MARY STUART IN FICTION AND DRAMA 
 
 BY 
 
 MERLE VINCENT RAINES 
 
 A. B. University of Illinois, 1921 
 
 THESIS 
 
 SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
 FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH 
 IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, 
 
 1922 
 
 URBANA, ILLINOIS 
 

 
M3 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 
 
 ^ay 26 -192 2 
 
 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY 
 SUPERVISION BY__ Merle Vinceot Rainer 
 ENTITLED Mary Stuart in Fiction and Dxamsu- 
 
 BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 
 
 THE DEGREE OF 
 
 Recommendation concurred in* 
 
 Committee 
 
 on 
 
 Final Examination* 
 
 •Required for doctor’s degree hut not for master’s 
 
 C*, * A 
 
 * x* J 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/marystuartinfictOOrain 
 
TABLE OP COJIT SOTS 
 
 I. Mary Stuart in Literature from 1567 to 1725 1 
 
 II. Mary Stuart in Literature from 1725 to 1820 50 
 
 III. M ary Stuart in Nineteenth Century Literature .... 52 
 
 IV. Mary Stuart in Twentieth Century Literature 68 
 
 Chronological List of Drama Concerning Mary Stuart .... 82 
 
 Chronological List of Fiction Concerning Mary Stuart ... 85 
 
 Eitliography 87 
 

I. MARY STUART IK LITERATURE FROM 156? TO 1725 
 The P o pul arit y ^of ry; .St u art, ^in ,Li t e r %t ' u re 
 
 The career of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, her flight 
 to Scotland from France, the young widow of Francois II, her 
 strife with the Presbyt erian lords for the control of the gov- 
 ernment, her marriage with Barnley, and after his murder, with 
 Bothwell, her escape from Murray to England, her twenty years’ 
 imprisonment amid Catholic intrigues for her release, and her 
 execution in 1587, affords a wealth of material for the poet, 
 the dramatist, and the novelist. In the opposition of the 
 strong personalities connected with it - Mary and Elizabeth, 
 the craven Barnley and the brutal, masterful Bothwell, the 
 faithful Melville and the sinister Bavison - there lie ready 
 for the author’s hand sharp contrasts and tense, dramatic sit- 
 uations. He may choose from the mass of forged letters, state 
 documents, and contemporary judgments those items which support 
 his interpretation of Mary's character and may condemn or ex- 
 culpate her by the emphasis which he gives to her own person- 
 ality, the political situation of the period, or the struggle 
 between Anglicanism and Catholicism. 
 
 Every account of a sovereign’s reign must consider 
 the individual qualities of that sovereign in their reaction 
 with the forces that determine the social and religious 
 history of a nation, but in the case of Mary Stuart this in- 
 terrelation is so obscured by defamatory letters concerning 
 her and so ccncealed by the diplomatic correspondence from 
 English and continental courts that it is difficult to deter- 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 mine her guilt. 
 
 Mary’s claim to royal power was never accepted 
 without question, either in England or Scotland. She had 
 "been educated in Prance in the palace of her uncle, the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine, and had accepted the religious faith 
 and the political ethics of the H ouse of Guise. At the age 
 of fourteen she had married the Dauphin, later Francois II, 
 and had ruled France as queen for eighteen months. On the 
 death of her husband she was forced to flee to Scotland, a 
 victim of the enmity of Catherine de Medici, and there she 
 established her court, a gay, pleasu re-loving Catholic 
 court, in a land of austere Presbyterian lords and rival 
 Border- raiding chieftains. After two years of widowhood 
 she chose as husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and united 
 the Stuart line with the house of Lennox, both families 
 with claims to English royalty. 
 
 By the terms of Henry VIII ’s will Mary was next 
 in succession to the English throne after the family of 
 Grey, although she had by right of birth a stronger claim 
 to sovereignty. Elizabeth had no greater fondness for the 
 Greys than the Stuarts, but the one house was Anglican, 
 the other Catholic. Elizabeth herself was without any deep 
 religious convictions, even inclining toward Catholicism 
 when she desired an alliance with France and Spain, but she 
 realized the danger of recognizing a Catholic heir in Eng- 
 land - England that opposed the pope with Henry, read the 
 prayerbook with Edward, and said mass with Mary Tudor. Mary 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Stuart as queen would unite Scotland and England and ally 
 England with her ancient enemies, France, Spain, and the 
 papacy. The Tudor constitutional government under a power- 
 ful Parliament which Henry developed to aid him against the 
 pope would give place to absolutist government under a 
 Stuart • 
 
 Mary’s execution, then, in 1587 deprived English 
 Catholicism of a strong claimant for the throne, rid Eliz- 
 abeth of a powerful rival who might combine continental 
 nations against England, and was a triumph for Protestant- 
 ism that balanced the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve 
 and rendered useless any attempt at rescue by a Spanish 
 A r mada. Though Mary had never been an ardent Catholic, dur- 
 ing her imprisonment she had been regarded as the symbol of 
 world Catholicism, whose fall could presage the ultimate 
 victory of Anglicanism or a revival of enthusiasm for the 
 papacy. Numerous pamphlets appeared as soon as her death 
 became known, a literary Armada from France and Spain de- 
 nouncing Elizabeth as a "feminine Nero, with a cannibal’s 
 thirst for blood." The personalities of the queens, except 
 as objects for scathing arraignment or undiscriminating 
 praise, were disregarded, and the two became the represent- 
 atives of the Catholic Reformation and the English Renaiss- 
 ance. The theme was taken up by novels and dramas, and 
 gained great popularity in seventeenth-century Germany and 
 ninet eenth-century England. Interest soon swung, however, 
 from the religious and political issue to the character of 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 the queen herself • 
 
 A Survey .o f. Stu dies of Jfer^ , T St u art ^s _Li t e.ra r z jjls t org 
 
 There has been only one attempt to link together 
 the numerous dramas that have centered around Mary Stuart - 
 "Maria Stuart im Drama der W e lt literatur " by Karl Kipka. 
 
 The author attempts to consider every important play on 
 the subject, comment irg both on its literary merit and its 
 place in the development of a. Mary Stuart tradition in lit- 
 erature. The account of dramas before 1300 is very full, 
 Jesuit and folk-plays of southern Germany receiving espec- 
 ially careful analysis. There is little discussion of works 
 in the nineteenth century, Kipka being content to list them 
 in chronological order without indicating their content and 
 their point of view toward Mary Stuart. Nor can he always 
 resist the temptation to laud the work of his countrymen 
 and slight that of other nationalities, particularly the 
 English. He succumbs to this impulse in his review of 
 Schiller, where he would show that the finely imaginative 
 grasp of the issues of character in the tragedy come by in- 
 tuition to the Teuton while the blunter, less sensitive 
 Anglo-Saxon reaches the same conclusion only after a long 
 process of reasoning. 
 
 The present study has been planned to remedy the 
 defects in Kipka' s presentation, and especially to show, as 
 he does not, the relation between Mary’s place as a heroine 
 of fiction and her popularity in drama. The study, further, 
 
5 
 
 aims to compile an accurate, complete list of the novels 
 and plays dealing with her life, following the actual chron- 
 ology and indicating as far as possible the content of each 
 work and the point of view inspiring it. Its primary pur- 
 pose, then, is to trace briefly and without national bias 
 Mary Stuart *s course through fiction and drama, showing how 
 men at different periods regarded her and what elements in 
 her history were selected for treatment by opposing schools 
 of literary thought. Because the work has been intended as 
 a basis for later, more detailed studies of the problem, 
 nothing like a comprehensive review of individual works has 
 been attempted. The play or novel has been placed in the 
 general literary movement to which its characteristics ally 
 it, and merely its underlying attitude toward Mary Stuart 
 has been emphasized. There has been little place for con- 
 siderations of the relation between different pieces and 
 of the development of minor characters. 
 
 For the early plays concerning Mary the author 
 has relied on Kipka, roost of the original plays not being 
 available, but the impressions given there have been ver- 
 ified by reference to the studies of von Pichler, Michels, 
 and Stachel of Jesuit drama, early German Renaissance 
 drama of the Senecan type, and southern German folk-drama. 
 For the more recent novels and plays, whenever the work it- 
 self was not consulted, the author turned to literary hist- 
 ories, dictionaries of biography, and to such handbooks of 
 
6 
 
 the stage as Genest, Fleay, and "Biographies Dramatica." 
 
 Mary Stuart View ed \>y_ ^Catholic .A- gologist 8 
 
 Six years after the death of Mary, when the forces 
 
 of each church were being marshalled for a spirited defense 
 
 of its position, there appeared "Insulani Stuarta Tragoedia 
 
 siue Caedes Mariae Serenissirnae Scot, in Angl. perpetrata," 
 
 by Adrian Roulers. The play’s primary purpose is religious 
 
 propaganda, its author being professor of poetry in the 
 
 Jesuit school at Douai, a center of the Catholic Reformation 
 
 (l) 
 
 in Germany, and its only merit is its animated present- 
 ation of Mary as a martyr queen. It is a five-act tragedy 
 modelled after the "Thyestes" of Seneca and is adorned with 
 many classical devices, a chorus of captive youths and 
 
 (p) 
 
 maidens serving as commentators on the action. 
 
 Roulers plunges into his attack on Elizabeth in 
 the prologue. The ghost of Henry VIII arises from the hell 
 to which the papal excommunication has condemned him, and 
 confesses Elizabeth the child of his incestuous union with 
 Anne Bol eyn, his own natural daughter. The action shows 
 Mary in consultation with her physician, her patient en- 
 durance of Amias’ brutal treatment, her composure during 
 the trial, and her leave-takings before her execution. 
 
 Dramatically the highest point is reached in the 
 last scene, as Mary, with joy at her approaching martyrdom, 
 
 1. - Woerner, Roman. "Die Alteste Maria Stuart-Tragtfdie. " 
 
 In "Germanistische Abhandlung en . " Hermann Paul, Strassburg, 
 1902. 
 
 2. - Stachel, Paul. "Seneca und das Deutsche Renaissance- 
 drama. " Meyer and Mtfller, Boston, 1907, p. 212. 
 

 
 
 
 
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 reviews the religious strife to which she is a sacrifice. 
 
 The chorus implores Heaven to send a rescuer, but God has 
 ordained her death that it may win new converts to the 
 faith. The scene (closely followed by Schiller) presents 
 the queen’s pathetic farewell, her message to her son that 
 she died a good Scotchwoman, a good Frenchwoman, and a good 
 Catholic, and her magnanimous forgiveness of the judges 
 and the executioner. The description is vivid and is for 
 the most part marked by an admirable restraint. Elizabeth 
 is portrayed without that sense of personal hatred which 
 actuates later dramatists, and Mary is a dignified queenly 
 figure. The first four acts are filled with exposition of 
 the crisis within the church, but the last act is simple 
 and moving. Houlers seems awed in the presence of death, 
 and he introduces into the sacredness of Mary’s last hour 
 on earth no religious note except an exultant one that she 
 died for her faith. 
 
 Similar restraint was not shown in the Catholic 
 dramas that kept interest in Mary Stuart alive in Germany 
 during the next fifty years. Protestantism had made such 
 progress in the public mind that to insure the continuance 
 of Catholic principles the Jesuit order in 1585 and again 
 in 1599 sanctioned the production of dramas that combined 
 classical form and spirit with the tenets of Jesuit theology. 
 Instructors in the university centers of the order res- 
 ponded loyally to the appeal. Because of the place which 
 

 
8 
 
 Mary Stuart had occupied in world Catholicism during her 
 imprisonment her story offered excellent opportunities 
 for such a glorification of religious faith. As a result 
 of Jesuit activity many dramas concerned with the spec- 
 tacle of her death were presented in Prague, Neuberg, Krems, 
 and the villages of the Tyrol during the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. ^ ^ 
 
 The plays built for presentation before village 
 audiences were clumsily constructed, with little literary 
 merit to counteract the zealot’s purpose that inspired 
 them. The fact that the author has profound religious 
 convictions does not make the plays perishable, for the 
 mystical rhapsody that comes through meditation upon the 
 divine has produced enduring literature. These works, 
 however, were too frankly argumentative to reach that high 
 plane of poetic feeling. Their material was that aspect 
 of Mary Stuart’s life which would inevitably lose interest 
 after religious differences were adjusted. Their grasp 
 of the issues involved in her execution was a superficial 
 one, for they selected only the bold contrasts that were 
 theatrically effective. Their delineation of character 
 was always along the obvious lines. Mary was the embod- 
 iment of virtue, patience, and nobility, while Elizabeth 
 was an inhuman tyrant, sensible to none of the gentler 
 
 1.- ^ichels, Victor. "Studien TTber die A'lteeten Deutschen 
 Pest nacht spiele . H K. J. TriJToner, Strassburg, 1896. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 feelings of her sex and allied, "by implication when not by 
 actual vows of fealty, to the devil and his legions of the 
 excommuni cat e . 
 
 The plays that emanate from the university cen- 
 ters were more creditable dramatic entertainment, with 
 greater consistency and subtlety in motivation and con- 
 ception of character* The earliest of the type illus- 
 trates in its ardor and its grotesque combination of human 
 and heavenly figures the strength and weakness of the 
 Jesuit perf ormances. At the University of Prague there 
 was produced in 1544 a "Ktfnigliche Tragtfdie. Oder Maria 
 Stuarda, Ktfnigin von Schott land und des Ktfnigreichs Eng el- 
 ls Jid Erbin, welcha Elisabetha, regierende Kifnigin in Eng- 
 landt , ausz Hasz gegen der katholischen Religion und Ehr- 
 geiz hat enthaupten las sen. Ward gehalten und gespielt 
 zur Herbstzeit von der ansehnlichen an der K. K. Univer- 
 sity der Societ. J. zu Prag studierenden Jugend im Jahr, 
 nach Christi Geburt im 1544, den 29. Sept."^) 
 
 Mary is pictured as robbed of her two husbands 
 by judicial murders, forced into a hateful marriage with 
 Bothwell, and ill-advised in her flight into England. The 
 first act shows her entrance into Elizabeth’s kingdom 
 after she has received very solemn pledges of welcome* 
 
 The following acts show her at crises during her detention 
 at Fotheringay , comforted by the Genius of Religion, warned 
 
 1.- Kipka, Karl. "Maria Stuart im Drama der Welt lit eratur. " 
 Max Hesse, Leipzig, 1907, p. 27* 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 against Elizabeth’s malice by the Genius of the House of 
 Stuart. As she makes preparations for death Susanna, fol- 
 lowed by a host of other innocent martyrs, corn® to proffer 
 the crown of martyrdom. She accepts their homage with 
 humility, praising the goodness of God in permitting her 
 sacrifice, and walks to the scaffold in a mood of intense 
 devotion. As the axe falls the chorus raises a solemn 
 chant, which changes to a song of victory. The Spirit of 
 Justice predicts the triumph of righteousness, and the 
 ghosts of Eranpois and Earnley promise to requite Eliz- 
 abeth for her murder of their beloved wife. 
 
 The action depends on the intervention of heav- 
 enly spirits, guardians over the good and the believers. 
 Man is conceived as essentially evil, redeemed only by 
 a belief in a higher power, and there is consequently no 
 character who can represent the good. Mary has received 
 her martyrdom as an act of divine grace and is numbered 
 with the angelic host. In motivation, as in character, 
 the author is content with the abstract, each step being 
 the triumph of one principle over another. Soon the sym- 
 bolism grows oppressive, even grotesque • The last scene 
 especially is ridiculous, as angelic Hosannas to Mary’s 
 upward mounting spirit mingle with earthly lamentations 
 of her maids. The prevailing tone of the play, however, 
 is that of earnestness, and some of the songs have a true 
 lyric uprueh of feeling. 
 
 Impetus was given to these Jesuit glorifications 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 of Mary’s death by the Thirty Years’ War, with the attempt 
 of Catholic princes to regain the land seized by Protest- 
 ants. Her story continued to be told during the middle of 
 the seventeenth century not so much because of public in- 
 terest in her fate as because of its power to stir the 
 German people to rebellion against Protestant persecutions, 
 the terror of which they had felt during the Bohemian up- 
 risings.^^ The Scottish queen became throughout southern 
 Germany and Austria a symbol of resolute adherence to faith* 
 
 1. - An additional incentive to write concerning Mary Stuart 
 came with the declining power of her family in England and 
 the rise of the austere Puritan exemplified by Cromwell. 
 Continental poets saw the danger to them that lay in the es- 
 tablishment of Puritan principles, and they included denun- 
 ciations of the Commonwealth in their discussion of the 
 Stuart fortunes. A play with this purpose is the ’’Maria 
 Stuart of Gemartelde Majesteit,” written in 1645 by Joost 
 von Vondel. Sombre and fatalistic in mode of expression, 
 
 it is similar to the many Butch plays of the period that 
 protest against tyranny. In its account of Mary’ s last 
 days it contains a bitter assault on Puritanism. Mary is 
 referred to as one "die zwiechen tugendhaft und stfndig den 
 Mitt enehrenweg hd!lt ; die irgend eine Schuld oder einen 
 Fehler hat oder durch heftige Leidenschaft oder durch Un- 
 verstand zu irgend etw&s Schrecklichen geftfhrt wird; des- 
 halb eben um diesem Mangel abzuhelfen, haben wir der Stuart 
 Unschuld und die Gerechigkeit ihrer Sache mit dem Hebei der 
 tfblen Nachrede under der Verleumdung und Btfsheit jener 
 Zeit verhtfllt, demit ihre christlichen und ktfniglichen 
 Tugenden durch zeitweilige Verdunkelung nur deetoheller 
 hervor leuchten.” Hellwald (Hellwald, Frederich von, "Ge- 
 schichte de3 Holl#ndischen Theaters,” 'Rotterdam, 1874, p. 
 
 40) describes the play as five-act tragedy without scene 
 divisions and conforming rigidly to the unities. In a pro- 
 phetic speech one of the attendants sees evil threatening 
 England and delivers a polemic against Puritanism. 
 
 2. - von Pichler, F. ”Uber das Brama des Mitt elalt ere in 
 Tirol.” Innsbruck, 1820, p. 76. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 An Early Analysis of Mary’s Personality 
 As the Jesuit dramas developed, the political 
 situation during the middle of the sixteenth century shared, 
 in writers’ minds, the importance of the religious struggle. 
 The Catholic dramatist could present only the events of 
 Mary’s last years, since the early years showed her neither 
 profoundly devout nor proceeding in her marriages as a 
 queen, a, noble woman and a martyr. To impart any originality 
 to his narrative he must emphasize the personal character of 
 the heroine or he must give a new interpretation of histor- 
 ical events and personages in their relation to her death. 
 
 Of the two courses he chose the latter as involving the 
 least difficulty. 
 
 1.- "La Reyna Maria Estuarda" by Juan Fautista Diamante 
 (1850) is imitative of the style of Calderon. It gives 
 itself to the love intrigues of Elizabeth and Leicester, 
 Mary and Norfolk, with counterpart humble characters for 
 comic relief. The only new motif is the inner conflict 
 of Norfolk between love and feudal loyalty, and the 
 struggle between duty and faith in his acceptance of Cath- 
 olicism. Mary is portrayed sympathetically as a martyr 
 to her religion, but the strong element of fatalism 
 lessens the poignancy of the final tragedy. Diamante is 
 intent on producing a play with stirring incident, lively 
 dialogue, and romantic appeal. 
 
