Royal Genealogy in the Age of Shakespeare
Title Details

324 Pages

24 x 17 cm

104 colour illus.

Imprint: D.S.Brewer

Royal Genealogy in the Age of Shakespeare

by Sara Trevisan

  • Description
  • Contents
  • Author
First full-length investigation of Elizabethan and Jacobean genealogy, showing how it could be manipulated to legitimise - and oppose.

Shakespeare lived in an age when royal genealogy mattered. Queen Elizabeth succeeded her father despite accusations of illegitimacy after Anne Boleyn's beheading. As she defied suitors and potential spouses, and refused not only to produce but even to nominate an heir, factions arose siding with the numerous candidates, particularly Mary Queen of Scots. When, upon Elizabeth's death, James VI, the king of Scotland, prepared to ascend for the first time in history to the English throne, it became paramount that he should fashion himself as an English monarch as well.
In this game of thrones, royal genealogy was the instrument that could best represent, distort, create, favour orundermine the ancestral right of the current ruler and their potential successors. In the form of scrolls, charts, books, paper rags and even maps, the genealogies of Elizabeth I, James I, and the main pretenders were circulatedin Britain and Europe in manuscript and print, officially or surreptitiously.
This book - the first systematic study of this subject - explores the most fascinating examples of royal genealogy in this era, from the rooms of Whitehall to the pockets of Jesuits in London prisons. Most of these texts are here reproduced in print for the first time, with lavish illustrations; they reveal the political divisions, concerns, treasons and celebrations that lurked behind their splendour.
Introduction
Chapter One: Blood and virtue
Chapter Two: Elizabeth's pedigree
Chapter Three: Subversive genealogies
Chapter Four: James and print
Chapter Five: 'Greater Britain'
Chapter Six: Genealogical Maps
Epilogue: The Year 1625
Bibliography

SARA TREVISAN studied at the University of Padua. After working as a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher in Renaissance Studies in Britain and the US, she is now a full-time rare books andmanuscripts specialist in the antiquarian book trade and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Warwick.

Hardcover

9781843845584

April 2020

Buy

£95.00 / $140.00

Shipping Options

Buy Fewer than 20 copies available

Buy

Purchasing options are not available in this country.

Ebook (EPDF)

9781787449107

April 2020

Buy

$29.95 / £24.99

Title Details

324 Pages

2.4 x 1.7 cm

104 colour illus.

Imprint: D.S.Brewer