exam, speaks volumes about her powerlessness, the importance of her virginity and her ability to bear children, while still managing to portray her as a noble and dignified personage.
The fascination with Elizabeth the First was reinvigorated for modern audiences with the 1971 miniseries Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson. This nine-hour series portrayed Elizabeth as a woman more in control of her Privy Council and her Parliament than her counterpart in 1998’s Elizabeth but less in control of her own life. Every depiction of the Queen, however, emphasised her indecisiveness. In Elizabeth I Jeremy Irons’ Robert Leicester described her thus: ‘Her favour changes with her mood. She is a woman’. Glenda Jackson’s incarnation of Elizabeth almost maniacally changed her mind over nearly every decision, from state affairs to her own love/hate relationship with Leicester. Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth was similarly minded, though she controlled herself better, while Cate Blanchett’s version of the Queen knew what she wanted but was at the mercy of her Privy Council and Parliament.
Over the years the view of femininity and women in power has changed. In Fire Over England Michael was undoubtedly the hero of the film. When entreated by Cynthia to stay in England with her, the Queen sardonically gave him the option to bow to the ‘girl’s’ wishes. He stated that he would not, clearly demonstrating Michael’s superiority over Cynthia and Elizabeth by association of gender. After the human rights movements of the nineteen-sixties, the 1971 Elizabeth R’s Elizabeth had more power over her life and her Kingdom, clearly demonstrating again the unintentional influence the present had on the making of historical films. Betteridge called Jackson’s Elizabeth a ‘product of liberalist humanist feminism’ and the Elizabeth of the 1998 film a ‘post-feminist girl-power queen’. Mirren’s character in Elizabeth I was stronger than either of these two Elizabeths. On several different occasions the Queen was visibly upset and a male tried to comfort her but pulled away, scared, before making contact. None of these versions of Elizabeth are likely to be representative of the real Queen. As much as times have changed over the last several decades, it would be naive to believe that attitudes have not changed even more dramatically over the preceding centuries.
The primary issue in Elizabeth R (1971), Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth I (2005) was marriage. Political alliance was the overriding impetus. Elizabeth in the 1998 film stated flippantly ‘Aye, but marry who, your grace? Would you give me some suggestion? For some say France and others Spain, and some cannot abide foreigners at all. So I am not sure how best to please you unless I married one of each’. The idea of marrying for love was a concept barely considered, each version of Elizabeth having accepted, albeit ungracefully at times, that the political stability of England came before personal happiness. The idea that Elizabeth was purposefully rejecting the idea of marriage at all in order to protect her kingdom was explored in Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren. She had fallen in love with the Duke of Anjou, unlike the other versions of the Queen in previous films, but the public pressure caused the Privy Council to force her to cancel the engagement. She rejected other proposals in order to keep from losing power to a king. The question of succession was a persistent one. In Elizabeth R, constant to her contrary nature, when the Queen was asked at her deathbed if James of Scotland would succeed, she shook her head then nodded several times in alternation, representing to the end her divided nature.
The importance placed on Elizabeth’s virginity had more to do with the myth than the fact. One of the first lines in Elizabeth I was a whispered ‘virgo intacta’. Whether or not the Queen was literally a virgin is an emotive issue. Shekhar Kapur stated that ‘her virginity is a matter of interpretation’ after his film portrayed Elizabeth as being sexually active. An editorial in the Daily Telegraph after the release of 1998’s Elizabeth read ‘to question Elizabeth’s virtue 400 years after her death is not just a blackguardly slur upon a good, Christian woman, but an insult to our fathers who fought for her. It should rouse England to chivalrous anger’. The outrage created by this interpretation of Elizabeth’s life, which differs from the commonly accepted perception of the ‘facts’, indicates the importance of the myth of Elizabeth.
In Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen, Helen Hackett discussed the idea that during her life or soon after her death ‘Elizabeth became a sort of Protestant substitute for the Virgin Mary, filling a post-Reformation gap in the psyche of the masses, who craved a symbolic virgin-mother figure’. She claimed that after Elizabeth’s death the Queen was used as an idealised example to compare later monarchs unfavourably against. After her death she could uncontroversially be thought of as a ‘holy saint in heaven’, and individuals had the ‘freedom to mythologise her and deploy her as a fictional character, for whatever purpose the contemporary political climate creates’. The belief that she was literally seen as a pseudo-saint during her lifetime or immediately after her death was in fact a myth invented in the twentieth century, and films have incorporated and adapted this myth, forming what is today a pervasive image.
Filmic portrayals of Elizabeth have had a number of historical repercussions. The films changed the perception of the past while they portrayed it, unintentionally but incontrovertibly distorting the way modern audiences view Queen Elizabeth the First. For nearly a century Elizabeth has been portrayed as a woman who could not be both a successful woman and a successful ruler, and had to sacrifice one or the other. This assumption, made decades ago, has persisted into the twenty-first century. The myth of Elizabeth owes almost its entire existence to the films which have traded on this myth as fact.
Ideally historical films would present the past in a reasonably accurate form. However, forces such as profitability, entertainment value, inadequate knowledge, and disagree-ments among historians formed over centuries of changing historiographical methods and conflicting information combine to make a film that reflects the time in which it was made more than the time is supposedly portrays. That these films are considered adequate substitutes for more traditional forms of historical understanding is unfortunate, but historians must read between the lines of such ‘historical’ films to understand the nuances of the myth of Elizabeth. Understanding the myths surrounding the Queen will enable people to look beyond the myth and understand the historical woman herself.
Bibliography
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Boas, Frederick S., Queen Elizabeth in Drama and Related Studies, (New York: Books for Libraries, 1950).
Chapman, James Past and Present – National Identity and the British Historical Film (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).
Frye, Susan, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Hackett, Helen, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, (London: Macmillan Press, 1996).
McKechnie, Kara, ‘Taking liberties with the monarch: The royal bio-pic in the 1990s’ in British Historical Cinema: The history, heritage and costume film, edited by Claire Monk and Amy Sergeant, (London: Routledge, 2002).
Pigeon, Renée ‘Gloriana Goes Hollywood: Elizabeth I on Film, 1937 – 1940’ in Reinventing the Middle Ages & the Renaissance, edited by William F Gentrup, (Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 1998).
Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works, edited by Steven W May, (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004).
Rosenstone, Robert R, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History, (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard, 1995).
Blackadder II: Part the Firste, mini-series, directed by Mandie Fletcher, British Broadcasting Corporation, 1986.
Elizabeth, motion picture, directed by Shekhar Kapur, Universal Studios, 1998.
Elizabeth I, mini-series, directed by Tom Hooper, Company Pictures, 2005.
Elizabeth R, mini-series, directed by Roderick Graham et al, British Broadcasting Corporation, 1971.
Fire Over England, motion picture, directed by William K Howard, London Film Productions, 1937.
Shakespeare in Love, motion picture, directed by John Madden, Universal Studios, 1998.