 "La Maria Stuarda " (l562>) by Giovan Francesco Savaro 
 follows Diamante in its dual intrigues of aristocratic 
 and humble characters and in its treatment of Mary as a 
 passive agent in the plot • 
 
 "Marie Stuart, Reyne d’Escosse" (1675) "Nouvelle 
 historique," by Pierre Pesant de Eoi sguilbert , is the first 
 work of fiction dealing with Mary Stuart’s history. It 
 was translated into English by James Freebairn under the 
 title "Life of Mary Queen of Scots" (Edinburgh, 1725). 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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15 
 
 The first dramatist to choose the first course 
 and attempt a searching analysis of Mar y*s character, 
 religion and politics being considered only as environ- 
 mental forces, was Johannes Riemer, whose "Von hohen Ver- 
 m^hlungen" appeared at Weissenfels in 1679. It is the 
 first play to treat Mary’s early years in Scotland and is 
 thus important in determining the general outline of suc- 
 ceeding studies of the period. P-iemer anticipates later 
 dramatists in conceiving a drama of human passions, upon 
 which depends the fall or rise of a noble Scottish house, 
 the Stuart 8. "Man und Weib ist ein Leib, M he says, "und 
 wann deren eins wieder-sinnet , so reist das Band, welches 
 das gantze Hause urafaeeet. ,, 
 
 Darnley’s craven spirit and hie inordinate greed 
 for power estrange Maria, who has hoped that greet good 
 to Scotland will follow her mating, deeply wounded by his 
 suspicions, she yet remains a true wife and wise queen, 
 dependingly increasingly, however, on Rit z (Riccio). After 
 his murder she turns to Eothwell in a moment of weakness, 
 the! fire in her finding in him an answering flame, a phy- 
 sical attraction, a brutality, and a force lacking in her 
 husband. Her new lover to be sure is not of heroic mold; 
 his animal instincts dominate him; his passionate desire 
 to possess Maria leads him to murder and disgrace; yet he 
 has one quality that Darnley has not - virility. The queen 
 forgets all restraints in the ardor of Eothwell’ s wooing, 
 and consents gladly to the murder of her husband. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 The third act is written with a skill in dram- 
 atic composition and a keenness of insight into the psych- 
 ology of the characters that the story did not receive 
 until Swinburne’s ,i Bothwell w two centuries later. The 
 English ambassadors assure Bothwell that he will find 
 favor with Elizabeth ae King of Scotland and pledge him 
 their aid in getting rid of Darnley. Poison fails, and 
 Barnley it lured to the orchard and stabbed. Bothwell re- 
 turns to kiaria, and the ambassadors find her in his arms. 
 
 "Von hohen Verm^hlungen" stands structurally as 
 an organic unit with a close-knit tragic action. The list 
 of characters is small, one-half the length of that of 
 Houlers or of the Prague dramatists, but each has a dec- 
 isive part to play in the action. The events of a year 
 are compressed into the space of several days, but the 
 exclusion of religious and political considerations permits 
 the focusing of the drama upon the degeneration of l£aria’s 
 character. Careful attention is given to details - the 
 dispatches, misdirected letters, am love tokens that be- 
 come familiar property of dramatists and novelists - and 
 these details, combined with vigorous dialogue and clear 
 character delineation, give a strong impression of reality. 
 It is significant that Riemer does not sympathize with 
 his heroine. She speaks, not for her faith, but for her 
 own passionate nature, which leads her inevitably to de- 
 struction. 
 
15 
 
 "Von hohen Verm^hlungen, M however, was little known 
 outside V/eiseenf els , and it made no direct impression upon 
 the Mary Stuart story in the eighteenth century. Swinburne 
 then revived interest in it by his trilogy. It must stand 
 side by side with Schiller's "Maris Stuart" as the finest 
 products of German thinking on the problem of Mary Stuart. 
 
 Marv Stuart in French Drama of Intrip-ue 
 
 Luring this period of popularity of the story 
 in Germany little attention was given it by writers at the 
 French court, who probably were not anxious to remind Cath- 
 erine de Medici of her hated daughter-in-law. Lesser poets 
 did not feel this necessity for restraint, and many poems 
 concerning Mary Stuart appeared. M^st of them were con- 
 cerned with Buchanan' s charges against the queen or with 
 the religious issue. French Catholicism never felt the 
 need of justifying itself to the public that German Cath- 
 olicism did, and the point of view that appears in "Marie 
 Stuart Rgyne d'Escosse" (1539) is the contribution made by 
 French authors to this literary tradition. It is the at- 
 titude of the man of letters who utilizes historical facts 
 as a background for a work of his own imagination, who cares 
 less for historical accuracy than for the color, the romance, 
 the pomp and pageantry, of an earlier age. This pseudo- 
 historic, romantic point of view informs more than half of 
 the seventy-five or more novels and dramas in which Mary 
 Stuart is a figure, reaching its lowest level in the super- 
 ficial, gaudily wrought novels of 1630 to 1680- 
 
IS 
 
 "Marie Stuart R e yne d*Escosse, M the first dram 
 with this attitude, is the work of Regnault , a, dramatist 
 attached to the group of players supported by Cardinal Rich- 
 elieu and presenting private performances in his palace. 
 
 It is primarily intended for a court circle, and especially 
 for one, like those at Paris and Madrid, where the act of 
 Elizabeth in riddir^ herself of a dangerous rival was 
 thought justifiable, highly moral statecraft. It is for 
 a circle, further, where religion is indifferently regarded 
 except when political factors are involved. Elizabeth is 
 consequently not the incarnation of fanatic malice that the 
 Jesuit drams make her, but a woman who can be as gracious 
 to the favored duke Norfolk as she can be merciless to Mary. 
 She comes near to pardoning the duke, who trustfully con- 
 fides his hopes of marrying her cousin, but she realizes 
 the danger of leniency and sends him to the block. Mary can 
 here reflect no glory of martyrdom; her first appeal is 
 for sympathy as a gentle woman, unfortunate in her love* 
 
 Regnault* 8 interest is twofold, however, and the 
 play divides as the second interest becomes dominant. The 
 first acts present the duke of Norfolk - an attractive noble 
 courtier without skill in diplomatic deception - and tell 
 the stoiy of hie love for Mary. In thie part Elizabeth ap- 
 pears as the beneficent sovereign, deceived by evil coun- 
 sellors, and Mary is the unhappy captive, bitterly maligned 
 and patiently enduring an unjust imprisonment. After the 
 execution of Norfolk another dramatic conflict is presented, 
 

 
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 and the problem is now the political justification of Mary’s 
 death. There is a reversal of sympathy to Elizabeth, and 
 her rival becomes a. heartless intrigant. The incoherence 
 resulting from a dual purpose in plot and characterization 
 is increased by the compression of the events of twenty 
 years into the compass of two days.' 1 ^ 
 
 Limitations on Dramatic Freedom in Elizabethan England 
 
 ^either Germany nor France, however, but England, 
 
 might be expected to be the first to tell the stoiy of Mary 
 Stuart. Yet Elizabeth had proceeded cautiously in the 
 trial and execution of her royal captive, since openly to 
 insult her would be to discredit her own name in Europe 
 and effect the dreaded alliance between Prance and Spain. 
 Though she might have enjoyed an attack upon her rival, 
 
 1.- Regnault’s attitude toward history is continued by 
 Marie Madeleine Pioche, Comtesse de Lafayette, in 'The 
 Princess of Clevee, " wherein Mary appears as a secondary 
 character. The story is that of the love of M. de Nemours 
 for the beautiful Madame de Clevee, who dislikes her hus- 
 band but cannot neglect the claims of marital honor to 
 entertain an intrigue. Reticence, grace, and delicacy 
 attend the unfolding of the simple narrative, which is set 
 against the background of the court of Henri II. Maiy 
 Stuart as the wife of the dauphin is a charming, young 
 princess, eager to acqui re perfection in music and poetry, 
 and gently curious about the love affairs of her attend- 
 ants. There is no mention of the relation between Fran- 
 cois and the Queen-Dauphin although their union seems 
 to be a happy one. The duel in which Henri II lost his 
 life is described, and there is a long account of the cor- 
 onation of the young king and queen at Rheirns. Chastelart 
 appears as one of the poets in Mary’s train. 
 
 The novel takes its place in literary history, not be- 
 cause of its treatment of Mary Queen of Scots, but because 
 of the advance it makes, after the romances of Scude'ry and La 
 Calprenbde, toward a probable love story stimply and in- 
 timately told. Its place in Mary Stuart tradition depends 
 on its use of court life for its picturesqueness, and its 
 depiction of a youthful, happy queen. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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18 
 
 she could not allow the public liberty to discuss openly 
 matters of state. In 1569, therefore, she had ordered her 
 officers to refuse licenses to plays ”wherein either matters 
 of religion or of the governaunee of the estate of the com- 
 mon weale shalbe handled or treated, beyng no meets matters 
 to be wrytten or treated upon, but by menne of aucthorite, 
 learning and wisedome, nor to be handled before any audience 
 but of grave and discrete persons. ^ 
 
 The rule was laxly enforced, although the council 
 under Leicester intervened to punish peculiarly flagrant 
 impropriety in discussion of political affaire. 
 
 A dramatist might of course evade the regulations, 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 as was often the case, by disguising the characters of 
 his play and transferring the events to an earlier century. 
 This device is followed in the first play to deal, even 
 indirectly, with Mary’s reign in Scotland. "A Hewe Inter- 
 lude of Vice Conteyninge the History of Horestes with the 
 cruel Revengement of his Fathers death upon his one naturill 
 
 Mother,” by John Pikeryng, was played at the court of Eliz- 
 
 (4) 
 
 abeth between July 14, 155? and March 5, 1558. It points 
 
 1.- Hazlitt, William Carew. 'The English Drama and Stage, 
 under the Tudor and Stuart Princes, 1545-1554. Illustrated 
 by a Series of Documents, Treatises, and Poems.” Roxburghe 
 Library, London, 1859, pp. 192. 
 
 £.- Gildersleeve, Virginia Crocheron. overnment Regul- 
 ation of the Elizabethan Drama.” Columbia University Press, 
 Hew York, 1908, p. 15. 
 
 5.- Simpson, ”The Political Use of the Stage in Shakespeare’s 
 Time,” Hew Shakespeare Society's Transactions, 1874, p. 5?1. 
 4.- Hazlitt, William Carew. "A Hand-Book to the Popular Poet- 
 ical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain.” London, 1857. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
19 
 
 the parallel between Mary and Clytemnestra in wedding the 
 murderers of their husbands. It urges that the recent crime 
 in Scotland be avenged: 
 
 "Therefore, 0 King, if that her faute should unrevengyd be 
 A thousand evylles would insu their of, Your Grace should se 
 Her faute is great, and punnyshment it is worthy for to have 
 Tor by that meane the good, in sooth, from daungere may be 
 saufe. M 
 
 This sentiment must have been particularly pies sing to Eliz- 
 abeth, who was only waiting for a pretext to justify her 
 alliance with Murray. 
 
 Except for the substitution of native morality 
 figures, Vice, Nature, and Bewtey, the interlude follows 
 
 (i) 
 
 closely the classical tragedy from which it takes its name. 
 
 It closes with a eulogy of Elizabeth delivered by Bewtey, 
 who claims for her the high privilege of setting up virtue 
 and correcting vice. 
 
 Pikeryng’s appeal to the queen to restore peace 
 in Scotland makes it evident that the pretense of Greek char- 
 acters is not seriously regarded. Critics have not such 
 clear proof when they see in "Hamlet " an attack on Mary sim- 
 ilar to that in Pikeryng’s interlude, but introducing more 
 
 daringly than its predecessor references to contemporaty 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 Scottish history. A number of parallel passages and iden- 
 
 1. - Eleay, Frederick Gard. "A Chronicle History of the Lon- 
 don Stage 1559-1642." Reeves and Turner, London, 1890, p. 61. 
 
 2. - Plumptre, James B. B. "Observations on Hamlet, and on 
 the motives which most probably induced Shakespeare to fix 
 upon the story of Amleth from the Banish Chronicle of Saxo 
 Grammaticus for the plot of that tragedy; being an attempt 
 to prove that he designed it as an indirect censure of Mary 
 
20 
 
 tical situations are presented to prove this theory, 
 but they are not sufficiently variants of the story that 
 is outlined in Saxo Grammaticus to justify one in contend- 
 ing, as does Plumptre, that "Hamlet" is a veiled attack 
 on Mary Queen of Scots. Shakespeare may have been influenced 
 in the choice of details by affaire in Scotland, but “Ham- 
 let “ is certainly more than a pleasant political document 
 dedicated to the English queen. 
 
 The ban which prevented the great Elizabethans 
 from deciding openly Mary’s guilt or innocence was effective 
 in the reign of her successor, who issued an order “against 
 any representing any Modern Christian King in plays on the 
 
 Queen of Scots.” Cambridge, 1796. A brief statement of 
 the theory is given in the appendix to volume 2 of Furness, 
 "A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare.” 
 
 1.- Claudius, for example, becomes king through his mar- 
 riage with "the imperial jointress of this warlike state” 
 (I, 2), and Bothwell likewise takes the crown matrimonial 
 as Mary’s jointure. Barnley and the elder Hamlet, both 
 graceful, handsome men, are succeeded by men of unsavory 
 reputation, Bothwell bearing throughout England and Scot- 
 land the name of ruffian, drunkard, and rake, and Claudius 
 passing under similar odium. Thr ee months elapse between 
 the death of Barnley and the queen’s marriage with Both- 
 well; and in "Hamlet” the son’s grief is aroused at the 
 marriage of Gertrude with her husband not two months dead” 
 (I, 2). Both kings are "sleeping. .. .of life, of crown, of 
 queen at once dispatch’d: . . . .unhousel’ d, disappointed, 
 
 unaneled, ” (I, 5), and the two counsellors, Biccio and Pol- 
 onius are killed in the presence of their royal mistresses. 
 Hamlet’s words (III, 4) on the death of Polonius are al- 
 most exactly those spoken in Holyrood at the murder of 
 Riccio (Proude, "History of England From the Fall of Wol- 
 sey to the Beath of Elizabeth,” vol. 9, p. 254. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
21 
 
 the stage. James was not likely to encourage public 
 
 discussion of divinely appointed royalty, or to welcome 
 a play either reproving by implication his unfilial con- 
 duct or attacking Elizabeth. In consequence Mary Stuart 
 does not appear in English dramatic literature before the 
 closing of the theatres in 1640. 
 
 Popularity o f the S t qex, .Aft er t.he^Rest oration 
 
 But English dramatists were too fond of dealing 
 with national history to neglect for long the theatrical 
 values in a situation that made England and her royal captive 
 the center of continental conspiracies for twenty years. With 
 the return of the emigrant king in 1660 and the opening 
 of the theatres, they were able to utilize for the first 
 time the possibilities as a tragic heroine which surrounded 
 Mary Stuart. At this time of ebb in English Catholicism a 
 controversial drama in the style of Roulers and the Jesuits 
 was not possible, and the development of Parliamentary power 
 made unnecessary any contrast between Tudor constitutional 
 government and Stuart absolutism. The religious and political 
 aspects of the material being thus closed to them, dramatists 
 selected the human elements, the personalities of the queens 
 in their influence on history. Interest was focused on the 
 love of Norfolk and Mary instead of being centered on her 
 death, and following French rather than German models, the 
 
 1.- Ward, Adolphus William. "A Histoiy of English Dramatic 
 Literature to the Death of Qyeen Anne. M Macmillan, London, 
 1799, vol . 3, p. 23. 
 

 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
22 
 
 queen was pictured as a gentle, noli le- spirited woman sac- 
 rificing her life not for religion but for love. Norfolk 
 was represented as a resolute manly figure, sensible to the 
 claims of love and honor, and in accordance with the ethics 
 of the heroic play exa.lt ing the dictates of honor. Eliz- 
 abeth is viewed magnanimously as a woman of generous heart 
 and fine character who permitted Mary’s execution only to 
 vindicate her own honor as a queen. Like the M Marie Stuart 
 Reyne d’Escosse" of Regnault , these plays are intended to 
 arouse sympathy and admiration, rather than pity, as did 
 the intensely earnest Jesuit dramas, or fear at inexorable 
 retribution for sin, as did Johannes Riemer’s "Von hohen 
 VermiJhlungen. " 
 
 Fourteen years after the laws against the theatres 
 were repealed (1674) John Banks wrote "The Albion Queens," 
 a five-act play in the heroic couplet. The licenser re- 
 fused to permit a performance of it, and it was not produced 
 or published until 1704. Genest speaks of the difficult- 
 ies attendant to its production: "Norfolk says: Kings are 
 
 like divinities on earth - but even this sentiment could 
 not save this Tragedy from being Prohibit ed. .. .by the caprice 
 of the Li censer . . . . f or what reason.... is not easy to con- 
 jecture."^ The licenser offered no objection to Banks’ 
 other historical plays: "The Innocent Usurper" (1685) 
 
 dealing with the rivalry between Elizabeth and Lady Jane 
 
 1. - Net tie t on, George Henry. "English Drama of the Restoration 
 and Eighteenth Century.” Macmillan, New York, 1914. 
 
 2. - Genest, "Some Account of the English Stage," vol. 1, p.423. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
25 
 
 Grey, and •'Virtue Betrayed," (1392), presenting the fate 
 of Anne Boleyn. 
 
 Elizabeth in "The Albion Queens” is anxious to 
 grant justice and royal honors to her cousin, but she can- 
 not receive her until the dishonor attached to Mary’s 
 name has been removed. The duke of Norfolk brings her a 
 letter from Mary, however, telling of the captive’s great 
 affection for her and describing, despite Murray’s pro- 
 tests, the squalor and desolation of Bother ingay. Moved 
 to pity by his account the tender-hearted Elizabeth sends 
 her own coach to bring Mary to London. 
 
 The sincerity of the magnanimous queen is tested 
 when the populace salute with cries of joy Mary’s passage 
 through the streets. Jealousy momentarily overcomes her 
 feelings of mercy and she declines to receive her prisoner. 
 The poor* trembling fugitive, believing herself mocked by 
 the cheers and too broken in spirit to resent them, accepts 
 this blow with patient resignation. She offers to break her 
 troth with Norfolk, knowing now that she can never regain 
 the throne. When the duke is imprisoned she renews her prom- 
 ise and is ready to die with him. 
 
 In spite of the efforts of Davison (Cecil’s sec- 
 retary) to prevent it, a meeting is effected between the 
 two queens. They are reconciled and Elizabeth proclaims 
 
 "Behold Your Queens, both Scot and English here, 
 
 Here, thou wide Ocean, hear thy Albion Queens. 
 
 Let my dread Voice far as thy waves be heard, 
 
 From Silver Thames to Golden Tweed proclaim 
 With Harmony of Drums, and Trumpets Sound, 
 
 Sound Mary and Elizabeth your Queens.” (ill, l) 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .. 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 » ' , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
24 
 
 Emboldened by this proclamation Norfolk confides his love to 
 the English queen. She orders his arrest, yet she cannot 
 deal harshly with him: 
 
 "Eiery and cool, and melting in a Breath, 
 
 At one she sighs, and pities the fall'n Man 
 
 And at the same moment rages, and upbraids him. M (IV, l) 
 
 Cecil and Davison acquaint her of the Babingto n 
 plot, of which Gifford, one of the conspirators, has confessed 
 Mary the instigator. In a moment of passion, indignant that 
 her hospitality should be abueed and her charitable intentions 
 ridiculed, Elizabeth orders the trial of Mary and the exec- 
 ution of Norfolk. 
 
 The final tragedy is not inevitable, since it may 
 be averted at several points in the narrative, and hence the 
 element of suspense is not lacking. There are many irregul- 
 arities of composition, the verse being so unmet rical that 
 one critic calls it "not poetry, but prose run mad,” ^ but 
 the success of the play on the stage testified to its power 
 to arouse the pity of the audience for the three principal 
 
 (2) 
 
 characters. 
 
