The Death of Elizabeth I

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Catherine Loomis

   Pages 1-6

3. At the Last Gasp: The Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I

   • Catherine Loomis

   Pages 7-46

4. “Weepe with Joy”: Elegies for Elizabeth

   • Catherine Loomis

   Pages 47-82

5. Some Strange Eruption to Our State: Elizabeth Southwell’s Manuscript Account of the Death of Queen Elizabeth

   • Catherine Loomis

   Pages 83-117

6. “Under Whom Is Figured Our Late Queene Elizabeth”: The Queen in Jacobean Drama

   • Catherine Loomis

   Pages 119-156

7. Conclusion

   • Catherine Loomis

   Pages 157-161

8. Back Matter

   Pages 163-238

   PDF

The death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 was greeted by an outpouring of official proclamations, gossip-filled letters, tense diary entries, diplomatic dispatches, and somber sermons. English poets wrote hundreds of elegies to Elizabeth, and playwrights began bringing her onto the stage. This book uses these historical and literary sources, including a maid of honor's eyewitness account of the explosion of the Queen's corpse, to provide a detailed history of Elizabeth's final illness and death, and to show Elizabeth's subjects - peers and poets, bishops and beggars, women and men - responding to their loss by remembering and reconstructing their Queen.

• body
• corpus
• death
• drama
• manuscript
• play
• poem
• prose
• British and Irish Literature

'Loomis's central point that Elizabeth's death caused a rupture in the traditional fabric of politics and culture cannot be ignored. The prose is accessible without being showy and the research is formidable.' Journal of British Studies

"Catherine Loomis's The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen is a valuable addition to the Palgrave series Queenship and Power, as well as to the growing body of scholarship on the afterlife of Elizabeth. Loomis's is a must-read book for all students of queenship, gender, and the politics of memory in the early modern period." - Huntington Library Quarterly

"This book provides a thorough and fascinating exploration of the posthumous representation of Elizabeth I in literary and material culture. Loomis is a thoughtful, interesting, meticulous scholar and this carefully constructed and highly readable book demonstrates a fine blending of literary and historical work." - Jo Carney, Chair, Department of English, The College of New Jersey

CATHERINE LOOMIS is an Associate Professor of English at the University of New Orleans, USA.

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