5 - The value of learning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2010
Summary
The coronation pageant which marked the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign looked back to the drama of John Bale. The show at the Little Conduit presented two hills, representing ‘a decaied commonweale’ and ‘a flourishing commonweale’. Truth, led by her father Time, stepped from between them to offer the queen an English bible. Elizabeth's performance was one of those that Bale's developing aesthetic sought, where there was no visible distinction between performer and role. There is a structural affinity, too, between Bale's King John and Elizabeth's coronation pageant: both present the monarch interacting with the figure of Veritas/Truth, and this interaction in turn seems to confirm the sincerity and authenticity of the monarch-performer. Though Elizabeth's response to Truth's gesture may have been rehearsed, or at least premeditated, it was performed to look like a spontaneously gracious act: ‘shee as soone as she had received the booke, kissed it, and with both hir hands held up the same, and so laid it upon her brest, with great thanks to the citie therefore’ (Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. IV, p. 168).
The propaganda potential of such a gesture at such a moment was immense: Holinshed's report of the pageant was in addition to an official printed record (issued twice in 1559 and again in 1604), and the Venetian ambassador also recounted the scene. The impact of Elizabeth's gesture is shown by the way later plays revisit it.
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- Language and Stage in Medieval and Renaissance England , pp. 106 - 140Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998