 Banks has followed Regnault in making Mary and Eliz- 
 abeth dramatically of equal interest, Mary the tragic victim 
 of her implacable enemies, and Elizabeth the tragic victim 
 of her advisers. It is difficult to gain sympathy for both 
 women, but Banks has succeeded in the attempt. Elizabeth is 
 
 1. - Langbaine, Gerard. ”An Account of the English Dramatick 
 Poets.” Oxford, 1691, p. 7. 
 
 2. - ”..it is impossible to avoid being deeply affected at the 
 representation, and even at the reading of his tragic pieces 
 ....he seems to have made it his rule to keep the scene per- 
 
[(%■* *, v**’ V. -'I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
25 
 
 jealous, hasty of temper, and irresolute of will; she can yet 
 he gentle, merciful, and self-sacrificing. Mary is a dreamy, 
 melancholy woman who fears to take love when it comes to her. 
 She will not yield to Norfolk’s wooing as long as the union 
 is dangerous to him. 'When he is imprisoned and there is lit- 
 tle chance of his escaping death, she is proud to acknowledge 
 her love. 
 
 The performance of "The Albion Queens" and the 
 disputes arising from its licensing revived English interest 
 in the fortunes of Mary Queen of Scots, an interest that pro- 
 duced in 1725 Mrs. Eliza Haywood’s "Mary Stuart, Queen of 
 Scots: Being the Secret History of her Life, and the Real 
 
 Causes of all her Misfortunes Containing a Relation of many 
 Particular Transactions in her Reign; never yet Published 
 in any Collection." With this work Mrs. Haywood began that 
 series of scandal novels^ ^ which won her a place in Pope’s 
 "Duhciad" and his arraignment of her as one of "those shame- 
 
 less scribblers. .. .who, in libellous memoirs and novels, 
 
 petually alive, and never suffer his characters to droop. 
 
 The ’Island Queens’ well preserved that power of affecting 
 the passions which appears through all his works, and some- 
 times makes ample amends for want of poetry and language." 
 Baker, David Erskine and Jones, Stephen. "Biographica Dram- 
 atica." Longman, London, 1812, vol. 2, p. 355. 
 
 1.- "A scandal novel or secret history is that type of pseudo- 
 historical romance which interpreted actual history in the 
 light of court intrigue. The writers proceeded on the theory 
 that secret history in recognizing woman's influence upon 
 the destiny of nations was more true than ’pure' history, 
 which took into account only religious, social, or moral 
 factors in judging the conduct of kings and statesmen." 
 Whicher, George Frisbie. "The Life and Romances of Mrs. 
 
 Eliza Haywood, " Columbia University Press, New York, 1915, 
 p. 95 . 
 
26 
 
 reveal the faults or misfortunes of loth sexes, to the ruin 
 of public fame or disturbance of private happinessl" 
 
 The work was drawn from fifteen or sixteen biog- 
 raphies of Mary hastily translated from the French to compete 
 with a rival volume, 'T’he History of the Life and Reign of 
 Mary Stuart, " published a week earlier. It differs from 
 Mrs. Haywood’s fiction only in the large proportion of events 
 between the scenes of flaming passion and romantic ardor which 
 she drew so frequently. "As history it ie worthless, and its 
 significance as fiction lies merely in its attempt to incorp- 
 orate imaginative love scenes with historical fact."^^ 
 
 3£aaE-§*aa A A& 
 
 With the year 1725 there came a decline in the 
 popularity of the Mary Stuart story, and for fifty years 
 there was no novel or drama in which the Scottish queen 
 was a principal figure. By that time the main outlines 
 of its episodes had been determined. Riemer had taken 
 the murder of Darnley and the union with Bothwell as the 
 moment in "Von hohen Verm4Tnlungen, "the German dramas had 
 concerned themselves with Mary’s execution, and Banks had 
 utilized Norfolk’s love for Mary. 
 
 By 1725, too, there had appeared the three possible 
 attitudes ^iich an author might adopt toward Mary Stuart. 
 
 The first, that of the ardent Catholic seeing her a queenly 
 
 1.- Whicher, George Frisbie, "The Life and Romances of Mrs. 
 21iza Haywood, " p. 97. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
27 
 
 martyr, .had teen selected by Jesuit writers, who had given 
 it prominence in German and Austrian universities and in 
 the villages of the Tyrol. The type had been popular until 
 about 1570, when the growing spirit of toleration had made 
 its aggressive Catholicism unpleasant. The last Jesuit 
 drama that appeared was the M Riccius M (1705) of Karl Kolc- 
 zawa, differing from its predecessors in that here, for the 
 first time in a continental religious drama, Mary is subor- 
 dinated to Riccio. He is seen as a blameless foreigner who 
 shares his queen’s martyrdom.' 1 ^ 
 
 "Riccius" is significant in that it combines the 
 religious motive with a second attitude toward Mary Stuart - 
 that of the author who sets a story of his own creation ag- 
 ainst a background of historical fact and who cares less 
 to be scientifically accurate than to write entertainingly. 
 Without compunction he will add a new lover to the list of 
 Mary’s gallants, attribute children to her and Bothwell or 
 to her and Norfolk, and dwell upon the amours of Elizabeth 
 and Leicester. Like Regnault and Madame de Lafayette, he 
 may use Mary’s fate merely as a picturesque setting by em- 
 phasizing one of the minor figures in the story. 
 
 Over half the novels and plays interested in Mary 
 Q^een of Scots show this use of history for its romantic 
 
 1.- M Ricciue M follows the dramas of Prague, Krems, and Neu- 
 berg in a close imitation of the classical tragedy, with a. 
 heavenly chorus and attendant virtues supporting the lovely 
 martyr. The play presents Riccius’ attempt to rid the court 
 of English conspirators, his partial success, and his down- 
 fall through Larnley’s groundless jealousy. The style is 
 pedantic. L ong descriptions of political ethics, conjugal 
 felicity, and Catholic dogma are introduced. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2 8 
 
 suggestion and its color. Several have a desire to present 
 her vividly and completely and to suggest an interpretation 
 of her career based on reliable evidence. A far greater num- 
 ber, however, prefer not to describe her as a living woman. 
 
 She is for them a name with many associations of pomp, glory, 
 and passion, and they set her, a puppet figure, in their 
 stories of adventure and intrigue. As literature they rank 
 with Mrs. Haywood’s scandal novel of 1725. 
 
 By 1725 also not only had the religious and roman- 
 tic aspects of the Mary Stuart problem been considered, but 
 there had been an examination of her early years in Scotland 
 by an analyst of human cha raeter interested in laying bare 
 the inner motives that sway mankind. Johannes Riemer, the 
 obscure German schoolmaster at Weissenfels, had attempted to 
 discover objectively what there was in Mary ’ s nature and in 
 her environment that led tier to react as she did in the crises 
 of her life. He was ready to accept her as "a respectable 
 type of royal womanhood, a pardo nable if not admirable example 
 of human character, " ^ ^ and he neither accused her or de- 
 fended her. The impression that her conduct makes upon him is 
 regret that her nature was not firm enough or fine enough to 
 withstand temptation. 
 
 In the development of the Mary Stuart tradition in 
 literature "Vo n hohen Verm&ilungen" is unique. After the de- 
 cline of the Jesuit drama, English men of letters were free 
 
 1.- Swinburne, Algernon Charles. "Note on the Character of 
 Mary Queen of Scots." Fortnight ly Review, vol. 57, 1882, 
 p. 14. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 » 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
29 
 
 to choose either of two courses: they might follow Regnault 
 
 and Madame de Lafayette in using Mary’s fate as picturesque 
 material, or they might follow Riemer in a minute analysis 
 of her character. Their dependence on French modes during 
 the Restoration led them to choose the former path. Not until 
 Swinburne’s trilogy (1855, 1874, 1881) did any novelist or 
 dramatist attempt the psychological study of Mary’s character 
 that Riemer had undertaken in 1579. 
 

 
 
 ’ ^ t .. } • ' • . *•'. *> •*•*»*< 
 
 , 
 
 jC / <. H.yvt f t;J T . v < i I (H ) *11 "l 
 
 ’ J u: r *t< t i>li 11 
 
 
 
II. MARY STUART IN LITERATURE FROM 1725 TO 1820 
 
 For a period of fifty years after the publication 
 of Mrs. Haywood’s secret history there was no mention in lit- 
 erature of Mary Stuart . The pseudo-classical spirit of the 
 age of Addison, reflecting the temper of aristocratic French 
 literature, regarded unfavorably the selection of modern 
 themes and looked to the classics for its models in form and 
 substance. As a result there was little dramatic literature 
 of native character in England during the early eighteenth 
 century, and none at all with a reference to Maiy Stuart. 
 
 John Banks’ ’The Albion Queens” had remained since 1S74 the 
 
 (l) 
 
 only important endeavor to defend her.' 
 
 Mary’s fame had been permanently blackened by the 
 wide circulation that the English had given to the accus- 
 ations of Buchanan and Drury. During the reign of Elizabeth 
 no charitable comment might appear, and any effort at re- 
 deeming her name in the reign of Jame I or Charles I would 
 have been a hazardous undertaking. James did, however, forbid 
 under penalty of death the publication of Buchanan’s pamphlets. 
 A few historians had written impartial accounts of her life, 
 but the poets and dramatists were more successful in setting 
 their views before the public. The English people, moreover, 
 were glad to believe any charges against Mary, a foreigner, 
 
 1.- ”Biographica Dramatic*, ” vol. 5, p. 24, no. 151, lists 
 a drama "Mary Queen of Scotland, advertised among others, 
 as sold by Wellington, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, in 1705.” 
 
 This probably refers to the early printing of Banks’ tragedy, 
 which was known under various titles, particularly "The Is- 
 land Queens” and "The Albion Queens.” 
 

 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 ( 
 
 
 t 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 
SI 
 
 a Frenchwoman, and a Catholic. Elizabeth was a benevolent 
 queen, with whom the majority of her subject a were well sat- 
 isfied, and no exaltation of Mary could be popular as long 
 as the Virgin Q,ueen was universally admired. This extra- 
 vagant praise, almost adoration, of Elizabeth continued 
 well into the century,' 1 2 ' until the efforts of the Pretenders 
 to regain the throne brought the Stuart cause into prominence. 
 
 The Attitude , of Ge rman Cy nicistq To ward Mfetry Stuart 
 
 During the period Mary became the prey of contemp- 
 orary ballads and long narrative poems which exhibited her 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 the incarnation of vice. Hot only was she so regarded in 
 
 England and Scotland, but she was the object of similar at- 
 tacks throughout Germany, a country which at the time of her 
 death had hailed her as a saint and martyr. The best example 
 of this attitude is "Marie Stuart," by C. H. Spiesz, in many 
 ways the most revolting treatment that the story has ever 
 produced. It is not the fate of Mary that Spiesz delights 
 in dwelling upon, for he presents her so inconsist ent ly vir- 
 tuous and sinful that she inspires no sympathy. He is ab- 
 sorbed in the wickedness of Murray and Walter Mildmay (the 
 English chancellor), men whose hatred of the queen arises 
 
 1. - "If Walpole (in ’Royal and Noble Authors’) had treated 
 the character of Queen Elizabeth with dirrespect, all the 
 women should tear him to pieces, for abusing the glory of 
 her sex." ( ’^The Works of Dodsley, ” M. V/ • Montagu. London, 
 1803, vol. 5, p. 150). 
 
 2. - See Child, F. J. "The English and Scottish Popular Bal- 
 lads, " Boston, 1882; Cranstoun, James, "Satirical Poems of 
 the Time of the Reformation, " Edinburgh and London, 1891; 
 and Irving, David, "History of Scottish Poetry," Edinburgh, 
 1861, pp. 405, 422, 441. 
 
 5.- Played before a royal audience in Berlin in 1787. 
 

 
 
 
 .... 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 . 
 
 I ■ 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
Z2 
 
 from a fundamentally evil nature and an inhuman blood-lust. 
 
 Spiesz uses 'The Albion Queens" as his source, 
 but the material is transformed by his cynical conception of 
 man’s essential depravity. Mary especially suffers at his 
 hands. In the first act she is a spoiled, petulant coquette; 
 in the succeeding four she is a poor, wronged woman. As a 
 heroine she has no dramatic meaning, no tragic significance. 
 
 From the first her lot is decided. Murray and Mildmay are 
 not disconcerted by her Innocence, for they have decided that 
 she must die.^ 1 ^ 
 
 Elizabeth, like her rival, is greatly debased in 
 Spiesz* effort to show that there is no nobility in the mot- 
 ives that guide mankind. In "The Albion Queens" she genuinely 
 weighs her natural tendency to mercy with what she has come 
 to consider the best interests of the state. Her indignation 
 at Mary’s ingratitude is that of a virtuous woman and a dig- 
 nified sovereign. Even after her decision is made she would 
 modify it did not a sense of justice forbid. In "Marie Stuart/’ 1 
 however, Elizabeth is only nominally "merciful, just, tender- 
 hearted"; the court iers’ plaudits deceive no one. She ex- 
 hibits as a queen a moral elevation and a power of delivering 
 intensely personal invective that would do credit t o an Eng- 
 lish fishwife, and as a woman a heartlessness and violent hat- 
 
 1.- Mildmay: "Oder abnahmt Gleichvieli Sind die Briefe auth- 
 
 entisch, urn so besser, sind sie falsch, auch gut l Sie be- 
 
 weisen doch, was sie beweisen sollen Sie beftfrdern rneinen 
 
 Plan und ich den Ihrigen. Sey er gerecht Oder nicht, gilt 
 wohl beyden gleich. Mit engen Gewissen und offnen Herzen, mein 
 lieber Graf, kommt man bey Ho.fe nicht weit . Wenn sich ein 
 Gltfck anbietet, der musz es annehmen, und ist’s nicht eins, ob 
 man auf einen graden Oder Seitenweg danach auegeht?" 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 * 
 
 V 
 
 - 
 
 ♦ 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
 ■ 
 
 . 
 
 
53 
 
 red that disgraces her sex. Instead of judiciously deter- 
 mining Mary’s sent ence she entertains her counsellors with an 
 amusing hit of comedy: she flies into a terrific passion at 
 
 the sight of the casket letters (which she has ordered them 
 to prepare) and is with difficulty restrained from starting 
 to Eotheringay for hand to hand encounter with her royal sis- 
 t er. 
 
 After this impressive view of English royalty one 
 expects the fitting close to the play that comes with Mary’s 
 farewells at the scaffold. The grisly suggestion of the 
 scene is worthy of Spiesz in his best manner. Amid the 
 groans of her maids Mary is led off the stage, there are 
 three thuds as the axe descends again and again, the first 
 blow having been ineffective, and Murray, complacent ly rub- 
 bing his hands, departs for London to delight Elizabeth 
 with the news. After this revolting picture one's faith in 
 human character in its potential nobility is somewhat re- 
 stored on learning that the play was received with great 
 hostility by Berlin audiences. 
 
 £en£)ved Anter^sWn ^^ry ^ij^Mi d- E ^i^t eyit u 
 
 While poets and playwrights were emphasizing the 
 sensational elements in Mary’s career, the situations and con- 
 trasts of character that were theatrically effective, hist- 
 orians were beginning a critical examination of the accus- 
 ations against her. There was the problem of the casket 
 
 1.- "Las Publikum nahm dieses mitt elm^szig e Produkt nach Ver- 
 di enst auf. Sich an die sen St off zu wagen, ist ein ktfhner 
 Gedanke eines Autors, dem es sowohl an Sprache als an Erf ind- 
 ung f ehlt . " ( "Lite rat ur- und Theat erzei tung , " Wien, 1784, p.119) 
 

 
 
 
34 
 
 letters, which, forged or genuine, had brought to en end her 
 long stay in prison. T here were the perplexities to be ex- 
 plained in her early reign in Scotland, especially her com- 
 plicity in Darnley’e murder and her relations with his murd- 
 erer. There was yet to be determined the position of Riccio 
 and Chastelard as the amorous dupes of the queen or as blame- 
 less attendants, and there was the task of uncovering her 
 real personality to determine its pert in bringing the final 
 catastrophe. 
 
 In 1754 there appeared the first important defense 
 of Mary in Goodall’s "Examination of the letters said to be 
 written by Mary queen of Scots to lames earl of Bothwell, also 
 an inquiry into the murder of King Henry. 1 ' It was followed 
 by the histories of William Robertson end David Hume, both 
 critical though somewhat prejudiced studies of her reign, and 
 by John Whitaker’s "Mary Queen of Scots Vindicated.** The 
 latter work is devoted to the casket letters and regards Mary’s 
 death as an act in which "Elisabeth’s avowed passions of 
 rivalehip were much more intimately concerned, than the well- 
 feigned purposes of interest or religion. ^ 
 
 But these studies, admirable though they were for 
 their careful examination of sources, were not actuated solely 
 by a desire for historical accuracy. In part they owed their 
 
 1.- **lt was an Englieh queen who could do this," continues Whit- 
 aker, "it was one of the most enlightened princes that ever sat 
 on the throne of England; it was one, whose name I was taught 
 to lisp in my infancy as the honour of her sex, and the glory 
 of our i sle . " 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
35 
 
 choice of subject to the movement of sent iment all sm which 
 dominated English letters in the last ha, If of the century, 
 after death in 1744 removed dope’s brilliant example. The 
 zeal for lew and order which charact erized the classical 
 spirit had sacrificed any great interest in the emotions. 
 
 It had set up rigid standards of form, beauty, polish, and 
 refinement, but their appeal was to the intellect, the mind 
 trained to appreciate subtle distinctions. Now, in reaction, 
 men were turning to events in the past or in remote parts 
 of the earth to escape from the world of London coffee-houses 
 and drawing-rooms. Shakespeare was successfully revived by 
 Garrick. A new impetus was given to the drama by the in- 
 clusion, as serious material, not as objects of satire, of 
 lives which because of rudeness or humble station had been 
 regarded with contempt by the aristocratic Augustan age. 
 Adherents of the school came to see human nature as fund- 
 amentally good, pure, and lovely, with tragedy consisting of 
 virtue in undeserved distress. Evil was a matter of the 
 emotions, created by non-ccnf ormit y, and atonable by sub- 
 sequent rectitude. 
 
 It was natural that Mary’s cause should attract 
 both historians and dramatists in this age dominated by a 
 new feeling for man, greater tenderness for the unfortunate, 
 greater sympathy for the humble and obscure, and awakened 
 interest in life in distant countries and earlier times. 
 
 The accusations against her had been so bitter and so pro- 
 longed that on first glance she seemed the victim of slander- 
 

 
 
 
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 , 
 
36 
 
 oue malice. The decline of Elizabeth’ s popularity made poss- 
 ible the praise of a rival queen, and the abatement of 
 religious hatred allowed an emphasis on the pathos of Mary’s 
 death not permitted in a time of bitter strife between Cath- 
 olics and Prot estarrt 8. Mary might be viewed as a pure, noble- 
 minded woman caught inextricably in the toils of circumstance 
 and bearing heroically her unmerited suffering. At the same 
 time there were interesting possibilities in the view that 
 recognized her as an evildoer but which promptly exculpated 
 her by showing her innate goodness. 
 
 Mary Stuart Viewed bv the School of Sentimentalism 
 It was in the guise of a virtuous woman unjustly 
 brought to death that laiy Queen of Scots appeared in English 
 
 literature during the eighties and nineties. She was the 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 heroine of a play by Dr. Thomas Erancklin, a play, "Mary 
 
 f 3J 
 
 Queen of Scotland” by John Yorke, • * and a long novel, “The 
 
 1. - A review in 1784 of ‘The Albion Queens’* illustrates this 
 
 attitude, not possible a century earlier: *The characters of 
 
 both queens seem to be at length clearly understood. Abilit- 
 ies of the first class at that time were the qualifications 
 of both - but a Good Woman would conceive it a profanation 
 
 to have it said, her heart was not better than either thmt of 
 the one or the other.” 
 
