Elizabeth I is one of England's most admired and celebrated rulers. She is also one of its most iconic: her image is familiar from paintings, film and television. This wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the origins and development of the image and myths that came to surround the Virgin Queen. The essays question the prevailing assumptions about the mythic Elizabeth and challenge the view that she was unambiguously celebrated in the literature and portraiture of the early modern era. They explain how the most familiar myths surrounding the queen developed from the concerns of her contemporaries and yet continue to reverberate today. Published to mark the 400th anniversary of the queen's death, this volume will appeal to all those with an interest in the historiography of Elizabeth's reign and Elizabethan, and Jacobean, poets, dramatists and artists.

Introduction: It's only a movie / Thomas S. Freeman -- A tyrant for all seasons: Henry VIII on film / Thomas S. Freeman -- Saints and cinemas: A man for all seasons / Peter Marshall -- Anne of the thousand days / Glenn Richardson -- Lady Jane Grey on film / Carole Levin -- From Hatfield to Hollywood: Elizabeth I on film / Susan Doran -- Lady in waiting: young Elizabeth Tudor on film / Judith Richards -- Kapur's Elizabeth / Christopher Haigh -- Mary Queen of Scots (1971) / John Guy -- The Armada, war and propaganda in the cinema / Will Coster -- Elizabeth: the golden age: a sign of the times? / Vivienne Westbrook -- Shakespeare in love: Elizabeth I as Dea ex Machina / Brett Usher -- The private lives of Elizabeth and Essex and the romanticization of Elizabethan politics / Paul E.J. Hammer -- Oliver Cromwell and the civil wars / John Morrill -- The unfilmed Oliver Cromwell / David L. Smith -- Winstanley / Christopher Durston -- Why don't the Stuarts get filmed? / Ronald Hutton.

Mary Tudor, England's first sovereign queen, is arguably also England's most vilified and misrepresented monarch. For centuries, she has been branded in popular and academic works as a vicious failure and superstitious tyrant. Infamous for burning hundreds of her subjects at the stake in a futile attempt to undo the English Reformation and restore Catholicism in England, she is widely remembered today as 'Bloody Mary'. In this volume, an outstanding team of international scholars trace and analyse the growth of the Bloody Mary myth, from the time of Elizabeth I through to the present day. Detailing the political, religious and gender assumptions on which the myth is based, they also attempt to recover the 'real' Mary û an educated, pragmatic and resourceful queen û underneath the myth of the villainous tyrant. Based on the very latest research, this book offers a truly revisionist and uniquely balanced portrait of Mary Tudor.