Abstract
The deliberate attempts of the Stuart kings to define their rule of reunited Britannia as the fulfilment of all past history seems to have been partly prompted by their anxieties about the effectiveness of post facto Tudor propaganda. The early years of James I’s reign did include a short honeymoon, but the inevitable comparisons with Queen Elizabeth subtly, and increasingly, undermined his validity as man and monarch, because he was obviously much less good at being Elizabeth than she had been herself. This propaganda on behalf of the now-dead Tudors was curiously widespread, particularly in non-courtly circles, including on the public stage of the period.1 The Tudor monarchs Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I are severally represented in six plays written between 1602 and 1611: Sir Thomas Wyatt (pr. 1607), the two parts of If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody (pr. 1605 and 1606), When You See Me You Know Me (pr. 1605), The Whore of Babylon (pr. 1607) and Henry VIII (perf. 1612/13). The citizen dramatists were working to a different remit from those historians, such as William Camden, more nearly concerned with the Jacobean court.2 Not only did their dramatizations need to work as plays, but they were also going to be played in front of a London audience notable for its strong Protestantism, relative to other sections of English society.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Anon., The History of the King and the Cobler, shewing How Henry VIII used to visit the watches in the city (Stirling: Macnie, 1825).
Archer, Ian W., ‘Discourses of History in Elizabethan and Early Stuart London’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 68/1–2 (2005), 205–26.
Augustine, St, Confessions, The Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols (London: Heinemann, 1912).
Barton, Anne, ‘The King Disguis’d; Shakespeare’s Henry V and the Comical History’, Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 207–33.
Bevington, David and Peter Holbrook (eds), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Bishop, Tom, ‘Tradition and Novelty in the Jacobean Masque’, The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, ed. David Bevington and Peter Holbrook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 88–120.
Chamberlain, John, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. and intr. Norman Egbert McClure (2 vols; Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1939).
Child, Francis James (ed.), English and Scottish Ballads (8 vols; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1889).
Collinson, Patrick, ‘William Camden and the Anti-Myth of Elizabeth’, The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 79–98.
Cranfield, Nicholas W. S., ‘Bancroft, Richard (bap. 1544, d. 1610)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1272, accessed 22 September 2006.
Dekker, Thomas, The Whore of Babylon (London: for Nathaniel Butter, 1607).
Dekker, Thomas and John Webster, The Famous Historie of Sir Thomas Wyat (London: E[dward] A[llde] for Thomas Archer, 1607).
Dugdale, Gilbert, The Time Triumphant (London: at R. B., 1604).
Dutton, Richard, ‘“Methinks the truth should live from age to age”: the Dating and Contexts of Henry V’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 68/1–2 (2005), 173–204.
Ellison James, ‘Measure for Measure and the Executions of Catholics in 1604’, English Literary Renaissance, 33/1 (2003), 44–87.
Evenden, Elizabeth and Thomas S. Freeman, ‘Print, Profit and Propaganda: the Elizabethan Privy Council and the 1570 Edition of Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs”’, English Historical Review, 119/484 (November 2004), 1288–1307.
Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments (London: John Day, 1583).
Foxe, John, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. Stephen Reed Cattley; 4th edn, rev. and corr. Josiah Pratt, 8 vols (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1877).
Freeman, Thomas S., ‘Providence and Prescription: the Account of Elizabeth in Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs”’, The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 27–55.
Goody, Jack and Ian Watt, ‘The Consequences of Literacy’ (1963), repr. in Jack Goody (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 27–68.
Grant, Teresa, ‘Drama Queen: Staging Elizabeth in If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody’, The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 120–42.
Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearian Playing Companies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
Holbrook, Peter, ‘Jacobean Masques and the Jacobean Peace’, The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, ed. David Bevington and Peter Holbrook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 67–87.
Hoy, Cyrus, Introductions, Notes, and Commentaries to Texts in ‘The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker’, edited by Fredson Bowers (4 vols; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
Lawhom, Mark H., ‘Taking Pains for the Prince: Age, Patronage, and Penal Surrogacy in Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me’, The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society, 1150–1650, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2002), pp. 131–50.
Martin, Mary Foster, ‘If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobodie, and The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat’, The Library, 4th series, 13 (1933), 271–81.
Meikle, Maureen M. and Helen Payne, ‘Anne (1574–1619)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/559, accessed 28 Febmary 2007.
Munro, Lucy, ‘Plays, Politics and Patronage: the Fortune Repertory, 1603–1625’, unpublished essay.
Noling, Kim H., ‘Woman’s Wit and Woman’s Will in When You See Me You Know Me’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 33 (1993), 327–42.
Nostbakken, F., ‘Rowley’s When You See Me You Know Me: Political Drama in Transition’, Cahiers Élisabéthains, 47 (April 1995), 71–8.
Pepys, Samuel, The Diaries of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews (11 vols; London, 1973).
Perry, Curtis, ‘The Citizen Politics of Nostalgia: Queen Elizabeth in Early Jacobean London’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 23/1 (Winter, 1993), 89–111.
Robinson, Marsha S., Writing the Reformation: Actes and Monuments and the Jacobean History Play (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
Rowley, Samuel, When You See Me You Know Me (1605), ed. F. P. Wilson (Oxford: Malone Society, 1952).
Seton, Walter W., ‘The Early Years of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Charles, Duke of Albany, 1593–1605’, The Scottish Historical Review, 13 (1916), 366–79.
Shakespeare, William, Measure for Measure, ed. J. W. Lever (London: Methuen, 1965, repr. 1977).
Stow, John, The Annales, or Generall Chronicle of England, begun first by maister John Stow, ed. and supp. Edward Howes (London, Thomas Dawson for Thomas Adams, 1615; STC 23338).
Strong, Roy, Henry, Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance (London: Thames & Hudson, 1986).
Watkins, John, ‘“Old Bess in the Ruff”: Remembering Elizabeth I, 1625–1660’, English Literary Renaissance, 30 (2000), 95–116.
Westbrook, Vivienne, ‘Authorized Version of the Bible, translators of the (act. 1604–1611)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/74199, accessed 22 September 2006.
Williamson, J. W., The Myth of the Conqueror, Prince Henry Stuart: A Study of 17th Century Personation (New York: AMS Press, 1978).
Woolf, D. R., The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500–1730 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Woolf, D. R., ‘Two Elizabeths? James I and the Late Queen’s Famous Memory’, Canadian Journal of History 20/2 (August, 1985), 167–91.
Wormald, Jenny, ‘James VI and I (1566–1625)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14592, accessed 22 September 2006.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2008 Teresa Grant
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grant, T. (2008). History in the Making: the Case of Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me You Know Me (1604/5). In: Grant, T., Ravelhofer, B. (eds) English Historical Drama, 1500–1660. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593268_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593268_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-52503-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59326-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)