 2. - In "Biographies. Dra.matica, ” vol. 3, p. 24 there is listed 
 a tragedy, ”Mary Queen of Scots, in Ms. bound v-ith a volume 
 of Dr. Erancklin’s two printed tragedies, and bearing intern- 
 al evidence of having been written by him. The author is Dr. 
 Thomas Erancklin ( “Dictionary of National Biography,” vol. 1, 
 p. 252), whose eldest son in 1837 published the play, till 
 then in manuscript. ‘Thomas Erancklin, Mary Queen of Scots, 
 an Historical Play, edited by Lieutenant -Colonel William Eran- 
 cklin.” Pickering, London, 1837. 
 
 3. - Notes and Queries , series 7, no. 8, July-Decerober , 1889, 
 
 p. 486 ff . refers to "Mary, Queen of Scotland: an Historical 
 
 Tragedy” (c. 1780 ) by "John Yorke" of Gourth waite, Yorkshire. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 ♦ 
 
 I 
 
 
 
37 
 
 Recess, " Toy Sophia Lee. The latter work is especially in the 
 mood of the sentimentalist, setting forth Mary’s love for 
 
 the two daughters which she hears to Norfolk after their secret 
 
 m (l) 
 
 marriage at Tut bury. 
 
 Perhaps the most perfect illustration, however, of 
 eighteenth century sentimentalism influencing the story of 
 
 Mary Stuaxt is the "Mary Gjueen of Scots” hy John St. John, 
 
 played hy Kemble and Mrs. Siddons at Drury Lane, March 30, 
 
 (2) 
 
 1789. It follows Banks closely, often borrowing unchanged 
 
 ( 1 ) 
 
 its dialogue. ' It differs from its predecessors in its 
 complete disregard for the unities and its insistence of the 
 pathos of Mary's last days. There is evinced, as in Banks, 
 sympathy for both queens, each an admirable woman, and there 
 is similarly much made of Norfolk’s struggle between love 
 and honor. It is significant of a change from the heroic 
 play to the romantic or sentimental play that Norfolk here 
 unhesitatingly places love foremost. ^ The dramatic formula 
 
 1. - “The Recess was not a masquerade, but the plot and char- 
 acters slightly picture the reign of Elizabeth. This was one 
 of the first novels in which there was an attempt to represent 
 a past age with something like accuracy. As this was the first 
 historical novel, using the term in the modern sense, it had 
 perhaps a right to be one of the poorest for it is impossible 
 to conceive three volumes of print in which there are fewer 
 sentences that leave an impress on the mind than this once pop- 
 ular novel.” (Whitmore, Clara H. "Woman' s Work in English 
 Fiction." G. P. Putnam’s, New York, 1910, p. 105. 
 
 2. - Genest, John. "Some Account of the English Stage," vol. 5, 
 pp. 535-35. 
 
 3. - Compare Banks Act V, scene 1 with St John Act V, scene 4. 
 
 4. - A.e in Banks, there is evidence externally of this struggle 
 in the duke’s mind, but the weight of sentiment is cast so com- 
 pletely in favor of love that there is little necessity for a 
 choice. Norfolk, whose wavering in the heroic "The Albion 
 Queens" was regarded as commendable, is now viewed somewhat con 
 temptuouely - the "half-paced, soft, scrupulous fool." 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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28 
 
 underlying the play is obviously the belief that tragedy con- 
 sists of the misfortunes of the righteous. In consequence 
 
 ( 1 ) 
 
 the play contains no real conflict and reaches no high 
 level of intensity. ' 
 
 Weakness of Sentimental Interpretation of Mary Stuart 
 
 The reason for the failure of these sentimentalist 
 novels and plays is their inability to see Mary’s life com- 
 pletely and to present it with all its inconsistencies. Their 
 authors deal with the materials, in their optimistic faith 
 in human purity, as inadequately as those, like Spiesz, who 
 exhibit Mary essentially wicked and ignoble. The two choose 
 different periods in her life, the eighteenth century sent- 
 imentalist taking her imprisonment and execution, the time 
 when she seems most th= victim of tyranny and oppression, and 
 
 1. - St. John neglects the opportunities which he has for 
 spirited description and resorts to frequent soliloquies to 
 aid in the exposition. He entirely omits an interview be- 
 tween Elizabeth and Mary, a scene that was very effective 
 in "TheAlbion Qjjeens.” The sources of action are not seen; 
 events only are presented, and they in summary fashion. 
 
 2. - This la.ck of dramatic warmth was apparent in the stage 
 
 production. A contemporary review ( European Magazine , vol. 
 15, 1769, p. 242) speaks of the play as rather a narrative 
 than a drama: "a versification of parts of Robertson’s 
 
 History and is cold and uninteresting. No person ever saw 
 Mrs. Siddons in such a colorless role. No one ever wit- 
 nessed Bank’s play on this subject without tears; but even 
 the efforts of Mrs. Siddons could hardly produce any at 
 this representation Some parts of the piece had a lud- 
 
 icrous effect, and some were tedious. It had a most power- 
 ful support from the audience of the first night ; but with 
 every assistance of scenes, dresses, and excellent acting, 
 will probably never be popular." 
 
 The published version of the play, however, reached a 
 third edition within the year. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
39 
 
 the materialist selecting her early rule in Scotland, years 
 when she seems a heartless, immoral coquette. Writers of the 
 two schools alike isolate her character from its historical 
 setting and portray it to win pity or arouse repulsion. A 
 century earlier the reverse had been true, her personality 
 being ignored and the factors in her environment receiving 
 first attention. Catholic writers had seized upon the relig- 
 ious issue to canonize her, and apologists had described the 
 political forces at work in England and Scotland to exculpate 
 her or justify Elizabeth. Dramatists in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury as well as in the seventeenth centuxy had been unable to 
 find the middle ground - to portray religious and political 
 conditions without giving theological discussions or treatises 
 on diplomatic ethics, or, in depicting her personality, to 
 steer between the sordidness and pessimism of scepticism and 
 the puerile optimism of sentimentalism. 
 
 The first dramatist to suggest a solution of the 
 difficulty was Vittorio Alfieri, who published in Florence in 
 1778 hie "Maria Stuarda.” The author considered the play wesk 
 and cold, the only one of his tragedies which he regretted 
 having written. In spite of the unreality and lack of ex- 
 ternal action for which he condemns it, the play must be reck- 
 oned with because of its two innovations. It presents a Prot- 
 estant reaction to Mark’s execution in showing Scotch Presby- 
 terianism rightfully triumphant and it seeks to moke Mary the 
 victim of her own deeds, not a puppet with no part in the 
 tragedy which consumes her. 
 

 
 
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 « 
 
 
 
 
 
 -• 
 
 > 
 
 
 « 
 
 
 
 
 
40 
 
 
 It ie probable that Aifieri was not grea.tly con- 
 cerned about Mary Stuart’s ca,reer. The play is one of the 
 many historical tragedies which he wrote and was undertaken 
 at the request of his fiancee, the Countess of Albany, with- 
 out any thorough study of the period. Had he been anxious 
 to verify his impressions of the story, he might have referred 
 to the old German dramas and the intrigue plays of Diamante 
 and Savaro, which were widely circulated in Italy and which 
 
 he had read some years before. He chose deliberately to for- 
 
 ( 1 ) 
 
 get them, not wishing to put restraints upon his imagination. 
 
 "Maria Stuarda" would have been merely the ordinary 
 story of Mary’ 8 life at Foth er ingay with even less historical 
 basis than usual, had not Aifieri applied classical tests 
 to the scanty stuff from which he made his play. He was desir- 
 ous above all of writing a drama which in its severity of 
 spirit, its observance of the unities, and its depiction of 
 a single passion would approach the Greek ideal of tragedy. 
 
 The French drama of Regnault failed with its formlessness, 
 
 1. - Aifieri once boasted that his tragedies had a style and 
 a movement which might not be beautiful but which was his 
 own work. He declined to read Shakespeare lest he might un- 
 consciously model his dramatic technique after that of the 
 Elizabethans. 
 
 2. - Morton, for example, does not appear or make himself felt 
 at any point in the action. Murry is in Scotland and in com- 
 munication with the queen to the last. Lamorre is created 
 
 by Aifieri’ s confusion of the Regent with John Knox. Darn- 
 ley is simply a faithless, thankless husband who has the bad 
 judgment to be jealous, and Bothwell is the urgent champion 
 of the perplexed queen. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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41 
 
 he thought, because its protagonist was merely a paseive 
 
 agent. He recognized the diffulty of making Mary a figure 
 
 with tragic guilt since her story was only the story of a 
 
 (l) 
 
 highly unfortunate woman, but he met it by the intro- 
 duction of the Puritan Lamorre. This character, compounded 
 from Murray and John Knox, forceiblly presents Presbyterian- 
 ism as the faith that can save troubled Scotland. Mary re- 
 fuses to abjure Catholicism, knowing that her refusal means 
 civil war. In this test, as in others in the play, she 
 fails because her emotions dominate her. An ambitious woman 
 she will not give the crown matrimonial to Parnley because 
 he will then be her equal. She loves him, inconsistently 
 enough, with a passionate ardor, even while his weakness and 
 arrogance arouse her contempt. "Ah, were I skilled in reign 
 ing, as I am in loving thee, "she says once, but she makes no 
 effort to deliver the government to wiser hands. 
 
 Her lot is not wholly of her own making, however, 
 for environment has forced her into the power of evil court- 
 iers. At the end of the play she dedicatee herself to veng- 
 eance for Parnley’ s murder: 
 
 'The truth shall be discovered 
 And let him tremble, whoso’ er he be 
 The atrocious author of a deed like this. 
 
 For vengeance now, and nothing else I live." 
 
 1.- "stante che chi la fa uccidere e Elisabetta, la natural 
 sua capitale nemica e rivele; e che non v’e tra loro percio 
 ne legami, ne contrast! di passione, che rendando tragedia- 
 bile la morte di Maria, abbenche veramente inguista, straord 
 irm, rie., e tragicamente funesta." (Magnoni, Tereeita. "Le 
 donne delle Tragedie di Vittorio Alfieri." Naples, 1900). 
 

 
 
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 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
42 
 
 Eut she has trusted too far to Eothwell. There is no hope tha.t 
 
 she can retain the throne. 
 
 The Humanistic Attitude Toward Mary Stuart 
 
 Alfieri’s fondness for Greek simplicity constantly 
 
 tends to efface everything hut the main lines of the action, 
 
 and the play, in consequence, lacks warmth. Yet it makes 
 
 a notable stride forward in the literary history of Mary 
 
 Stuart, in that it marks a stage between sentimentalism and 
 ( o) 
 
 humanism, ' the former seeing Mary as a naturally noble char- 
 acter, the latter seeing her as inseparably a compound of good 
 and evil. The former sees tragedy in her undeserved distress, 
 while to the latter her real tragedy lies in her fatal weak- 
 ness, that fault that brings to ruin a character capable of 
 attaining great heights. 
 
 1. - The characters are few - five in number (Mary, Earnley, 
 Eothwell, Ormond, the English ambassador, and Lamorre, the 
 apostle of peace - and the narrative moves to its appointed 
 end without any explanatory dialogue. To a certain extent 
 the brevity and restraint are worthy of praise, but they do 
 not allow enough graphic description to give the impression 
 of reality. The episode of Earnley’ s death, for example, 
 is told as nonchalant ly as if no one beyond the four char- 
 acters in the play were involved. 
 
 2. - Three years after St. John’s play (1792) appeared Mrs. 
 
 Mary Eeverell’s "Mary Queen of Scots - an Historical Tragedy, 
 or Eramatic Poem," of which Genest (vol. 10, p. 20l) says: 
 
 "a poor play, particularly in point of language." "Biographies 
 Eramatica, " vol. 3, p. 25, part 1, no. 186 subjoins a "short 
 but perhaps sufficient specimen of this lady’s poetry: 
 
 Qu. Mary: Earth’s summit of bliss i’ve long since reach’d: 
 
 How in misery chain’d, each state I retrospect." 
 
 The play, like Alfieri’s "Maria Stuerda, " makes Mary the 
 victim of her own sin, but the conception of character is thor- 
 oughly in accord with sentimental tenets. 
 

 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 - 
 
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 ' 
 
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45 
 
 The possibilities for a well-rounded depiction of 
 Mary’s character which Alfieri barely touched were realized 
 for the first time in literature by Schiller in his "Maria 
 Stuart." In accordance with the humanistic or classical tem- 
 per here was undertaken a representation of a drama of human 
 passion against a historical background. The situation 
 Schiller recognized as one with inherent elements that could 
 arouse pity and fear. The chief problem was to build a plot 
 in which Mary would appear acting the climax must be the 
 inevitable result of her own sin. He therefore invented the 
 figure of Mortimer, who awakened Mary’s desire for liberty 
 but effected her destruction when she chose Leicester’s love 
 instead of his. 
 
 Mary at the beginning of the play feels keenly the 
 wrongs done her, but her old spirit is broken. Her long im- 
 prisonment, the separation from her friends, the suspense 
 regarding her fate, the refusal of religious consolation, 
 the remorse for the murder of Larnley - all have brought her 
 so near despair that she endures Paulet’s insults with patient 
 dignity . 
 
 It is at this time when Mary believes herself com- 
 pletely abandoned that Mortimer declares himself a convert to 
 Catholicism and her devoted adherent. His story of the French 
 court recalls vividly her happy days at Paris, and the news 
 
 1*- Schiller arrived independently at this conclusion. He did 
 not read Alfieri until 1805, three years after "Maria Stuart" 
 was written. He knew "The Albion Queens," but he used Euchan- 
 an, Hume, and Archenholz as his main sources. For the account 
 of the execution he relied on the description in Brantome. 
 

 
 
 
 
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44 
 
 that the duke of Guise is still scheming for her rescue 
 brings new hope. Sympathetic companionship and the promise 
 of aid work an entire change iii her mental condition. She 
 ceases to wait quietly for Elizabeth’s decision, and sends 
 a letter to Leicester asking his help. Self-confidence re- 
 stored by the prospect of release, she refuses to accept Bur- 
 leigh’s announcement of the sentence of the court. With a 
 spirit that she did not show before she presents in an eloq- 
 uent speech the illegality of her trial, making it clear 
 that tyranny, not justice, has prompted the verdict. 
 
 The first act, with its skilful exposition and the 
 keen interest which it arouses in Mary’s fortunes, accomplishes 
 more than the entire five acts of St. John’s play. Mary is 
 not a woman without faults, but her remorse for her sin is 
 sincere and awakens the reader’s pity. She has been en- 
 dowed by a deeply passionate nature, and her education 
 in France and her surroundings at Holyrood have aided in 
 making her thoughtless and selfish. Her greed for power 
 and a mad infatuation for Bothwell have led her to consent 
 to the murder of Darnley. By the time of the first act 
 her better nature has asserted itself. Her conduct in Eng- 
 land has been blameless. 
 
 The second act, laid at Elizabeth's court, exhibits 
 Leicester, a selfish, ambitious, cowardly courtier and con- 
 trasts his pretended love for the Scottish queen with the 
 ardent, sacrificial passion of Mortimer. It introduces Eliz- 
 abeth, whom Schiller elsewhere terras his "royal hypocrite," 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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45 
 
 a vain jealous woman whose natural cruelty has been developed 
 by the unhappiness of her early years. Her only care i s to 
 preserve the appearance of virtue, and she urges Mortimer to 
 murder Mary that she may not have to deliver judgment against 
 her. 
 
 In the third act there comes the test of both Mary 
 and Elizabeth. The Scottish queen is jubilant over the lib- 
 erty which has been granted her, and regards it as an indic- 
 ation of the complete freedom that Leicester will gain for 
 her. Her mental condition is exact ly opposite to that in 
 which she appealed to Mortimer for an interview. In her 
 new-found hope of release she has no desire for a reconcil- 
 iation that will discredit her throughout Europe. She con- 
 trols herself, however, and humbly pleads her cause. Met 
 with bitter contempt, she answers taunt with taunt, incensed 
 at the endeavor to make her shameful in Leicester's eyes. The 
 world knows the worst of her, and she is better than her name, 
 but Elizabeth covers unchastity with the garb of royal honors. 
 Silent and defeated the English queen withdraws, leaving Mary 
 exultant that Leicester has witnessed her triumph. 
 
 She soon learns the worth of his affection. He will 
 rish nothing for her sake, and her conduct has closed to her 
 tine last chance of mercy. The one rescue possible for her is 
 Mortimer's plan, which he will undertake only in return for 
 her love. She has sealed her own doom. 
 
 The concluding acts show the close of Mary’s life. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
43 
 
 Her sentence is precipitated by her own deed,^^ "but she 
 is innocent of the crime for which she suffers. With com- 
 posure and resignation she prepares for death, receiving 
 
 the last comforts of the church when her request for a 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 priest is unexpectedly granted.'' She forgives Leicester 
 his cruel mockery, and goes forth on his arm to the scaf- 
 fold as she once thought to go forth with him to the altar. 
 
 The drama does not end here: Elizabeth cannot 
 
 triumph over the victim of her jealousy and hypocrisy. Her 
 malice avenges itself upon her. Shrewsbury leaves her, 
 having failed to recall her to her nobler self, her favorite 
 forsakes her, and she is left in tragic isolation. 
 
 Schille r* 8 A nalysis of the a Probl^m 
 The greatest advance which Schiller makes is the 
 
 1. - The fourth act shows the preparation of the death-warrant . 
 Eurleigh tells Leicester that his relations with Mary are 
 known and that their correspondence has been seized. With 
 cowardly selfishness Leicester thinks only of concealing his 
 treason. He orders Mortimer’s arrest as a conspirator and 
 urges Mary* a immediate execution. In her choice of lovers 
 Mary has made a fatal error of judgment. 
 
 When the death-warrant comes before Elisabeth for sign- 
 ature Burleigh and Shrewsbury, the one wicked, the other just, 
 advise her about the wisdom of the deed. The queen realizes 
 that her enemy's death is necessary to the state, but person- 
 al hatred is a stronger motive. Mary has come between her and 
 every hope of happiness, and has robbed her of her favorite, 
 Lei cest er. 
 
 The quarrel scene is a controlling factor in Elizabeth’s 
 decision. By undertaking a second appeal to Leicester Mary 
 has hastened the catastrophe. 
 
 2. - It ha.8 been argued by critics, especially by German Prot- 
 estants that Schiller has introduced Catholic propaganda in 
 allowing Mary to receive the confessional and communion on the 
 stage . 
 
 To accuse Schiller of pro-Catholic sympathies is utterly 
 to misunderstand his artistic method. He is intent on bring- 
 ing to the aid of the narrative as rich and varied a setting 
 as he can devise. The scene adds both pathos and a higher, 
 more spiritual note. 
 

 
 
 
47 
 
 application of the humanistic belief that human character is 
 paradoxically good and bad. Eurleigh is a cool, calculating 
 statesman, knowing no scruples when the welfare of the state 
 is involved, but his conduct is mitigated by his sincere love 
 for England. Simiarly Mortimer’s sensual desires are com- 
 pensated for by his impulsive, passionate enthusiasm for Mary’s 
 cause, for which he can die quietly and uncomplainingly . 
 
