Tudor England's Foreign Queens

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Not Just the Tudors’ special month-long look at Queenship continues with an exploration of the popular perception of those foreign Queens who came to England in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Catherine of Aragon, Anne of Cleves, Anne of Denmark, Henrietta Maria and Catherine of Braganza have all become part of our national fabric, and yet when they arrived on English shores to be wed, they were very much foreigners. The strong sense of difference that surrounded them even featured in the plays that were written and performed for the thriving theatre culture of the time.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Mira 'Assaf Kafantaris, a specialist in early modern literature, about the works of literature that explored ideas of queenship and cultural mixing, which proliferated from the late 1500s onwards.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	To study a list of the patrols of 16th and 17th century English kings is to study a list dominated by foreign
0:09.4	it. Catherine of Arrogant and Anne of Cleaves were foreign-born queens of Henry VIII.
0:15.0	Anne of Denmark married James I and I. Henry Eta Maria was the French-born queen of King
0:21.6	Charles I and the Portuguese Catherine of Bruganza married Charles II. As queens and consuls,
0:28.2	these women have become part of our national fabric. And yet, when the women arrived to be wed,
0:35.6	they were very much foreigners. They traveled for months by sea in carriage to make land in
0:42.1	their new home. Not knowing a soul saved those in their entourage. Their arrival in England must
0:47.6	have caused feelings of sadness at leaving behind their homeland as well as anticipation and anxiety
0:54.5	about the new life that lay ahead. The sense of feeling like an alien and a stranger to use the
1:00.2	16th century words for foreigners was likely very strong indeed. And a strong sense of difference
1:06.8	was felt amongst the people of England too. What would their new queen look like? How would she act?
1:13.9	Would the marriage affect politics, religion, culture or society? One fascinating source for
1:20.7	understanding people's perceptions of their foreign queens is the plays written and performed
1:27.2	for a thriving theatre culture. Players exploring ideas about queenship and cultural mixing
1:32.6	that proliferated from the late 1500s. To discuss the representation of early modern queens
1:39.0	on the English stage, I'm very pleased to welcome Mira Asaf Kaffer and Tarris, a system professor
1:45.6	of English at Butler University in Indianapolis. Mira specialises in early modern literature
1:52.9	and her work has appeared in the Cambridge edition of the works of Ben Johnson and the Paul Grave
1:57.6	Handbook of Shakespeare's Queens. She's currently writing Royal Marriage, Foreign Queens and
2:04.4	Constructions of Race in the Early Modern Period, about which we will be talking today.
2:14.1	Mira, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to not just the tutors. I think this is such a fascinating
2:20.2	topic that we're going to talk about today and it seems to me amazing that our eyes haven't been
	...

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