 It is in Mary that the paradox is most apparent. The 
 thoughtlessness the the waywardness that made her sin with 
 Bothwell have been atoned for by twenty years’ unmerited suf- 
 fering in English prisons. In discouraging Mortimer's plot 
 to assassinate Elizabeth she stands on higher moral ground 
 than before, although she is attracted to Leicester in the 
 same manner that she had been to Bothwell. The quarrel scene 
 shows still further development of her better nature, for 
 she displays a self-control that would have been impossible 
 in earlier days. Yet she is still humanly frail, and when 
 she does give way to her scorn and hatred she becomes viol- 
 ently abusive. In a greater moment of life, the last fare- 
 wells before her execution, her nobler self again prevails. 
 
 She resolutely renounces earthly hope, and death, which in the 
 first act held many horrors to her remorseful mind, now is 
 welcomed as a haven where she may expiate her crime. 
 
 This Mary combines the unrestrained passion of 
 Riemer’s Mary with the serenity, the queenly dignity, and the 
 heroic resignation of Banks’ heroine. While in the crises of 
 her life she makes her own decisions, she moulds her ideals 
 

 
 
 
 
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48 
 
 in harmony with the religious, social, and political "background. 
 Schiller does not advance these factors in palliation of her 
 offense; he presents them as part of Mary’s milieu, "by in- 
 teraction with which her character has been formed. His at- 
 titude toward them, in general that of the humanist, is one of 
 reverence for the great institutions - the church, the school, 
 the state, the court - which have been the bearers of culture 
 down through the ages. 
 
 An interpretation of Mary Stuart’s character which 
 is in complete harmony with that of Schiller occurs in "The 
 Abbot " by Sir Walter Scott (1820). It treats of the queen’s 
 
 captivity at Lochleven and her escape to Niddrie. Both this 
 novel and "Maria Stuart” are informed by a desire to present 
 a human theme against a setting of Scottish history. The 
 
 1.- A year after Schiller’s "Maria Stuart" (l80l) there was 
 published in Edinburgh "Mary Stewart Queen of Scots, a Hist- 
 orical Drama, " which dwelt briefly with the early reign of 
 the Scottish queen. It centered around her escape from Loch- 
 leven, her flight to England, and the force of the conspiracy 
 against her. The innovation that the drama makes is the un- 
 happy love of George Douglas, rescuer of Mary from Lochleven, 
 and her attendant, Adelaide de Verneul. In 1807 the play 
 again appeared, under the title "Mary Steward Queen of Scots, 
 a Dramatic Poem, " with the name of the author, James Grahame. 
 The play was never acted, lacking "that passionate and happy 
 vigour which the stage requires." (Cunningham, Allan. "Biog- 
 raphical and Critical History of the Last Fifty Years," Edin- 
 burgh and London, 1852.) Although it is frequently incorrect 
 in composition and "deficient in dramatic effect, this trag- 
 edy is not without some claim to praise. The sentiments are 
 often energetic, and suitable to the characters by whom they 
 are expressed; and the author in many places evinces a know- 
 ledge of the human heart." ( "Eiographica Dramatica, " vol. 5, 
 p. 25) . 
 
 "The Death of Darnley" by V/niiam Sotheby (1814) is pub- 
 lished in a collection entitled "Five Tragedies" (Murray, Lon- 
 don, 1814 ) . 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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49 
 
 novelist, however, is not so much interested as is the dram- 
 atist in showing Mary’s tragic guilt. He is more absorbed in 
 the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism in these 
 disturbed, eventful times and is intent on illuminating nat- 
 ional history to show how broad political movements, such as 
 the growth of Presbyterianism, have influenced human character* 
 
 In consequence he selects Roland Graeme and Catherine 
 Seyton as convenient figures for the cetnral love story and in- 
 volves them in the religious strife, seen in the election of 
 the new abbot, and in the struggle of political factions. Prot- 
 estantism is respected as a great historical force. Its 
 representative, Murray, thus cannot be the monster of hatred 
 pictured by Spiesz, and Scott draws him a man in whom evil 
 constantly strives with good. Selfish ambition guides him, 
 but he i 8 not insensible to feelings of pity for his sister. 
 
 In the depiction of Mary’s character Scott follows 
 
 Schiller in creating a woman with many noble qualities, kept 
 
 from happiness by numerous imperfections. He does not commit 
 
 himself on the question of her knowledge of Bothwell’s deed 
 
 ( 1 ) 
 
 at Kirk o’ Field, and the novel leaves with the reader a 
 deep interest in Mary and sympathy for her lot rather than a 
 firm belief in her innocence. She follows the dubious dip- 
 lomacy of the house of Guise; she delights in taunting the 
 aged Lady Douglas and in using her royal prerogative to in- 
 
 1.- When Graeme arrives outside Edinburgh he asks the old 
 falconer who accompanies him concerning the ruins of Kirk 
 o’ Field. His guide replies: "Ask no more about it. Some- 
 
 body got foul play, and somebody got the blame of it, and 
 the game began thare that perhaps will not be played out in our 
 time. M 
 
f 
 
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 * 
 
50 
 
 suit the older woman; she would readily enter a love intrigue 
 with Roland Graeme or George Douglas if ambition did not re- 
 strain her; she "becomes temporarily insane under the stress 
 of violent emotion. Rut for the most part she is a calm, dig- 
 nified queen, bearing with composure the slights which Ruthven 
 puts upon her. In her relations with her attendants she is a 
 kind, gentle mistress, with a winning charm of manner and sin- 
 cere regard for their welfare. She is a devout Catholic, but 
 she is never blatant about her faith, as is the Mary of Eanks 
 and of Jesuit drama. She is mildly surprised that any one 
 should try to convert her to Protestantism. 
 
 Import anc e _of .S chiller J%, n A Scott in the Ma.ry. Stuart .Tradition 
 It is because they recognize the duality in Mary's 
 nature that Schiller's "Maria Stuart" and Scott’s "The Abbot" 
 come closer to the heart of the Mary Stuart problem than any 
 novels or dramas written before them. No other works had 
 essayed, or so successfully achieved, a harmony between the 
 various aspects of her career. Whenever religious and politic- 
 al conditions had been discarded, historical truth had been 
 so twisted that Mary appeared either a soulless harlot or a 
 patient, cruelly maligned woman. Scott and Schiller, on the 
 other hand, depicted her as a woman with both harlot and saint 
 in her nature, a woman neither to be condemned nor canonized, 
 a woman who exemplified a noble spirit brought low by human 
 frailty. They did not neglect the important movements of the 
 time but subordinated them as environmental influences upon 
 Mary’ 8 life. In each case the story is told not for its own 
 

 . 
 
 
 
 
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51 
 
 sake, although it is interesting as a narrative, hut for its 
 value as a document of human passions. 
 

 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I j 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
III. MARY STUART IN NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE 
 
 Minor S ent imental JT r eat tpent s of Mary Stu art 
 The interpretation of Mary Queen of Scots as Loth 
 woman and queen presented by "Maria Stuart" and "The Abbot" 
 was the one that continued popular during the first half 
 of the nineteenth century. The dominant literary temper 
 of the period was sentimentalism. Writers were still turning 
 to the lives of historical personages for colorful settings, 
 and in Mary’s fate they saw an opportunity for picturesque, 
 romantic description and a wealth of stirring episode. In 
 general they were indifferent to the problem which Schiller 
 saw as the most insoluble one in the situation - namely, that 
 of making Mary the cause of her downfall. Their main in- 
 tent was to write ent ert ai ningly rather than to illuminate 
 history or to point a moral. Their work is often hasty, 
 showing only superficial study of the original story, but 
 there is often in theee novels and plays that use Mary Stuart’s 
 fortunes as interesting narrative material^) a vigorous, 
 
 1.- Schiller’s "Maria Stuart" was adapted to the English stage 
 and was acted at Covent Garden under the title of "Mary Stuart, 
 Queen of Scots," on December 14, 1819. Kemble and Macready 
 were in the cast. Genest (vol. 9, pp. 49-51) says that the 
 communion scene had been altered to please English audiences, 
 that the play was dull, uninteresting, often absurd, and that 
 it was on the whole well written. 
 
 In June of the next year (June 17, 1820) "David Rizzio, 
 a Serious Opera in Three Acts, founded upon Scottish history" 
 was performed. This play by Colonel Ralph Hamilton follows 
 history as recounted by William Robertson. It tells of the 
 love of Rizzio for Mary Livingstone. Mary Stuart is guiltless 
 of unlawful ties with him, but her dependence on his advice 
 incites Darnley’s suspicions. At the time of the murder Mary 
 Livingstone avows herself Rizzio’ s wife. Darnlfcy repents his 
 jealousy but he cannot recall the order which he has given to 
 Ruthven. "Although this is a serious Opera. .. .there are some 
 comic scenes. The serious scenes are injudiciously written 
 in blank verse." (Genest, vol. 1, p. 520; p. 559). 
 
55 
 
 logical portrayal of character and considerable skill in ar- 
 ranging incidents. They are not enduring literature because 
 
 An Italian drama dealing with Mary Stuart’s execution ap- 
 peared about this year, In the "Aligemeines Theater Lexikon, " 
 Altenburg and Leipzig, 1845, vol. 5, p. 310 this play, "Morte 
 di Maria Stuarda" by Mariano Caracciolo is listed as one of 
 the most noteworthy Italian tragedies of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury . 
 
 A drama by Elizabeth Wright Macauley entitled "Mary Stuart, 
 a Dramatic Representation" appeared in 1823 (Sherword, London). 
 
 "Mary, Queen of Scots; or, The Esca.pe from Loch Lever., " 
 by William Murray, was first performed at the Edinburgh Theatre 
 on October 3, 1825. It follows "The Abbot" in its description 
 of Mary’s escape. It is published as no. 408 in "Licks’ 
 Standard Plays, " John Licks, London. 
 
 An adaptation of ‘The Abbot" under the title "Know Your 
 Own Mind, " was presented at the Lath Theatre January 13, 1827 
 with Miss Jarman as Mary Stuart. She had previously played 
 the role for more than fifty nights in Lublin. The dramat- 
 ization was poor, and there was but one spirited scene - 
 that in which Mary signed her consent to resign the throne 
 (Genest, vcl. 9, pp. 400-01). 
 
 "Southennan" (1830) by John Galt unfortunately challenges 
 comparison with Scott. Its author is one of the journalists 
 who aided in the intense waver of national feeling that swept 
 Scotland during the latter half of the century. There is 
 evident a patriotic desire to praise everything Scotch. The 
 work has a wide and penetrating observation, gentle humor, 
 pathos, and an admirable skill in drawing homely Scotch char- 
 acter. Galt is lost, however, when he steps beyond his locale. 
 Eis picture of sovereignty is especially feeble by the side 
 of Scott, who excelled in describing important historical per- 
 sonages. ( For an appreciation of Galt see Gordon, R. K. "John 
 Galt," University of Toronto Studies, Philological Series, 
 no . 5) . 
 
 Mary Russell Mit ford's "Mary Queen of Scots" (l83l) appears 
 in her "Lramatic Scenes and Other poems. " tfaitt aker , London) . 
 
 Three years later (1634) an opera entitled "Maria Stuarda" 
 by Gaetano Lonizetti was produced at the San Carlo Theater in 
 Naples. It was played in Milan and Rome in 1835 as “Giovanna 
 Gray" and "II Euondelmont e " and was given in Florence the next 
 year under its original title. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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54 
 
 they skirt the edges of the problem; they are content to peer 
 into one crisis in Mary’s career without seeking an imaginative 
 
 "Lord. Barnley: Or The Keep of Castle Hill, An Original 
 
 Romantic Brama, in 2 Acts” by Thomas E^erton Wilks (1657) 
 deals with a hunting adventure of the husband of Mary Stuart 
 but is without reference to her. It appears as no. 715 in 
 "Ricks" Standard Plays." 
 
 James Haynes is the author of "Mary Stuart; An Historical 
 Tragedy, in five Acts," which was first produced a.t Rrury Lane 
 on January 22 , 1840 with Macreedy in the cast. The subject is 
 the murder of Rizzio. (No. 749 in "Ricks’ Standard Plays.") 
 
 "The Spae Wife: or, The Queen’s Secret" (1855) by Rev. 
 
 John Boyce (pseud. Paul Feppergrass) presents Elizabeth’s 
 persecution of an old Jesuit landowner and his daughter. The 
 two finally escape from her malice by the aid of the Scotch 
 spae wife, who has devoted her life to the task of rescuing 
 Mary. The spae wife has attended Elizabeth during the birth 
 of a son to Leicester, a.nd she holds her knowledge as a threat 
 over the queen. The picture of Elizabeth is far from a pleas- 
 ant on5 . 
 
 James Grant’s novel, "Bothwell, " wa6 published in 1854. It 
 "opens in Norway, where he (Bothwell) is an ambassador to the 
 Ranish king, with scenes of shipwreck and peril. Lady Both- 
 well’s piteous tragedy, the murder of Barnley, Bothwell’s amour 
 and marriage with Mary, hie miserable end as a captive in 
 Malm#" are described. (Eaker, E. A. "Guide to the Best Fic- 
 tion, " p. 74). Kaye ("Historical Fiction," p. 270) says that 
 "for fertility of incident, rapid change of scene, and skilful 
 intermingling of historical with imaginary people and events. 
 Bothwell is not surpassed by any of the romances that came from 
 its author's fertile pen." The novel is a dexterous blend of 
 romance and history, vivaciously presented in the romanticist ( 
 manner of Bumas. ( Saturday Review , vol. 55, 1887, pp. 690-91). 
 
 Julius Bernme ’ s "Marie Stuart, oder: Rie Reformation in 
 
 Schottlend. Brama in fiJfnf Akten." (i860) is a drarnia which, 
 according to Kipka (p. 562) is crowded with dry theological 
 ai9putatione. 
 
 "The Queen’s Maries" (1862) by George James V/hyte Melville, 
 presents the love affairs of Mary’s waiting maids. Mary Hamil- 
 ton is shown as the queen’s rival in Chastelard’s affections. 
 Mary Carmichael is the sole one of the five whose romance ends 
 happily. None of the characters is vividly imagined, and there 
 is no illusion of reality. Bothwell is described as a man in- 
 tensely loyal bu nature but who becomes permanently embittered 
 when Mary orders his imprisonment. 
 

 
grasp of her life as a whole. In them Mary is usually a passive 
 figure, caist rained to action by the necessities of the narr- 
 
 Three years later there was published in Berlin "Maria 
 Stuart " by Eugen H. von Dedenroth, a novel in which there has 
 "been an unsuccessful attempt to follow Schiller. 
 
 Ludvig Schneegans in 1858 produced his "Maria, Ktfnigin von 
 Schottland" at the Hoflheater in Munich. Grillparzer, speaking 
 of it in his reminiscences, characterizes it as dramat ically 
 skilful hut somewhat uninspired in its delineation of historical 
 persons. f'Errinnerung en an Franz Grilipart zer . " Konegen, Wien, 
 1901, p. 85). 
 
 "Anthony Bahingto n. A Drama" (l8?0) hy Violet Fane, deals 
 with the Catholic conspiracy to murder Elizabeth and rescue 
 Mary. Batingtan, the leader of the six conspirators, joins the 
 plot because of his love for Mary. (Chapman and Hall, London, 
 1876) . 
 
 In 1884 M. Quinn published "Mary Queen of Scots. A Tragedy 
 in Three Acts." ( Washbourne , London). 
 
 The following year saw the publication by Major-C-eneral John 
 Watte de Peyster of "Bothwell: an Higtorical Drama." (Hew 
 
 York, 1885). 
 
 Rev. Edward Bradley (pseud. Cuthbert Bede) is the author of 
 "Fotherir^ay and Mary Queen of Scots," published in 1888 (Simp- 
 kin, Marshall and Company, London). 
 
 Lord Ernest William Hamilton's 'The Outlaws of the Marches" 
 (1897) makes no mention of Mary Stuart’s fate beyond showing 
 the bold, lawless, border-raiding sjirit of the times. The 
 story opens in 1587, the year of her execution, and is laid in 
 the Borderland between England and Scotland. Bothwell' s son by 
 hi 8 marriage to Lady Jean Gordon is the benefactor of the hero. 
 The original James Hepburn is mentioned with loathing, although 
 every one accredits to him a. remarkable charm of manner and 
 attractiveness of personality. 
 
 "Riccio, " an historical tragedy by David Graham (1898) 
 reverts to the "Riccius" of Karl Kolczawa in making Riccio share 
 in Mary’ 8 martyrdom because of his religious convictions. 
 
 Frank Mathew is the author of the novel "One Queen Triumph- 
 ant " (Lane, London, 1899) which deals with the end of the long 
 rivalry between Elizabeth and Mary. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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55 
 
 ative. Whenever her guilt iss acknowledged in these works it 
 is attributed to a passionate nature, an unfortunate early 
 training, or the force of circumstance. There is little ev- 
 idence of a desire to define the relati on b et ween her char- 
 acter and her environment or t o hold her morally responsible 
 for her death. Fate is regarded ss blind, illogical, arbit- 
 rary, bringing her added suffering by its sudden reversals 
 of situation. Not all of these novels and plays regard her 
 favorably, certain of them portraying her the wicked enemy 
 of the gloiioue Elizabeth, but they also lack distinction 
 because of their sentimental conception of character and their 
 disregard of the deeper values of the story. 
 
 In their choice of materials nineteenth century 
 novelists and dramatists hesitated, for the most part, to 
 challenge comparison with Scott and Schiller. Whenever they 
 do treat the Lochleven period and the final catastrophe they 
 pass over them briefly or with a new interpretation of the 
 events. Instead they devote their attention to Mary’s years 
 in France or to the confused, perplexing period between the 
 establishment of the court at Holyrood and the surrender to 
 Murray. Incidents are invented to motivate more adequately 
 her actions, when, for example, the discovery in "Mary Hamil- 
 ton” of Darnley’s liaison with the lady-in-wait irg is respons- 
 ible for Mary Stuart's hatred for her husband, or when, in 
 "The Master of Grey," the treason of the earl is attributed 
 to his hopeless love for his queen. 
 
 Other characters of less historical importance come 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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57 
 
 into prominence in these accounts - Darnley, Eothwell, Riccio, 
 one of the Marys, a court follower, or, frequently an unacknow- 
 ledged daughter of Mary. They are subjected to a series of in- 
 cidents which have no relation to the original story hut which 
 are offered to explain the i nconei st enci es in the queen’s con- 
 duct • 
 
 Typical of the development of the Mary Stuart theme 
 in these novels and plays are "Unknown to History" by Charlotte 
 M. Yonge, ‘T'he Two Dianas" by Alexandre Dumas, and "Mary Ham- 
 ilton" by Lord E. \7. Hamilton. The first claims to "reveal" 
 history in explaining for the first time a note in Chaetelnau’s 
 diary to the effect that &ary gave birth to a daughter in Loch- 
 leven. Miss Yonge describes the touching reunion of this 
 child with Mary and their happiness together until the queen’s 
 execution. The account is quiet and unpretentious, delighting 
 in descriptions of contemporary manners and dwelling with 
 fonanese on Mary’s maternal love. The captive herself is 
 summarily excused from sin by her pride and her French light- 
 heartedness. She has thought no evil; therefore, she has 
 wrought none. 
 
 "The Two Dianas" is true to Dumas’ habit of motiv- 
 ating history by love, adventure, and court intrigue. The 
 scene is laid in France under Henri II, with the Comte de Mont- 
 gomery as hero and the daughter of Diane de Poitiers the heroine 
 Mary Stuart appears a serene happy princess, nai've in her mis- 
 understanding of the real problems of government but admirably 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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58 
 
 fulfilling the requirement that a princess be lovely and grac- 
 ious . ^ 1 ^ 
 
 "Mary Hamilton” is "based upon a sixteenth century 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 ballad which brands Mary’s attendants as unchaste as she. 
 Mary Hamilton has been secretly carried to Barnley, who in his 
 ambition has then contracted a state marriage with the queen. 
 The story revolves upon the effort of both women to win the 
 love of this philandering young prince, an effort that sends 
 Mary Ha, milt an to the scaffold and Mary Stuart to the arms of 
 Bothwell. The author shows an inability to fasten blame for 
 the bigamous relationship upon either Barnley or his two wives. 
 All are good at heart , and all are stricken with remorse when 
 they realize that unconsciously their lower nature has led them 
 astray . 
 
 These three novels in their placid tenor and optim- 
 istic faith in human nature are typical of the great number of 
 treatments of Mary during the nineteenth century. They have 
 warmth and color, they are written with facile craftsmanship, 
 but they lack profundity. They present situations which are 
 interesting and episodes that will entertain or perhaps in- 
 struct. An earlier period is described, but the description 
 does not show, as does 'fThe Abbot” an anxiety to recreate a 
 preceding epoch to see what lessons there are in men’s failure 
 
 1. - Dumas is not so charitable in his "Life of Mary Stuart, 
 Queen of Scots, " a brief historical account of her career 
 interspersed with scenes of passion and adventure, much in 
 the style of Mrs. Haywood’s secret history. It admits Mary’s 
 crime and makes no effort to excuse it. 
 
 2. - Strickland, Agnes. "Lives of the Queens of Scotland.” 
 Harpers, Hew York, 1854, vol. 4, p. 11. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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59 
 
 to adjust themselves to that epoch or in their success in do- 
 ing so. There is little effort to show character a product 
 of innate capacities and environmental forces or as an in- 
 separable mixture of good and evil. 
 
 Hew Tendencies in the Victorian Age 
 The novels and plays produced after 1850 with this 
 romantic point of view made no permanent impression on the 
 Mary Stuart tradition, because in their attitude toward life 
 they were going counter to the main literary current of the 
 time. The political and social unrest in England which found 
 expression in the Parliamentary reform fill of 1852 and factory 
 legislation was reflected in literature by the substitution 
 of realism for sentimert all sm. There was an increasingly 
 strong tendency to sweep away error, corwenticnal restraints 
 of every sort, in order to reveal the underlying truth of 
 human life. Writers like Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot 
 were winning adherents in their effort to ridicule men’s 
 foibles, to uncover moral disease, and to rid society of its 
 malformations. The problem of evil, which sentimentalism had 
 avoided by ignoring its existence, became a vital one. Dis- 
 coveries in science, especially new theories about man’s 
 origin, brought about the dissolution of old beliefs without 
 suggesting in their place a reasonable interpretation of the 
 meaning of life. Writers with the sceptical attitude result- 
 ing from this lack of new standards took sharp issue with the 
 idealization of human character which sentimentalism had so 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
60 
 
 energetically presented. They began to subject human char- 
 acter to keen scrutiny to determine the freedom of the will 
 and the relation between man’s physical nature and his en- 
 vironment . 
 
 In Mary Stuart literature the searching psychol- 
 ogical analyses of the springs of human action produces a type 
 of novel and drama that swings to the ext rerue of pessimism 
 ae the works of the first part of the century swung to the 
 extreme of optimism. The first evidence of a new spirit is 
 the “Maria Stuart I Skotland of E j tfrnst j erne Ejdfrnson, a 
 vigorous play with brilliant dialogue and striking act clim- 
 axes . 
 
 Although Ejtfrnson places his scenes on Scottish 
 soil and gives his characters Scottish names, they have a 
 boldnese, a force, an epic largeness that one associates 
 with the Norse sagas. Mary in particular has a terrific 
 strength. Externally her nature appears calm, quiet, 
 lovely - “gleaming like a diamond and cold like a diamond." 
 
 Care and hate are foreign to her, and passion has never 
 
 touched her. She lias not sinned with Riccio or with Bothwell. 
 There at first seems no possibility of rousing her, when 
 even the sight of Riccio’s murder provokes no more personal 
 
 response than the thought that it is noble to face death 
 
 f earl ess ly. 
 
 Within Mary, however, there are horrible depths of 
 passion and lawlessness, depths of which she is utterly un- 
 aware. It is the dictates of this violent part of her nature 
 that she follows blindly, thinking in her ignorance that fate 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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61 
 
 opposes her and that her surroundings are forcing her to des- 
 truction. She can turn to no one to solve the riddle of her 
 character; Darnley is an ambitious tyrant, Murray is openly 
 a rebel, and the officers of her government are in league 
 against her. In desperation, forsaken by man and deserted by 
 her God, she yields herself to Bothwell. 
 
 Bjtfrneon’s analysis of Mary leads him to a novel 
 manner of exposition. Each step in the action is an exper- 
 iment undertaken by one character, like a psychologist, to 
 draw a certain response from another charact er . ^ ^ The mur- 
 der of Riccio is an instance of this experimentation. Parnley 
 is not convinced that he can thus regain Mary’s affection, 
 but he believes that she may be won back by fear when he has 
 failed to win ber back by love. 
 
 Swinburne’s Psvcholcg ical Analysis 
 The force of Bj <J?rn9on’ s Mary as a tragic heroine 
 is lessened by the fact that to the end of the play she re- 
 mains in ignorance of the real cause of her ruin. She blames 
 fate for its part in her downfall, while in reality it is the 
 springs of passion within her that impel her to sin. From 
 the beginning her doom is sealed. The blind slave of physical 
 forces which she does not recognize, or which, when she feels, 
 she does not understand, she struggles on through the dark, 
 
 1.- This method of composition allows no dramatic climax. The 
 play closes with the dethronement of Mary and the proclamat ion 
 of popular sovereignty under John Knox. The Presbyterian 
 faith is triumphant and Knox asserts that 
 M Mvil shall be routed 
 And weakness shall follow 
 The might of truth shall pierce 
 To the last retreat of doom.” 
 

 
 
52 
 
 troublous days of her reign until the barriers which she has 
 been raising against her happiness become too firm for her to 
 oppose. 
 
 Swinburne in his trilogy - "Chast elard," (1656), 
 "Bothwell," (1874) ’’Mary Stuart," (1981) - does not repeat 
 Bjdfrnson's mistake in leaving his heroine without a conscious- 
 ness of her guilt or the forces of her own nature. He has 
 examined the evidence against Mary Stuart in Buchanan, Robert- 
 son, and Knox and has found only one possible interpretation 
 of her conduct: "she hated Barnley with a passionate but 
 
 justifiable hatred and loved Bothwell with a passionate but 
 pardonable love. For the rest of her career, I cannot but 
 think," he says, "whatever was evil and ignoble in it was the 
 work of education or of circumstances; whatever was good 
 and noble, the gift of nature or of God. 
 
 In his drama , however, he could not show Mary in- 
 fluenced to her destruction by her early training or her 
 evil surroundings. She must, as in Schiller's "Maria Stuart,” 
 be an active agent in the tragedy which destroys her. He makes 
 
 her then a vicious, fascinating woman, like the Lilith of 
 
 ( o ) 
 
 Bant e Gabriel Rosetti. "A Venus Crowned who eats the 
 
 1 . - Swinburne, Algernon Charles. "Note on the Character of 
 Ma by Queen of Scots." Fortnightly Review , vol. £7, 1862, p. 
 
 25. 
 
 2. - Swinburne's description of Lilith ("Essays and Studies," 
 
 4th edition, London, 1897, p. 375 ff.) all is applicable to 
 Mary: "Of evil desire or evil repute she has nothing and noth- 
 
 ing of good. Bhe is indifferent, equable .magnet ic ; she charms 
 and draws down the souls of men by pure force of attraction, in 
 no wise wailful or malignant ; outside herself she cannot live, 
 she cannot even see; and because of this she attracts and 
 subdues all men at once in body and in spirit." 
 
63 
 
 hearts of Men” Chastelard calls her: 
 
 "For all Christ’s work this Venus is not quelled, 
 
 Eut reddens at the mouth with blood of men. 
 
 Sucking between smell teeth the sap o’ the veins, 
 
 Labbling with death her little tender lips - 
 A bitter beauty, poisonoue-parlfcd mouth. 
 
 I shall escape you somehow with my death." 
 
 Love she recognizes as a blind, venomous, over- 
 powering insanity, bitter-sweet, cloying and acid, destroying 
 all the tendernees in a woman. Knowing what havoc it will 
 bring, her, yet she chooses it, preferring to spend one month 
 in glorious abandon than to live through a score of drab, 
 well-ordered years. Men are toys to her, and she delights 
 in driving them to madness. She is not offended by Chastelard’s 
 intrusion into her apartment, for it gratifies her to know 
 her power over him. *^his suicidal young monomaniac" has an 
 unusual fire and vigor, qualities that attract her. He is, 
 like her, an epicure in sensations, deliberately cultivating 
 hie mad infatuation for her because he is conscious that in 
 his absorption lies the greatest peace he can ever find. 
 
 The man who can hold Mary must be her master, how. 
 ever, and when Chastelard becomes her slave she tires of him. 
 
 He seems resolved on blazoning their relation through France 
 and Scotland, and she is glad that she can discard him before 
 her reputation is tarnished. Never intending to grant him 
 official pardon, she goes to his prison cell to caress him, 
 luxuriating in the sensation of having a strorg man ready to 
 die for love of her. With a callousness that shocks even the 
 hardened Murray, who refuses to dip his hands in her sin, she 
 
54 
 
 turns to Bothwell and goes with her new lover to witness the 
 execution of the old, 
 
 A morbid craving for sensual pleasure attends her 
 passage through the years, as she goes from one love to an- 
 other, feeling that life is short and beauty fleeting. As 
 the inevitable of her animal lusts her sense of venues be- 
 comes dulled; she can no longer indulge in the piercing 
 self-analysis of "Chast elard . " Passion coarsens her and 
 she appears an embittered woman, linked in marriage with a 
 man whom she hates, and doomed never to find a nature more 
 masterful than hers. "Men must love you in love's spite," 
 Chast elard has told her 
 
 "For you will always kill; man by man 
 
 Your lips will bite them dead; yea, though you would 
 You shall not spare one; all will die of you." 
 
 Mary has chosen her c curse in life deliberately 
 and she never regrets her decision. Resolute, etill defiant 
 after twenty years in English prisons, she hails death gladly: 
 "Mary has lived out her passion and her hate." When life has 
 no more zest, variety, storm and stress of emotion, she is 
 willing that the sentence of the court be administered. She 
 does seek to regain in ecstatic piety the enthusiasm and 
 vigor of her early years, but she is too unwilling to relin- 
 quish earthly pleasures to become a religious zealot. 
 
 But Mary cannot escape fate: 
 
 ^The bitter tongue through bitter speech shall rue, 
 
 Let bloody stroke for bloody stroke be law, 
 
 The doer must suffer. 'Tis the world-old saw." 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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65 
 
 Through all these years there has been beside Mary one woman 
 who typifies the spirit of justice. The unhappy Mary Beaton, 
 who loved Chastelard devotedly, pledges herself at his exec- 
 ution to bring the same fate to Mary. "I will never leave you 
 till you die,” she assures the frightened queen on their flight 
 to England, and the words have a meaning that Mary does not 
 understand. Mary Beaton, however, is not a silent avenger, 
 standing beside her mistress and ready to bring her to des- 
 truction. She serves Mary faithfully and well during the tem- 
 pestuous days after Darnley’s murder, and shares the long im- 
 prisonment in England. It is her duty to perform these ser- 
 vices, and she performs them c onscientiously, although she re- 
 gards with contempt the queen’s weakness. 
 
 The climax of the trilogy is a short scene in w Mary 
 Stuart” where the queen asks Mary Beaton to enliven their 
 dreary day with a song. The maid sings an old song of Chas- 
 telard’s, but the queen has completely forgotten it. Mary 
 Beaton has hesitated to use against Mary the letter which the 
 angry captive addressed, but never sent, to Elizabeth, taunt- 
 ing her with her bastard birth. Mary Beaton has retained the 
 letter, determined to use it unless the queen shows some sign 
 of pity and remorse for Chastelard. She sees now that what 
 has been the great tragedy of her life is merely a minor ep- 
 isode in the queen’s past. She forwards the letter to White- 
 hall, where it hastens the signing of the warrant. Then, her 
 mission performed, she can retire to France to mourn her lover. 
 
 The suggestion that the death of Chastelard and the 
 

 
 
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53 
 
 memory of Mary Beaton Bring Mary to the Block is poetic and 
 juBt . It unifies and completes the trilogy, which otherwise 
 would Be the picture of a passionate woman Brought to death 
 accidentally rather than inevitably as the result of her crime. 
 In this unity the three plays make a powerful study of human 
 passions, laid Bare and analyzed with the skill of the scient- 
 ist. The character drawing is within narrow lines, But within 
 its limits it is accurate and vivid. 
 
 The chief danger in Swinburne’s depiction of Mary as 
 the personification of cruelty and lust is that the plays will 
 Be little more than sordid, revolting accounts of her amours. 
 
 To a certain extent this danger is not avoided. There are pre- 
 sented few noble traits of character, for Mary is no worse 
 than her corrupt court. Scotland is a land of wild godless 
 men; Darnley is a despicable craven, who requites his wife 
 for her infidelity By his intrigue with Mary Hamilton; Both- 
 well is a Brutal libertine; Chastelard hovers on the Brink of 
 insanity. The sight , in addition, of Mary Beaton watching 
 down the years for a change to avenge her lover’s death is re- 
 pugnant . Swinburne casts over his dark scene a graphic imagery 
 and a haunt ing melody of verse, But even poetical Beauty can- 
 not disguise the cynical interpretation of the principal fig- 
 ures . 
 
 The picture which Bjtfrnson and Swinburne present is 
 as extreme as that drawn By the sent iment ali st e . The treatment 
 of man’s vices is too stark, too unmitigated, ignoring the 
 praiseworthy qualities in Mary Stuart as unconcernedly as the 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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57 
 
 novels of the preceding period ignored the evil ones. A just 
 int erpretat ion of Mary’s character should recognize both. 
 
 There must have "been possibilities for good in her, for she 
 inspired a devotion in her attendants and leaders in Scotland 
 that surpassed loyalty or religious prejudice. There must 
 have been reprehensible tendencies in her, for historians have 
 now generally accepted her complicity in Darnley’s murder and 
 the authenticity of the casket letters. There is no attempt in 
 Bjtfrnson and Swinburne to reconcile these opposing forces with- 
 in her, and the value of the psychological study is lessened 
 by the neglect of an important part of the problem. 
 

 
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IV. MARY STUART IN TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE 
 
 General Tenden cie. s T in Treatments ,of M ary Stuart 
 The cause of Mary Stuart has been ably presented dur- 
 ing the last twenty years. In history Innes, Lang, and Mumby 
 have examined state documents and diplomatic correspondence and 
 drawn from them a tolerant picture of the young queen* In 
 novels built for popular consumption by Lee, .Major, Pease, and 
 Cullen^) the broadly romantic aspects of her life have been 
 
 1.- "The Gentleman Pensioner: A Romance of the Year 1539" by 
 
 Albert Lee (1900) tells of "Catholic plots to release Mary and 
 place her on the English throne. One of the Gentlemen Pension- 
 ers is entrusted by the Queen with important letters and under- 
 takes a journey full of peril. Queen Mary was at the time in 
 prison in the charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury; and Lord Huns- 
 don, in command of the troops in the West, is instructed to re- 
 lieve the Earl and take the Captive Queen to a place of secur- 
 ity Interwoven with the descriptions of public tumult and 
 
 veiled conspiracy is the troubled love-3tory of the Gentleman 
 Pensioner." (Baker, E. A. "A Guide to Historical Fiction, " 
 p. 48) . 
 
 "Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall" ( 1902) by Charles Major, 
 (pseud. Edwin Cuskoden) is a popular romance of the Roraeo- 
 Juliet love of Dorothy Vernon for Sir John Manners. The narr- 
 ator introduces a love affair of his own with Mary Queen of 
 Scots whom he paints as selfish, treacherous, and frankly wan- 
 ton. Elizabeth has much the same character. 
 
 Henry Christopher Bailey’s *The Master of Gray" (1903) 
 takes the period of Mary’s captivity in England. Its cent ral 
 character is Patrick Gray, a prominent Scotch earl whose de- 
 sertion of his queen is attributed to his unrequited love for 
 her. Except for this variation the story follows that out- 
 lined in Miss Strickland’s life of Mary Stuart. 
 
 Howard Pease in "With the Warden of the Marches: or, The 
 Vow by the ’Nine Stane Rig’" ( 1909) tells in broad Scotch of 
 Liddesdale border raids during the time of Queen Mary. Eoth- 
 well is the most noted personage who appears, and he is set 
 forth as a gallant leader of men. The work abounds in anti- 
 quarian learning but the dialect in which it is cast renders 
 much of it unint elligible to the modern reader. 
 
 William Robert Cullen in "The Unwedded Bride" deals with 
 Mary Queen of Scots and the dissensions of Papists and Protest- 
 ants in Aberdeen and Edinburgh. The novel was published in 
 1910. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
59 
 
 set forth, and in that by Benson there has been a return to the 
 
 (i) 
 
 early Catholic adulation of her. In the historical novel 
 
 Maurice Hewlett has made a remarkably faithful and graphic study 
 
 of Scotland of the mid-sixteenth century. In drama her story 
 
 (?) (S) (4. 
 
 has been told, v * most adequately by Michael Field, Ada Sterling, 
 
 1. - "Come Rack! Come Rope!" by Father Hugh Benson (1912) sets 
 forth events accurately but Mary has never appeared more blame- 
 less, or more insipid, or the Jesuits in a fairer light. The 
 book is full of stirring adventure - the flight of the pro- 
 scribed Jesuits, the ^abington conspiracy, the trial and exec- 
 ution of Mary - and abounds in analyses of religious emotion. 
 Helena Concannon reviewing the novel in the Cathol ic World 
 (vol. 99, 1914, pp. 535-45) speaks of Mary as standing for 
 Catholic England, "a little worn and wear y, and middle-aged, 
 and unattractive except to the few faithful souls who know her 
 best. But to the others .... she is a mistress to be fled from. 
 So England leaves the old faith for the new. " 
 
 2. - H. Cornelius is the author of a trilogy: "James Stuart, 
 
 Graf von Murray" ( 1897 ) ; "Elisabeth, Kifnigin von England" 
 (1898); and "Maria Stuart" ( 1903) • 
 
 "Elizabeth of England" by Nathaniel S. Shaler (1903) is a 
 "dramatic romance in 5 parts." In its adulation of Elizabeth 
 it reverts to the early eighteenth century view of Mary as a 
 monster of vice and sexual morbidity. 
 
 3. « "Michael Field" is the pseudonym of Catherine Bradley 
 and Emily Cooper. 
 
 4. - Appearing six months after Drinkwat er’ s "Mary Stuart," 
 
 Ada Sterling’s "Mary Queen of Scots" (1921) is the latest drama 
 to deal with the story. Miss Sterling in the preface states 
 her purpose of revising Schiller’s play to meet the require-- 
 mentB of the modern stage. She adapts from Scott scenes of 
 Mary’ s life at Lochleven, and begins the account with Mary’s 
 flight from Calais. 
 
 The first episode, Miss Sterling’s own work, is well writ- 
 ten and introduces an interesting dramatic conflict. There is 
 a decided loosening of the tension when the author slights 
 this conflict in the succeeding scene. The play aims to touch 
 merely the crises of Mary’s life, and each of necessity re- 
 ceives meager treatment. 
 
 The earlier accounts with Miss Sterling selects for abridge- 
 ment are those of Schiller and Scott. 
 

 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
70 
 
 and John Drinkwater. 
 
 These works do not "break sharply with those at the 
 end of the preceding century, and their sole difference from 
 them is a tendency toward moderation. In them Mary is neither 
 the picturesque martyr of Banks nor the pathetic queen con- 
 ceived by Scott’s romantic imagination nor yet the morbid har- 
 lot of Swinburne. They are, for the most part, content to 
 admit her guilt without excusing it by reference to environ- 
 mental conditions or by insistence on the physical necessities 
 of her nature. Her weakness is not condoned; it is accepted 
 without comment. 
 
 These works, further, stay closely within the common- 
 ly accepted outlines of the story. They evince none of that 
 desire to "explain” history by the introduction of imagined in- 
 cidents and characters that the sentimental novelists fifty 
 years earlier showed. The distinctive quality about them, and 
 this is particularly true of the three productions of the per- 
 iod with literary merit, is that they do not make striking ad- 
 ditions or novel interpretations but that they work patiently 
 over the materials in a spirit of tolerance. In one sense, as 
 a result of this leniency toward the dramatis personae, Field’s 
 "The Tragic Mary " may be called a work of tolerant sentimental- 
 ism, and Hewlett's "The Queen’s Quair" and Drinkwat er ' s "Mary 
 Stuart" tolerant psychological ana, lyses of Mary's personality. 
 
 Modifie d Sentimentalism t in , he .Tragi,! c Mary" 
 
 Perhaps the meaning of these terms will become clear- 
 er on an examination of the novel and the plays themselves. It 
 has been said that sentimentalism in its purest form viewed 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
71 
 
 Mary Stuart as an essentially noble character unjustly suffering 
 imprisonment and when it dwelt upon her early years, as it 
 rarely did, it forgave her because of her innate goodness. It 
 portrayed her, as in The Tragic Mary, “ a woman whose attendant 
 could say of her: “I have had brave thoughts since she ques- 
 
 tioned me, and I will love her to my heart’s end.” It showed 
 her an unsuspicious queen who could arouse by her charity of 
 mind a tribute in “The Tragic Mary" from so selfish a character 
 as Let hingt cn : 
 
 The queen acts in a noble childishness 
 Of unsuspicion, ready to espouse 
 Whoever is accused, since she herself 
 So rankly charged, is wholly without fault." 
 
 It emphasized the appeal which the humbler sert iments made to 
 
 her and stressed the redemptive power of nature on her spirit. 
 
 In accord with sentimental practice Field makes her heroine a 
 
 woman who delights in ordinary housewifely duties and who turns 
 
 after stormy council sessions to wild rides in the moonlight. 
 
 In an intime.te contact with nature her serenity is restored. 
 
 The Tragic Mary “ shows also the influence of the 
 psychological studies of Mary’s character in the previous cen- 
 tury. She is depicted a proud passionate woman, a queen, the 
 author says in the preface, with “majesty of intellect, con- 
 scious of the burden of her beauty, and devoting every power 
 of spirit and sense to the reception or excitement of desire." 
 Her nature lies somewhere between contemporary judgments of 
 her - the fool that her officers consider her and the wicked 
 woman that the savage, brutal Knox opposes. She is normal 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
72 
 
 womanhood exalted to sovereignty and bearirg royal dignities 
 because her duty compels it, even though she prefers domestic 
 happiness. Her fate is not so much the tragedy of a noble 
 mind brought low through human weakness as the pathetic lot 
 of the woman raised above her proper station. Bothwell’s 
 fall has more real elements of tragedy in it, for the earl is 
 a strong , honest lover whose ambition and lust for power 
 bring his destruction: 
 
 "I have so much to hope, so much to do’* 
 
 0 happiness! I only look on death 
 
 To feel life’s manifold inducements grow 
 More glorious and hazardous than ever 
 They were before; my every appetite. 
 
 Each mighty muscle in me seems t o shout 
 As through a lifted trumpet! I will live, 
 
 1 will possess, and let the universe 
 Endure my depredations.” 
 
 The principle that underlies the dramatic structure 
 of ’The Tragic Mary” is that which animates Greek tragedy - 
 the belief that the emotions of the audience are stirred more 
 by the consequences of an action than by the action itself. 
 The play thus come3 to resemble Alfieri’s ’’Maria Stuarda" in 
 its small number of characters - five in all - and its lack 
 of external action. The conflict is a mental and spiritual 
 one, and the play sets forth in one scene after another the 
 stages in the inner development . The murder of Darnley oc- 
 curs on the stage but the audience is interested in the mind 
 of the murderer, in the motives that finally lead him to the 
 act and the memories, regrets, and fears that follow it. The 
 verse of the play is strong, direct, and beautiful, except for 
 occasional daring phrases and extravagant similes. 
 
9 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
73 
 
 A Realist ic Hi s tor ical J^ovel i n. "The Qu een^s .Quair " 
 
 ^The Tragic Mary" illustrates modifications which the 
 late nineteenth psychological spirit had made in one type of 
 Mary Stuart literature. "The Queen’s Quair," by Maurice Hewlett, 
 (1905) shows similar changes occurring in the historical novel 
 dealing with the same subject. M A book about Queen Mary - if 
 it be honest - has no business to be an exercise in the roman- 
 tic, " Bays the author in the preface. "If the truth is to be 
 told, let it be there." Following this ideal he draws a stern, 
 realistic picture of a stirring period, going far beyond Scott’s 
 purpose in "The Abbot" of presenting wide historical movements 
 for their significance in national life. He exhibits in minute 
 detail even the most trifling incidents of the story - the de- 
 nunciations of Knox, the intrigues of the nobles, the execution 
 of Lord Huntly, Mary’s marriage with Larnley, Riccio’s murder, 
 the conspiracy ending in Larnley’ s assassination, the union 
 with Bothwell, the fiasco of Carbery, and the humiliating re- 
 turn to Edinburgh. Eveiy historical character, important or 
 insignificant, is crowded into his pages, with a great con- 
 fusion of motives. There results, not the simplicity of great 
 tragedy as in Schiller, but a meticulous, scholarly study of 
 an earlier epoch. The story does not touch the heart of the 
 reader, although it itis gorgeous diction, its facile workman- 
 ship, and it 8 lifelike recreation of the period it makes a 
 strong appeal to hie iraagin e.t ion. 
 
 In "The Abbot " the tragedy of Mary Stuart was the 
 loss of her throne; in this modern realistic novel the tragedy 
 

74 
 
 lies in the breaking of her spirit. ^ As long as she main- 
 tains her indomitable Stuart courage she can face the world. 
 
 Once she has lost it she is a baffled, sorely disillusioned 
 woman looking eagerly toward death. Initially innocent, she 
 comes to Scotland, a land of jealous, pitiless nobles and aban- 
 doned lower classes. From this point onward the narrative is 
 concerned with describing the gradual change in her character 
 among her sombre, evil surroundings. Her trust is often be- 
 trayed, and she becomes suspicious of every one; the sweet- 
 ness is slowly sapped from her nature; she meets treachery 
 with treachery and intrigue with intrigue. Anxious for love, 
 she seeks a man who in his brilliance, gaiety, keen wit and 
 daring can rival her, and in the search she is the destined 
 prey of the masterful Eothwell. His pretended indifference 
 makes her pursuit of him only the more eager. 
 
 At this crisis in her career Hewlett accepts the 
 darkest accusations against her. The casket letters are gen- 
 uine, and Mary, enslaved by her passion for Eothwell, is his 
 accomplice in the murder of her husband. For these crimes 
 Hewlett does not seek to extenuate her, for her early training 
 
 1.- "Forth from the Lady of Lorraine came the lass, born in an 
 unhappy hour, tossing high her young head, saying, ’Let me 
 alone to rule wild Scot land ’... .Maids ’ Adventure - with that 
 
 we begin A hundred books have been written, a hundred 
 
 songs sung; men enough of these latter days have broken 
 their hearts for Q,ueen Mary’s. What is more to the matter is 
 that no heart but hers was broken in time. All the world can 
 love her now; but who loved her then? Hot a man among them. 
 
 A few girls went weeping; a few boys laid down their necks 
 that she might walk free of the mire. Alas’, the mire swallow- 
 ed them up, and she must soil her pretty feet. This is the 
 nut of the tragedy; pity is involved rather than terror.” 
 (Author’s preface). 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . . . 
 
 
75 
 
 and the unwholesome atmosphere of Holyrood have largely decided 
 her doom. Her plight is not tragic, therefore, although in 
 moments of great decision she follows her passions instead of 
 her intellectual convictions and thus has a part in bringing 
 the final catastrophe. She is a pitiable figure caught in the 
 net o f fat e . 
 
 "The Queen’s Qpair" applies in the novel the psychol- 
 ogical test of character that Swinburne applied in his trilogy. 
 Both works give dark, depressing glimpses of a troubled, god- 
 less land in which there are few men breathing truth, virtue, 
 and honor; both are permeated with a feeling of pessimism, a 
 sense of the futility of struggling against fate. They differ 
 widely, however, in their attitude toward the main character. 
 
 In Swinburne 34a ry is essentially evil. She is static from one 
 play to another of the trilogy, except for a gradual coarsen- 
 ing of moral fibre. Hewlett, on the contrary, adopts the view 
 that a nature inherently good can be warped and brought to 
 destruction by the power of environment. In his Mary Stuart 
 there is a gradual degeneration as good qualities recede and 
 evil tendencies come to the fore under the stress of her love 
 for Bothwell. The novel thus gains a vitality, a sense of 
 progression, that the dramas lack. 
 
 Mary’ s Tr agedy as Conc eived by Brink w ater 
 
 The psychological interest whi ch Swinburne and Hew- 
 lett showed in their searching, almost pathological treatments 
 of Mary’s character is the one that has inspired John Brink- 
 water in "Mary Stuart" (1021). Here the dramatist goes to the 
 
76 
 
 past for a solution of a modern problem and f o r a setting from 
 which it can be regarded calmly and dispassionately.' 1 ^ As in 
 ’The Qpeen’s Q.uair" this tendency toward a thorough examination 
 of Mary’s nature leads toward a conception of man’s failure in 
 life because it is the will of fate that he shall never find 
 that environment in uihich his personality can develop unhampered. 
 Lrinkwat er sees Mary as a human, not uncommon type of woman. 
 
 It is predestined that her fine, strong, ardent spirit shall 
 seek its mate and it is predestined not to find one equal to 
 it. Therein lies the tragedy. 
 
 The play revolves around the marital troubles of the 
 young Scot chman, John Hunter, who is introduced in the pro- „ 
 logue. His wife, Margaret, has come to love another man with- 
 out ceasing to love her husband. He is wondering how a woman 
 may so divide her love and be true to two men at once when the 
 scene changes from modern Edinburgh to Holyrood on the night 
 of March 9, 1566. Hunter can be aided in his difficulty by 
 Mary Stuart, whose faith it is that “we must become love or it 
 spends us." 
 
 She is a woman with a capacity for a great love, 
 which she fatalistically realizes will never come to her. She 
 wonders which of her lovers will win her - "the scented pimp, 
 the callow fool, or the bully" - but she knows that in the 
 
 1.- "In ’Abraham Lincoln’ he wanted to show those human qual- 
 ities of mind and heart that make a. great and wise leader of 
 men. In ’Mary Stuart* he wants to show how the fine qualities 
 of a woman’s mind and heart can be thwarted, can count for 
 nothing, when the woman is not happy and richly and completely 
 fulfilled in her love life." The Lraroa . vol. 11, 1921, p. 255. 
 

 
77 
 
 end life will cheat her. As the old song has it, 
 
 "Not Riccio nor Barnley knew 
 Nor Eothwell how to find 
 This Mary's test magnificence 
 Of the great lover's mind." 
 
 She has no feeling for Ficcio except regret that he has not 
 the stature for love with her, and she ignores Barnley as a 
 jealous courtier with small intelligence. Toward Bothwell 
 she turns eagerly, kindling to the ardor of his wooing, yet 
 restrained by her conviction that their attraction is only 
 momentary. It is not the great love for which she is waiting. 
 "Mary Stuart was a queen of love," she telle her maid, "but 
 she had no subjects. She was love's servant, but she found 
 no lord." She is driven through the world; she cannot find 
 peace because there is no man whose largeness of nature ans- 
 wers her own.^^ After the murder of Riccio she yields to 
 Bothwell in revulsion from the weakness of her other lovers. 
 The potentialities for royalty in her - the political keenness 
 displayed in her interview with Elizabeth's ambassador, her 
 splendid physical courage, her almost masculine resolution of 
 spirit, her power of analyzing moral issues of personal and 
 
 1.- Mary thus answers Barnley when he demands that she dismiss 
 Riccio*. "There are tides in me as fierce as any that have 
 troubled women. And they are restless, always, always. Bo you 
 think I desire that? Bo you think I have no other longings - 
 to govern with a clear brain, to prove myself against these 
 foreign jealousies, to see Strong children about me, to play 
 with an easy festival mind, to walk the evenings et peace? 
 
 All should be resolved and clear in me, with a king to match 
 my kir^dom. My love is crazed, a turbulence, without direction. 
 It was made to move in long--yes, deep--assurance, moulding me 
 beyond my knowledge. I, who should be love, may but burn and 
 burn with the love that I am not . " 
 

 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
78 
 
 national importance - all are thwarted and wasted "because the 
 love in her nature must remain unfulfilled. 
 
 This view of Mary Stuart, in common with that of 
 Hewlett, presents forcefully that thought that whatever Mary's 
 nature was, it was opposed by fate. In consequence the climax 
 of the play, as is the case in "The Queen’s Quair" and in 
 Swinburne’s trilogy also, is not a moral climax. At the be- 
 ginning there is told Mary’s strong desire for a mate who will 
 be her peer and her revolt against the ignoble intrigues by 
 which she must satisfy her passion. A.fter this there is 
 nothing to be said, no new material to dwell upon except in- 
 cident. There are present none of the elements of pity and 
 fear that Greek tragedy demands. As in other realistic in- 
 terpretations of Mary's character she is pictured as an in- 
 terest ing type of royal womanhood, but her history has not 
 been examined to discover the paradox of good and evil in 
 her that finally causes her death. The peculiar qualities 
 in her personality in their relation to environment are por- 
 trayed sympathetically eo that they exculpate her almost as 
 completely as her native goodness o.f heart excuses her in 
 Hanks and St. John. In other words, it is the perversity of 
 fate rather than tragic guilt that forces the final catas- 
 trophe in krinkwater. Here is not, as in the humanistic 
 view of Schiller, a woman capable of good and evil who, al- 
 though influenced in her decisions by her early training and 
 her struggle against her bleak, ugly surroundings, neverthe- 
 less sees the alternative courses before her and consciously 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
79 
 
 chooses those whi ch accomplish her ruin. 
 
 Modern Solutions of the Problem of Mary Stuart 
 
 Drinkwat er* e combination of a sympathetic attitude 
 toward Mary Stuart with a none the less searching study of 
 her character is an important step in the gradual approach 
 to the heart of the problem which dramatists and novelists 
 have made. The early Catholic apologists in their eagerness 
 to canonize Mary and to point a religious moral from her 
 lot had selected an aspect of the story that could not be of 
 permanent interest. The eighteenth century sentimentalists 
 in their depiction of a noble queen in undeserved distress 
 had been similarly unobservant of the deeper meaning of the 
 situation. They had wisely made little reference to the 
 struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism but had exam- 
 ined the political conditions of the time in order to excuse 
 Mary or, conversely, to justify Elizabeth. Jesuit and sent- 
 imentalist writer alike had been unsuccessful. Mary was for 
 them too much the pars-gon, the type of womanhood set apart 
 from her surroundings to excite admiration and pity. The 
 question of her guilt had been ignored by them or answered 
 in feeble fashion. 
 
 Schiller in drama and Scott in the novel had res- 
 tored Mary to her place as a historical personage. The pol- 
 itical, social, and religious movements of the time had been 
 described, but they had been subordinated to the background, 
 where they exercised a power in shaping the queen’s ideals. 
 Mary had been held responsible for her crime; at the same 
 
80 
 
 time her noble qualities had been recognized. She had been 
 made a livirg woman with human virtues and human weaknesses. 
 Her death in "Maria Stuart*’ and the lose of her throne in 
 ‘'The Abbot** had resulted directly from her inability to pur- 
 sue the course of action which her better nature prompted her 
 to follow. 
 
 But in these two great humanistic works Scott and 
 Schiller had given unequal emphasis to Mary’s nobility of 
 character. Schiller in particular had been hampered by the 
 form he employed. Hie tragedy must have dignity and elev- 
 ation, and it could not portray its heroine as too consist- 
 ently sinful. In consequence he was forced to focus atten- 
 tion on a single act in which all the potentialities for 
 evil in her nature are revealed. This one deed, although 
 it sums up her fatal weakness, must appear scanty ground for 
 the punishment meted her. 
 
 Although they admit her guilt neither Schiller nor 
 Scott deals with her first years in Scotland, the time when 
 Mary appears in a most unfavorable light. The need for a 
 careful study of these years in the light of modern psychol- 
 ogy was met by Swinburne and Hewlett in works that presented 
 her nature in its primitive passion with the objectivity and 
 merciless fidelity of a surgical clinic. 
 
 The Swinburnian trilogy, and t o a lesser extent 
 **The Qpeen’s Quair," was unsuccessful in its treatment of Mary 
 Stuart because for all its excellent analysis its view was as 
 extreme as that of earlier optimistic apologists. It failed 
 

 . 
 
 - 
 
 
 ’ 
 
 - t ■; 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . . 
 
 - 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
81 
 
 utterly to take into account the good in Mary’s conduct, which 
 historians have established as firmly as they have determined 
 her crimes. 
 
 In his view of Mary Queen of Scots Drinkwater takes 
 the middle of the road attitude. He has a scientist’s interest 
 in the springs of human action and a poet’s conception of the 
 essentially paradox! cally nature of mankind. His "Mary Stuart M 
 is in reality only a long one-act play within the narrow com- 
 pass tut one aspect of Mary - Mary as the great lover - can te 
 touched. Other elements in the situation remain untreated 
 ty this modern attitude, an attitude that tempers with the 
 broad humanism of Scott and Schiller the analytic, objective 
 interest of Swinburne and Hewlett. 
 

 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF DRAMA CONCERNING MARY STUART 
 
 (Each drama is listed under the year of first production or 
 first publication . Wherever there are several editions of a 
 play the best critical or annotated edition has been mentioned.) 
 
 1593 Roulers, Adrian. "Insulani Stuarta Tragoedia, siue Caedes 
 Mariae Sereni ssimae Scot. Reginae in Angl. perpetrate.. " 
 In "Lat eini sche Lit eraturdenkreA'ler des XVI und XVII 
 Jahrhundert s , " vol. 17, Max Herrmann, Berlin, 1906. 
 
 1539 Regnault . "Marie Stuard Reyne d’Escosse.” Quinet , Paris. 
 
 1344 Prague Jesuit drama. "Zeidler, Studien und Beitr^ge zur 
 Geschichte der Jesuit enkomdfdie und des Klost erdramas . " 
 Hamburg and Leipzig, 1891. 
 
 1660 Vondel, Joost van. "Maria Stuart of Germartelde Majes- 
 (?) teit." J. van Lennep, Amsterdam, 1859. 
 
 1660 Diamante, Juan Bautista. "La. Reyna Maria Eetuarda. " 
 
 (?) 
 
 1653 Savaro, Giovanni Francesco. "La, Maria Stuarda . " 
 
 1679 Riemer, Johannes. "Von hohen Verm^hlungen. " 
 
 1704 Banks, John. 'The Albion Queens; or, The Death of Mary, 
 Queen of Scotland. A Tragedy." (Written in 1574). 
 
 J. Darby, London, 1728. 
 
 1?05 Kolczawa, Karl. "Tregicae Fortunae Metamorphosis sue 
 
 Riccius, Stuartee Reginae Scotiae Primus a Consiliis." 
 
 1776 Alfieri, Vittorio. "Maria Stuarda." Translation in "The 
 Literature of Italy," vol. 8, The National Alumni, 
 
 1907. 
 
 1780 Yorke, John. "Mary, Queen of Scotland." 
 
 1?8Z> Spiesz, C. H. "Marie Stuart." Joseph Edlen von Kurzbek, 
 Wien, 1784. 
 
 1769 St. John, John. "Mary, Queen of Scots." Longman, Lon- 
 don, 1811. 
 
 1792 Deverell, Mary. "Mary Queen of Scots - An Historical 
 Tragedy, or Dramatic Poem." Gloucheeter. 
 
 1800 Schiller, Johann Friedrich Christopher von. "Maria 
 
 Stuart." D. C. Heath and Company, New York, 1914. 
 
 1801 Grahame, James. "Mary Stewart Queen of Scots." William 
 
 Elackwood, Edinburgh, 1807. 
 
 1814 Sotheby, William. "The Death of Darnley." Murray, Lon- 
 don, 1614. , 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
85 
 
 1810 
 
 1820 
 
 (?) 
 
 1820 
 
 1820 
 
 1825 
 
 1825 
 
 1827 
 
 1851 
 
 1854 
 
 1840 
 
 1860 
 
 1864 
 
 1865 
 1668 
 1874 
 1876 
 1881 
 
 "Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots." Adaptation from Schiller, 
 played by Kemble and Macready December 14, 1810. 
 
 Caracciolo, Mariano. "Morte di Maria Stuarda." Allge- 
 meinee Theat er-Lexikon, Altenburg and Leipzig, 1846. 
 
 Hamilton, Colonel Ralph. "David Ricci o; a Serious Op- 
 era, in three acts (founded on Scottish history). As 
 performed at the Theatre Royal Durry Lane 17 June 
 1820." John Lowndes, London, 1820. 
 
 Lebrun, Fierre-Ar.t oine . "Marie Stuart, Tragfedie en cinq 
 actes." Ladvocat and Barba, Paris, 1820. 
 
 Macauley, Elizabeth Wright. "Mary Stuart, a Dramatic 
 Representation." Sherword, London, 1825. 
 
 Murray, William. "Mary, Queen of Scots; or, The Escape 
 from Loch Leven. A Historical Drama, in Two Acts. 
 
 First Performed at the Edinburgh Theatre, October 5rd, 
 1825." John Dicke, London, 1825. 
 
 "Know Your Own Mind." Adaptation from Scott, played at 
 Bath, January 15, 1827. 
 
 Mitford, Mary Russell. "Mary Queen of Scots." Whittaker, 
 London, 1851. 
 
 Donizetti, Gaetano. "Maria Stuarda, Oper. " Presented in 
 Naples . 
 
 Haynes, James. "Mary Stuart: An Historical Tragedy, in 
 
 Five Acts." J. Ridgwary, London, 1840. 
 
 Bamme, Julius. "Maria Stuart, oder : Die Reformation in 
 
 Schottlsnd. Drama in fii'nf Akten." Anton, Halle, 1850. 
 
 Bjtfrnson, Bjtfrnst jerne. "Maria Stuart I Skotlend." Nic- 
 olai, Berlin, 1865. 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles. "Chast elard. " Harper and 
 Brothers, New York, 1907. 
 
 Schneegane, Ludwig. "Maria, K(5nigin von Schottland. 
 
 Drama in fflnf Aufztfgen. " G. Weiez, Heidelberg, 1868. 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles. "Bothwell." Harper and 
 Brothers, New York, 1907. 
 
 Fane, Violet. "Anthony Babirgton, A Drama." Chapman and 
 Hall, London, 1876. 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles. "Mary Stuart." Harper and 
 Brothers, New York, 1907. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
84 
 
 1884 Quinn, M. ♦’Mary Queen of Scots. A Tragedy in Three Acte. 
 
 Washbourne, Ldonon, 1884. 
 
 1885 Peyster, Major-General John Watts de. "Bothweli: an 
 
 Historical Drama. " Hew York, 1885. 
 
 1890 ’’Field, Micheal." (Bradley, Catherine and Cooper, Emily). 
 ”The Tragic Mary.” George Bell and Sons, London, 
 
 1890. 
 
 1894 Plaice, Robert. ”Mary Queen of Scots: A Tragedy in 5 
 
 acts.” Simpkin, Marshall and Company, Loridon, 1894. 
 
 1893 Cornelius, H. "Maria Stuart, Ktfnigin von Schott land." 
 Schtfningh, Paderborn, 1897. 
 
 1898 Graham, David. "Riccio, An Historical Tragedy. " A. Con- 
 stable and Company, Westminster, 1898. 
 
 1905 Shaler, Nathaniel S. "Elizabeth of England." Houghton 
 Mifflin Company, Boston, 1905. 
 
 1921 Brinkwat er , John. "Mary Stuart." Houghton Mifflin Com- 
 pany, Boston, 1921. 
 
 1921 Sterling, Ada. "Mary, Queen of Scots." Oxford University 
 Prese, Hew York, 1921. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF FICTION CONCERNING MARY STUART 
 
 (The date under which the novel is listed is that of first pub- 
 lication. ) 
 
 1675 Eoisguiltert , Pierre le Pesant de. "Marie Stuart, Reine 
 d’Escosse," Paris, 1675. 
 
 1680 LaF&yette, Marie Madeleine Pioche. "The Princess of 
 Cleves." Translation, J. Party, London, 1820. 
 
 1725 Haywood, Mrs. Eliza. "Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots: Eeing 
 
 the Secret History of her Life, and the Heal Causes of 
 all her Misfortunes Containing a Relation of many Part- 
 icular Transactions in her Reign; Never yet Published 
 in any Collection." London, 1725. 
 
 1785 Lee, Sophia. "The Recess." 
 
 1620 Scott, Sir Walter. "The Abbot." Waverley Novels, Amer- 
 ican edition, 1892-1900. 
 
 1850 Galt, John. "Southennan. " Works of Galt, William Black- 
 wood and Sons, Edinburgh, 1895-96. 
 
 1840 Pumas, Alexandre. "The Life of Mary Stuart, Queen of 
 Scots." Translation, Merriam, New York, 1896. 
 
 1845 Pumas, Alexandre. ’The Two Lianas." Translation, Ver- 
 sailles edition of Lumas, Little Brown and Company, 
 1802. 
 
 1854 Grant, James. "Bothwell . " 
 
 1862 Melville, George John Whyte. "The Queen’s Maries." Long- 
 mans, Green and Company, New York, 1862. 
 
 1865 Pitawall, Ernst (Herra. vcn Ledenroth) . "Mari©. Stuart, 
 
 Hist orische-romant ische Geschichte der Zeit una dee 
 Lebens der Ktfnigin von Schottl&nd, Mari© Stuart." 
 Vienna. 
 
 1882 Yonge, Charlotte Mary. "Unknown to History." Macmillan 
 and Company, London, 1920. 
 
 1886 Maclaren, Jessie. "Neil Wilcox: A Story of Edinburgh 
 
 in the Lays of Queen Marie." 
 
 1886 Bede, Cuthbert ("Edward Eradley") . "Fotheringay and Mary 
 Queen of Scots. " Simpkin, Marshall and Company, Lon- 
 don, 1888. 
 
 1897 Hamilton, Lord Ernest William. ’'The Outlaws of the Mar- 
 ches." Lodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1897. 
 
 1899 Mathew, Frank. "One Queen T riumphant . " Lane, London, 
 1899. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
86 
 
 1900 Lee, Albert . 'The Gentleman Pensioner: A Romance of the 
 
 Year 1569.“ Appleton, New York, 1900. 
 
 1901 Hamilton, Lord Ernest William. "Mary Hamilton: Her Life 
 
 and History." Methuen and Company, London, 1901. 
 
 1902 Major, Charles (Edwin Caskoden) . "Dorothy Vernon of Had- 
 
 don Hall." Groeset and Dunlap, New York, 1902. 
 
 1903 Bailey, Henry Christopher. "The Master of Gray." Long- 
 
 mans, Green and Company, New York, 1902. 
 
 1902 Hewlett. Maurice. ^he Queen’s Quair." Charles Scrib- 
 ners s Sons, New York, 1903. 
 
 1909 Pease, Howard. "With the Warden of the Marches: or, 
 
 The Vow by the ’Nine Stane Rig.’" Constable, London, 
 1909. 
 
 1910 Cullen, William Robert. "The Unwedded Bride." Longman, 
 
 London, 1910. 
 
 1912 Benson, Pather Robert Hugh. "Come Racki Come Rope’." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 A. Compilations and Crit iclsmg of Mary Stuart Literature 
 
 Scott, John. '’Bibliography of Works Relating to Mary, 
 Queen of Scots, 1544-1700.” Edinburgh Bibliograph- 
 ical Society Publications, vol. 2, Edinburgh, 1895. 
 
 Kipka, Karl. "Maria Stua,rt in Lrama der Welt lit eratur. 
 
 B. Manuals of Biography and of Fiction 
 
 1. Eor their biographies of authors and their reference to 
 critical works concerning them, the following are useful: 
 
 2. Manuals of historical fiction which give details of pub- 
 lics.ticn and brief reviews of the novele, especially the less 
 important ones dealing with Mary Stuart: 
 
 Baker, E. A. "A Guide to the Best Eiction in English." 
 Macmillan, Kew York, 1913. 
 
 Baker, E. A. "A Guide to Historical Fiction." George 
 Routledge and Sons, London, 1914. 
 
 Buckley, J. A. and Williams. V/. T. "A Guide to British 
 Historical Fiction." George G. Harrap, London, 1912. 
 
 Kaye, James R. "Historical Fiction." Snowdon Publishing 
 Company, Chicago, 1920. 
 
 C, Historical Accounts of the Period 
 
 1. Early accounts. For their picture of Scottish history and 
 for their influence in moulding popular opinion in regard to the 
 Stuarts theee histories are important. 
 
 Bourdeille, Pierre de ( Abbfe de Brantome). 'The Book cf 
 the Ladies." Hardy, Pratt and Company, Boston, 1902. 
 Presents sympathetically Mary's fortunes from the point 
 of view of a man who accompanied her from France to 
 Scotland, who lived at Holyrood until her capture, and 
 who was present at her execution. Historically it is 
 important for its influence on descriptions of Mary's 
 execution. It served in its own day to counteract the 
 accusations of Buchanan. 
 
 » g 
 
 Mfl-s c Harris Leipzig, 1907. (See Chapter I, page 4 
 
 "Allgemeines Theater Lexikon, " Altenburg and Leipzig, 
 1845. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
88 
 
 Robert eon, William. ’The History of Scotland During the 
 Reigns of Queen Mary and King James VI.” Cadell and 
 Davies, London, ,,1817 . Deals only with Mary’s reign 
 in Scotland, ii’ is popular as source material for 
 dramatists and novelists. Its view of Mary is human- 
 istic. 
 
 Strickland, Agnes. H Lives of the Queens of Scotland. ” 
 Harpers, New York, 1854. The great historical study 
 of Mary during the nineteenth century; very influ- 
 ential on public opinion in regard to Mary Stuart. 
 
 (Labannff’s critical work, for which much historical data has 
 been amassed, gives the best discussion of the casket letters). 
 
 2 . Modern accounts. These recent historians have dealt with 
 the problem of the casket letters or have given humanistic de- 
 scriptions of Mary’ s conduct; 
 
 Hume, Martin. ’The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots.” 
 Eveleigh and Nashnon, London, 1905. 
 
 Lang, Andrew. The Mystery of Mary Stuart.” Longmans, 
 Green and Company, London, 1901. 
 
 Mumby, Frank Arthur. ’’Elizabeth and Mary Stuart.” Hough- 
 ton Mifflin Company, Heston, 1914. 
 
 Mumby, Frank Arthur. The Fall of Mary Stuart.” Hough- 
 ton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1918. 
 
 D • Eng 1 1 sh St ag e Hi st or v 
 
 1. A broad survey of the movements of English dramatic liter- 
 ature is given in an adequate, scholarly fashion in the follow- 
 ing : 
 
 Cunningham, Allan. biographical and Critical History of 
 the Last Fifty Years.” London and Edinburgh, 1852. 
 
 Hazlitt , William Carew. "A Hand-Book to the Popular 
 Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Eritain.” 
 London, 1857. 
 
 Ward, Adolphus William. "A History of English Dramatic 
 Literature to the Death of Qu een Anne.” Macmillan, 
 London, 1799. 
 
 2. Especially valuable for contemporary accounts of stage 
 productions are these collections of reviews: 
 
 Baker, David Erskine and Jone3, Stephen. ”Eiographica 
 Dramatica. ” Longman, London, 1812. 
 
80 
 
 '‘Companion to the Theatre." J. bourse, London, 1747. 
 
 Fleay, Frederick Gard. "A Chronicle History of the Lon- 
 don Stage 1550-1342." Reeves and Turnder, London, 
 
 1800. 
 
 Genest, John. "Some Account of the English Stage From 
 The Restoration in 1630 to 1830." H. E. Carrington, 
 Bath, 1832. 
 
 E. Germ an g^nd Aust^i.^n Ma,rv JD 
 
 Michels and von Pichler treat the cruder, less sophisticat- 
 ed forms of the Jesuit drama; Stachel reviews the development 
 of the University Jesuit dramas, with especial reference to 
 their dependence on Seneca* 
 
 Michels, Victor. "Studien IJLer die Altesten Leutschen 
 Fest nacht spiele . " K. J. Trainer, Strassburg, 1806. 
 
 von Pichler, F. "Uher das Lrama des Mittelalters in 
 Tirol." Innsbruck, 1850. 
 
 Stachel, Paul. "Seneca und das deutsche Renal ssanc edrama. " 
 Meyer and Mtfller, Boston, 1007. 
 
 F. Crit icism t of ^Individual ,^o,r k§, 
 
 In this study it has often been impossible, especially in 
 the case of German drama or minor pieces, to examine the works 
 themselves. The author has found the following analyses of in- 
 dividual novels and plays or or the author's literary method 
 stimulating and suggestive. 
 
 Everett, William. "The Italian Poets Since Lante." Luck- 
 worth and Company, London, 1910. 
 
 Rusconi, John. "The Alfieri Centenary." Fortnig ht lv 
 Review , vol. 80, 1903, pp. 769-81. 
 
 Robert Hur}-^ .B qqq qq _ 
 
 Concannon, Helena. "Robert Hugh Benson: Novelist." 
 
 Cathol ic World, vol. 99, 1914, pp. 635-45. 
 
 Boyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth. "Essays on Scandinavian Liter- 
 ature." Charles Scribners Sons, New York, 1895. 
 

 
90 
 
 "Bot hwell ' s Banish T omb . H Ljtt ell’s. Ag.e, vo 1 . 
 
 309, 1921, pp. 303-05. 
 
 Brandes, George. ’’Henrik Ibsen. 3 jtfrnst j e rne Bjifrnson . 
 Critical Studies.” William Heinemann, London, 1899. 
 
 Payne, William Morton. ”Bj tfrnst j erne Bjtfrnson." McClurg, 
 Chicago, 1910. 
 
 iaJaJiUa&ssUs 
 
 "John Drinkwater.” Nat i on . vol. 112, 1921, pp. 554-55. 
 
 Eaton, Walt er Pri chard. "Drinkwat er ’ s ’Mary Stuart.’” 
 
 The D rama v vol. 11, 1921, pp. 255-56. 
 
 Ervine, St. John. "John Drinkwater’e ’Ma.ry Stuart.’” 
 
 Ljtt el ],* b Living A& e. vol. 309, 1921, pp. 423-35. 
 
 Wilson, Edmund. "Drinkwat er’ s ’Mary Stuart.’” New Re - 
 public, vol. 26, 1921, p. 152. 
 
 Lie Id” 
 
 "The Tragic Maiy . ” Academy , vol. 38, 1890, pp . 123-24. 
 
 Gordon, R. K. "John Galt.” University of Toronto Stud- 
 ies, Philological Series, no. 5. 
 
 The Novels of John Galt.” Blackwo od, ’,8. Edinburgh Magazine, 
 vol. 159, 1896, pp. 971-82. " 
 
 1ms* A satassA 
 
 Moir, D. M. "Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the 
 Past Half-Cent ury . " Edinburgh, 1851. 
 
 Mrs . Eliza J*%£wqo,d 
 
 Whicher, George Brisbie. "The Life and Romances of Mrs. 
 Eliza Haywood. ” Columbia University Press, New York, 
 1915. 
 
 Maurice Hew lett. 
 
 Bonner, Milton. "Maurice Hewlett.” John W. Luce and Com- 
 pany, Boston, 1911. 
 
 Bruce, H. Addington. "The Queen’s Quair.” Curr ent .Lit- 
 erat u re . vol. 37, 1904, pp. 82-84. 
 

 
 
91 
 
 “Mr. Hewlett’s Latest Story.” Hat i on. vol. 79, 1904, 
 p . 14 . 
 
 Madam e d e L aPayette, 
 
 Mathews, Brander. M A Best Seller of Two Hundred Years 
 Ago.” Bookma n, vol. 39, 1914, pp. 398-94. 
 
 Wright, Edward. ,r The Earliest Modern Novelist.” Acad - 
 emy . vol. 30, 1906, p. 91. 
 
 Sftat&a 
 
 Whitmore, Clara H. “'Woman’s Place in English Piction.” 
 
 G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1910. 
 
 MiAfta. 
 
 Woerner, Homan. "Lie Allteste Maria Stuart-Trag<5fdie. ” 
 
 In "Germant ische Abhandlung en. ” Hermann Paul, Strass- 
 burg, 1902. 
 
 J oha nn P r^edri ch .Q^r^st^ojiher J£on J5cJii 1 lejr 
 
 "Schiller’s Mary Stuart.” Knick erbocker,, vol. 9, 1837, 
 pp. 433-43. 
 
 Sir Walt er . Scot t, 
 
 Canning, Albert S. G. “History in Scott’s Novels.” T. 
 Pisher Unwin, London, 1907. 
 
 "The Waverley Novels." Ljtt ell ’s Ljv i m. Aj? e r . vol. 205, 
 1895, pp. 513-34. 
 
 "Mr. Swinburne’s ’Bothwell.’" Port nig . \v, FfiPX qw • vol. 
 
 22, 1874, pp. 76-88. 
 
 "Mr. Swinburne’s ’ Chast elard. ’ " Port n i,ght \v; Review, 
 vol. 4, 1866, pp. 533-43. 
 
 "Swinburne’s ’Mary Stuart.’” Rial . vol. 2, 1882, op. 237- 
 38. 
 
 Simcox, G. A. "Mr. Swinburne’s Trilogy." Port nigh tly 
 Review , vol. 37, 1882, pp. 156-79. 
 
 Wrat ialaw, Theodore. "Algernon Charles Swinburne.” Green- 
 ing, London, 1900. 
 
92 
 
 CharloAt e ,Ma r% Jfog&g 
 
 "Charlotte Mary Yonge." Lit t e ll* s Living Age, vol. 240, 
 
 1904, pp. 567-81. 
 
 v 
 
 "The Novels of Miss Yonge." Edinbu rgh R eview , vol. 202, 
 
 1905, pp. 557-77. 
 
 "Unknown to History." Satu rday Review, vol. 54, 1884, 
 pp. 60-51. 
 
 ias&t^aa Zo^ei 
 
 Hellwald, Frederich von. "Geschichte des Holl^ndischen 
 Theaters." Rotterdam, 1874.